LEGENDS OF THE SPRING

LEGENDS OF THE SPRING Pursuing big black bears in the mountains as winter recedes 'one of the most underrated big game hunts someone can do.'

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CASSIDY CARON

At the age of 10, my first big game animal was a small yet beautiful color-phase black bear. Countless evening hours were spent cruising the mountain roads after school with my dad until that perfect moment presented itself for a young and inexperienced hunter to harvest her first animal. It is engraved in my memory. To this day, spring bear is one of my favorite hunts.

Every year, as the snow recedes and the wet earth smells of last fall’s composting leaves, that urge comes back. It is time to start the search for some legendary bruins. Even with many, many successful bear hunts behind me over the past 25 years, that promise of one bigger, one older, one more beautiful than any in the past keeps the excitement up. You never know what lies around the next corner, or in the next avalanche chute. You just might cross paths with a legend emerging from his secret den.

Spring hunting for black bears is one of the best hunts you can do. Besides seeing a lot of bears, it’s a great way to assess how other species wintered in your favorite hunting

Author Cassidy Caron, age 10, with her first big game animal, a color-phase black bear.

These days Caron guides bruin hunters, including 78-year-old Vietnam veteran Richard Horne, who bagged this nice bear with her during the 2022 spring season.

Danish hunter Michael with his beautiful boar from spring 2022 at Compass Mountain Outfitters’ base camp in Canada.

spots. You see cow moose with calves on wobbly legs; bull elk with alien-like fuzzy stubs sprouting from their heads; confused yearling deer, recently abandoned by mom, clumsily bouncing across roads; shed horns and winter kills. Cascading waterfalls, raging flood waters, rotting avalanches and towering peaks all form the formidable yet stunning backdrop for a spring bear hunt.

AS WELL AS being my first big game animal, guiding black bears right out of high school was also my first professional job in the hunting industry.

I was green as could be and my very first client wounded a bear that ended up in the top of a large fir tree. The client was able to finish the bear, threading a shot through the massive limbs of the old tree. To my surprise, the bear died suspended in the huge limbs some 60 feet off the ground!

Being young and ambitious as I was, I climbed the tree to push the bear down. It took quite a while to weave my way up through the twisted branches to reach the height of the bear. He wasn’t a small bear and it took some doing to get him to fall out of the tree rather than myself. Finally, after much cursing and much more exertion than I had calculated, the bear plummeted to the earth. Unfortunately for me, it broke all the limbs off one side of the tree as it went.

To scale the tree, I had wound myself around all sides of it. Getting down was sure a challenge missing half those critical branches! But my very first guiding expedition was a success.

YEARS LATER, ONE of my most memorable black bear hunts took place with a father and daughter from Germany. Julia was on her first international hunting trip and was as excited as she was nervous.

I tried hard for the first four days of the hunt to exercise the same patience my dad showed me on my first bear hunt, as opportunity after opportunity presented itself but Julia just wasn’t comfortable enough to make them work. As the time ran down, I dreaded sending her home from her first big hunt without a bear.

On the last day of the hunt, we headed out in the early morning. We hiked 3 miles into a valley full of avalanche chutes – prime habitat for bears as the warmth of June melts the snowpack and greens the grass below.

We spotted a very big boar on the first slide but before we could get a shot, he fed into some dense undergrowth and did not reappear. I decided to wait. We killed a very long day by napping, snacking around a small fire and watching the slide for the bear. It was terribly boring and

I found myself second-guessing my tactic, as it was the last day of the hunt and perhaps covering more ground would have been more fruitful.

Finally, the sun began to dip below the mountaintops and my senses and anticipation heightened. Still the old boar did not come. Even on highpressure sheep hunts I’ve guided, I have not experienced tension like I did that evening. I wanted so badly for Julia to have a successful trip.

And then a dark shape lumbered onto the avalanche chute. There was no mistaking it was him. The way old bears carry themselves is distinct. Bears can be a hard animal to judge, but when a true titan of the mountain appears, you just know. There is the roll of the shoulders; the sway of the belly; the confident position of his blocky, muscled head; the arrogant, confident lumber; and the deliberate flicks of the big front paws.

The boar had come out much higher than where we had spotted him that morning. With only 1.5 hours of good daylight left, we had to move fast. Luckily for us, the evening downdraft had begun and we were able to stalk up the chute underneath the bear. The noise of the raging runoff creek covered our sound, as we fought our way up through the tangled alders and loose rock. At last we were within 90 yards.

I set my pack on the ground and got Julia comfortable in a prone position. At this distance, it was impossible not to see how big the bear was, but I downplayed his size to keep her calm. As the bruin fed into a grassy opening above us, he presented the perfect broadside and Julia made a perfect shot.

The bear was ancient, his scarred face and coat telling a tale of many battles and tough years living on turf infested with grizzlies. Julia had worked hard and had earned every foot of that giant old bear. She was ecstatic and so was I.

We skinned and field-dressed him on the chute in the glow of our headlamps as darkness set in. On the hike out in the dark, heavily laden with the fresh hide and quarters, I suddenly saw a large and very ominous shape on the outer reach of my headlamp beam. It was a grizzly. He hadn’t heard us coming over the roar of a nearby river. Covered in blood and sweat and reeking of a fresh kill while marching directly into a grizzly’s path in the middle of the night is not ideal.

“Hey!” I yelled, waving a hiking pole in the air. Luckily, the grizzly was as surprised as I was and went careening off the trail, crashing and smashing his way through the dense brush. We

First-time bear hunter Julia with her amazing last-day boar. Hiking out in the dark, the German huntress and the author ran into a grizzly, which fortunately for them ran the other way. FROM ENTRY-LEVEL HUNTERS to very experienced ones looking for a spring adventure, black bear hunting has something for every hunter, on every level. It’s always a high-action, highsuccess hunt that in my opinion is one of the most underrated big game hunts someone can do. Black bears make beautiful trophies and great sausage. Guided hunts are affordable and a great way to adventure in some new territory.

Every mountain has a mysterious hidden den that holds a legendary bear, and every fresh spring brings a hunter’s chance at a quest to pursue him. As the sun melts away another long winter and the new life of spring comes to the mountains, put your boots on and go bear hunting.  Editor’s note: Cassidy Caron is the owner of Compass Mountain Outfitters. For more information, visit compassmountainoutfitters.com.