Spring Black Bear Hunting Highs – Lows – Highs

Randy McLemore talks about his 2025 Spring Black Bear bow hunt with Chaparral Hunting Adventures in Saskatchewan. The high excitement of the arrow release, the low feeling of losing the blood trail, the next morning high of the trophy black bear discovery.

How long have you been hunting Black Bear?

Well it’s just my second time to ever hunt back black bear. Just decided it’s something I wanted to do. It’s always been on my bucket list to kill a black bear.

…and, how do you do?

Last year not so good but this year I killed a nice bear. You know doing it with the archery, so archery is a little harder. A little more frustrating sometimes, but I was able to get it done.

How long have you been hunting big game?

I’ve been hunting big game on my archery for 30 plus years. Mainly elk, mule deer and whitetail. Killed a lot of big elk but never any bears. Yeah that’s back home that’s all we have is whitetail you know and we we have lots of lots of deer.

What do you think about the camp and the accommodations?

You know Greg runs a really top-notch camp. You know he’s real detail oriented. You know everything you know money’s no limit. You know he don’t scrimp on stuff. He you know he does stuff right. You know the food’s been excellent. He really does a good job running and keeping everything organized. Inside the sleeping you know where you sleep at it’s all real nice. Just upgraded all the bathrooms and is just you know very nice accommodations and Greg’s really a nice guy and real personable. Anytime you text him or call him or whatever he’ll always answer you and always return your call. I know I’ve hunted with other outfitters and that’s a rarity. You know you know you text them or whatever they might get back with you and they might not.

Does anything standout regarding the guides?

I mean yeah I mean they just wait on your hand and foot foot you know anything you need you know they accommodate you and really nice and polite. Dave went with me this morning and helped and got the bear and got him back here and then other guys you know they skin it get all skinned and put in the cooler for me. Very nice not to have to do any of that stuff. It’s all taken care of.

What were your thoughts heading out to the stand the first day?

I you know I just want to kill a decent bear with my bow. You know I never killed one so I wasn’t real off you know real picky but I didn’t want to kill no little 100 pounder either.

Was there much for bear activity?

Greg brought me, took me into the stand, when we pulled up to the stand there was a bear there at the bait that ran off and Greg had a picture of a real big bear at this bait station. I was on the lookout for this real big bear and sit there I don’t know till about 8:00 hadn’t seen a bear. Then about eight I look to my right and then all of a sudden look back at the bait station and there’s a big bear. It got me pretty excited, plus it was like my fourth hunt in a row that I’d finally seen a bear I had seen a bear in like four different hunts.

How did you know this one was your shooter bear?

To me they told me he not fit inside the 55 barrel drum, he was a shooter. He walked right beside it and he didn’t look like he’d fit inside the barrel to me. I thought you know I thought he was a good bear. I had to wait a while. He made a couple of circles around the bait. He finally come around the tree and walked up to the bait and gave me a perfect broadside shot so I drew my bow back on a shoot and what right when I got my bow back and just about got my pin on his shoulder he decided to stand up on his back legs. He stood up and was sitting there trying to get to the to the beaver that was in the propane tank and I didn’t want to shoot him standing so I sat there and waited and waited and waited for him to come down off his back legs. Well when he came down off his back legs and just sit on his butt, just sit down you know right on his hind end. By then I done been holding my bow back seemed like forever and I was really scared to let it down cause I was scared he’d hear me and run off so I just decided to shoot him while he was sitting on his butt. I shot him and I knew I hit him real good but he took off out there 90 miles an hour and that’s when I called Greg to come tell him what I’ve done.

What happened next?

Greg got there you know we didn’t have I don’t know we didn’t have probably 15 minutes of daylight left, you know, it was almost dark. He gets there and goes ask me questions, you know, where the bear went and, you know, how I hit him, how good I thought I hit him. So I was trying to explain all that to him. Then we went over and looked at the arrow and seen the it was a complete pass through had blood all over the arrow. Then we went to trying to see which direction he ran which is hard to tell when they take off you know 90 miles an hour through the thick woods. Finally find his track or find some blood where he ran then we get on his blood trail and start tracking him. I fall back behind Greg and Greg tracks him and we track him to a certain point which is about 75 yards from where I shot him. The blood just kind of quit. He just quit bleeding and we could not find which way he went. We looked and looked could not find which direction he went from that last blood. Greg was scared we was going to bump him out of the area so we just stopped and backed off and left.

I watched you go through it. How did you feel last night?

Uh, pretty sick and so you know that’s all I could think was last night I done wounded another animal and he might not find him, so I was pretty sick in my stomach. Tossed and turned most of the night.

Tell me about this morning.

Yeah, this morning you know I was very anxious to get out and go look for my bear. Dave, one of his guides, went with me and and we get over there and get everything unloaded and look at the camera to make sure the bear hadn’t came back that night that I shot you know thinking maybe I just nicked him or whatever. Nothing on the camera so we take off over there and I find where the last spot was that we left the night before where he quit bleeding at. Dave got on his knees and was just looking and just looking through the leaves and looking and finally found a couple of specks of blood back like two steps back there in the on the back track. Apparently the bear had stopped and backtracked and then turned and headed kind of in the South direction. So we found where he’d turned and then looking, crawling on the hands and knees, we’d find a speck here and a speck there. Then we got another line of which direction we was headed and then the the spot started getting bigger and bigger and then we was walking and looking for blood and Dave said you kind of let me look for the blood and if you would look ahead and see if you can see the bear. Just look for something big and black. I looked ahead and I turned around like are you talking about like that big and black bear right up there? He’s like, where. I’m like right up there. So we found him. He was like 40 yards up the trail from where originally we lost the blood so I was I was pretty happy.

When you finally put hands on the bear, how were you feeling then?

Uh big relief, you know I was very sick my stomach cause I’ve hunted big game, like I said, probably at least 40 years I’ve hunted big game and that’s the worst feeling is to wound an animal and lose him. You know if you hunt all your life and really you know respect animals and you know want to do a clean kill and so it’s very sick feeling. Big, extremely big relief when you do find one.

Tell me about your weapon of choice.

I started bow hunting about 40 years ago and we did it really because we was hunting hunting Wyoming for elk. I just you know got hooked on it and got extremely lucky the first afternoon I bow hunted, nice 5×5 bull elk the first afternoon I bow hunted. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Would you come back to Chaparral Hunting Adventures?

Oh yeah, yeah I mean Greg’s you know really nice guy and like I said he runs a really really good operation. He’s trying to do things right and trying to let the deer get bigger and putting limits on what you can kill on the deer. You know he’s trying to get, doing a lot with the bears. I mean he’s got a lot of big bears now. I hunted another place last year that didn’t have these this bigger bears and so now I would come back.