Going on 4 years now, I have gone to Idaho during the spring to hunt black bears. Since my first trip, which was actually solo for 8 days, I have looked forward to this hunt every year. The first year I missed several bears. The second year I made a bad shot and couldn’t recover a bear. And the third I finally laid my hands on my first Idaho black bear. These were all backpack hunts with my rifle. There was one thing on my mind the whole time. A dream.
Each year I have returned back to this merciless country it has grown increasingly more fulfilling. Just being in this landscape is rewarding enough. It is some of the roughest country in the lower 48 and a privilege that we can go embrace its sheer ruggedness, all the while trying to take a small piece of that place home with us in the form of a black bear.
I have, and always will be, mainly a bowhunter. Rifle hunting is fun, don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it and I’ve got a lot of fond memories from doing so. Life behind the bow is quite different though. The things we experience are on another level. There is that old saying “where the rifle hunt ends, the archery hunt begins.” It couldn’t be more true.
With that said, Idaho is going to look a little different this year for me. Instead of a rifle attached to my backpack, there is going to be a bow. And I am over the moon with excitement about this archery spring bear hunt. It’s something I have dreamed about doing since before I even went on my first bear hunt to Idaho. Looking back I think it was a combination of the steep technical terrain and me wanting to increase my chances of success why I never brought the bow. Bear or no bear, this is the year.
Dreaming is fantastic. It’s a way to manifest what we want to happen in our lives. But, if you never put action to them, they will always just be dreams. I never put action to this dream in the past, because I was afraid of failure. Denying myself what I would deem the most epic bear hunt, because I was afraid of not succeeding. That’s a load of crap and consider this me apologizing to myself for doing so.
Someone just told me this morning “no risk it, no biscuit.” Most are afraid of risk. We try to avoid it, myself included. However, if we never push ourselves past the point of comfort, we will never know our true potential in a given situation. This hunt is going to be very physical. It’s going to be very difficult. And I’m looking forward to every damn minute of it.
Stay tuned for a future post on what I’m doing as far as prep goes for this ultimate backcountry archery spring bear hunt.
Want to learn more about backpack hunting? Check out my book Becoming a Backpack Hunter – A Beginner’s Guide to Hunting the Backcountry.
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