Eric, Dawson, Oakley and I headed to Shadow Mountain, just outside of Jackson Hole, to meet up with Eric's mom Susan, my brother Ryan and our friends Jeremy, Laura, Jarom, Wyatt and Ezra Gleed.
The main objective: a bison for Eric. We stopped at the Game and Fish to get tags for Eric's hunt and on a whim, I bought a bear license. We all made it to camp within the same hour and set up camp. How many does it take to setup a camper awning? Apparently 3 adults and a dog.
We found Jarom off the side of the road, and he took us to Jeremy, who had been watching the bear. Wouldn't you know it...the darn thing had went into the thick trees and we couldn't see him. But wait..what is that big black thing on the far hill, its a bear! Eric spots him too and we are on the stalk, through a creek, up several steep hills and finally (actually it was more like "OH MY HELL CAN WE BE DONE HIKING UP THIS HILL...YOU'RE GUN CAN SHOOT THIS FAR, RIGHT?!) Seems Eric's adrenaline was helping him up the hill more than mine was (couldn't be that I haven't been working out lately and he has.) It was over 600 yards and while the gun can shoot that far, turns out, after 2 shots, I do not possess the skill. I was not even close enough with the shots to phase the bear. So here we go again, huffin and a puffin 300 yards closer. This time there was a really cool old tree that I was able to rest the gun on, lean on, and get a very steady shot. Eric always tells me to squeeze the trigger slowly and it should surprise me when it goes off. Well it did surprise me...and even more surprising was I hit the bear and it was rolling down the steep mountain. Poor Jeremy, Jarom and Ryan had stayed behind and couldn't see me, they just heard a shot and saw the bear heading down the hill...hoping it wasn't coming at us! There was lots of celebrating, we found the bear, I put 2 more shots into him to make sure. Jeremy was standing next to me on the last shot , held out his hand for a high-5 and said, "way to go." However I thought he was waving his hand in front of me telling me "don't go" so after a moment of confusion and Jeremy thinking I was going into shock since I didn't respond, we gave our high-5's and went over to the bear for pictures, pictures, pictures. I was sure glad I had all 4 guys there; it took all 4 of them to move the bear to the right spot for pictures.
So no bison, but we still had a lot of fun!
