Shelby's First Bear, Washington State 2024

My first successful hunt, Washington Black Bear! This newer journey of a huntress has been a long awaited one. In 2022, a light bulb came on and said the hunting thing isn’t just for my husband, I could join him and do it too, he of course was all for that. That year I got my hunter safety course completed, did a couple scouting trips and took on 5 days in the high country for high buck here in Washington State.

I did not grow up hunting or even in a household that owned guns. In the last 3 years I have been on 2 successful hunts with many trips to the mountains. Last year my husband scored on high buck and now this day my black bear. Dave and I do things differently and we bring our kids on some of these scouting/hunting trips. 

This weekend marked my 7th day hunting in August with a devoted 4 day hunt with just Dave and I. Of course, August 30th with all ours kids in tow, we were lucky to find this humongous bear (Samantha’s description). We sat up on this ridge top the night before, we had hunted all day, 13 hours with plenty of snacks and an iPad with movies for the kids. An hour before we were going to call it, this same bear came within 235 yards. I scrambled to get a shooting position never feeling comfortable and the bear never stopped moving. That night we got to the truck and both Dave and I said we are coming back in the morning. Again, we have our kids in tow so we weren’t rushing the mornings. We got up to our perch about 8am, got the kids setup and were glassing for 10 minutes. I spotted this guy naked eye coming up the same ridge, but he was eating and slowly making his way up. I said to Dave “I think it’s a small bear”. Dave gets the spotter on him and says “no, it’s the same one from last night.” I get on him behind the gun and setup my shooting position and he isn’t giving me a clear shot right away. About 10 minutes of watching through the scope he gave me the opportunity at about 330 yards. I had him perfectly in the crosshairs and squeezed off a shot. He ran a little bit up the mountain, so I squeezed one more and one more. My biggest fear was injuring an animal and having it go off and not be found. Not sure if the last 2 shots even hit him. I then watched him roll and come to a stop! I just shot my first Bear! 

We had a bit of a yard sale and I had to keep an eye on the spot where he laid. Dave and Barrett hiked over to him, Dave gave me the thumbs up through the binos. Just wow!  I packed up Samantha and Rowan and we made it over. This was now about 9am. We setup for photos and took our time with the animal and thanked him for letting us take him. 

We then got to breaking down the animal while the kids snacked some more. It is quite the process and time to break the animal all down. We caped him as we were for sure taking my first bear and going to at least get the hide tanned. Several hours later and the sun about to hit us we were ready to pack out. We soon realized this would be a two trip pack out, with Samantha in the backpack, our other two kids not quite big enough to pack a lot, 100 lbs. of meat and a huge hide! We had to make a quick plan on how to get it all out. We thought I would be able to pack the hide out but that was a big misjudgment, this bear was really a big guy! The first load we packed Samantha and the hide out and went back in for our second trip  for the meat.

This day still plays over in my head as it all happened so fast yet took all day. Having my kids and of course my husband there was special, I will for sure always have this memory as a top one! Here’s to many more hunting trips with my husband and kids!