# First time bear hunting



## Bowhunter77 (Sep 1, 2016)

Me and a buddy are coming down to North Georgia this Oct 10-16th. We are gonna try our hand at bear hunting . I've read post on here going back for years. We are in good enough shape to hike ,old and out of shape enough to sit all day after that hike. Any bear would be a bonus to us, we are just getting bored of Ky bucks and turkeys. If any of y'all have any questions about coming to Kentucky ask away. If anybody has any advice I'm all ears too... Thanks for sharing the woods with us this fall.


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## Killer Kyle (Sep 1, 2016)

If you kill a bear (wr have more bears than deer....p.m. me with your very GENERAL location and I will direct you further). Anyway, if you kill a legal bear, quarter it and skin it immediately. Have the hide, claws, skull, and meat with you. Make sure is weird 75 lbs minimum. Don't spend all day/morning/afternoon dragging a bear. In the bow season heat, you will ruin the delicious, rich red meat. Get it skinned, quartered, and get the meat on ice within a few hours. Check the game at the check station if you are hunting a WMA, and if no rangers are at the check station, drive the ice cooled bear to the WRD office in Gainesville the next morning or take it to J.J.'s deer processing facility, in Banks Co. and a Wildlife Tech will come out from Lake Russell WMA and tag it first thing the following morning. Just remember to cool then ice the meat immediately as possible or it will spoil quickly, and you will have killed a bear for nothing. Just for the sake of killing something. Hunt hard, and hunt daylight till dark. When the white oakd begin dropping, game can be on the feeding places at any time of day, even noon. The year before last two guys came down to hunt from Michigan. They killed two bears in a corn plot planted on Swallow Creek WMA. They killed two bears in one a.m. They killed one around 380 lbs and one at 240 lbs. in the morning. They spent all day dragging and loading the bears without gutting them, and the processor (Chad at J.J.'s) told me most of the meat was ruined and he could only salvage about 20% of the meat. This was while I was dropping off a doe to be processed. so kill the bear, then skin and gut and wuartwr it immediately and get it on ice as quickly as possible. Don't kill a bear just for the sake of killing one. That is an injustice to the animal. P.M. me your very general hunting plans and I will try my best to steer you in the right direction.


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## Rich Kaminski (Sep 2, 2016)

My advise is to gut the bear, pack the body cavity with ice then skin it. If you are going to do a full mount or any type mount with claws, leave the paws on the skin and remember to turn the ears inside out. If you don't the mount will be ruined.


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## Bowhunter77 (Sep 2, 2016)

Thanks for the advice, after reading your post my plan is if we get one, gut it, one of us go get ice from truck and put in the cavity. Then pack out. I have to say I'm not a fan of the no wheeled cart rule. I understand why they have the rule but I eat what I kill and the carts would reduce waste. But being a guest to the state of Georgia I don't want to be "those out of state hunter" types , I'll just have to lace them up tight and get it out. Thanks for the help.


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## ripplerider (Sep 2, 2016)

As far as I know that rule only applies on Wilderness areas. There are many bears outside the Wilderness areas too. That said, a wheeled cart usually wouldnt be much help to me. You couldnt get one through a laurel thicket to save your life and if youre hunting uphill of the truck which I try to do it would run over you. There are some closed roads a cart might be useful on. Some friends I hunt with have a sled made of heavy-duty PVC pipe that works real well if theres two of you. Its kind of like an Indian travois with a handle on one end and two legs that drag, when you have to cross a log one of you picks up the legs and sets it across. Has a quarter-section of a 40-gallon plastic tank zip-tied onto it to hold your game. Wouldnt work for a real big bear but its great for a deer or medium-sized bear. We used it to get out a buck I killed a couple miles back on Chestatee WMA and it worked real well once I had drug it down the steepest section.


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## Rich Kaminski (Sep 2, 2016)

I'm not sure, but I think you need to take the gual bladder to the check station as well.


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## ripplerider (Sep 2, 2016)

Nope.


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## Killer Kyle (Sep 3, 2016)

Rich Kaminski said:


> I'm not sure, but I think you need to take the gual bladder to the check station as well.



This is not the case. Only head and hide are required. In the older regs, this may have been the case, but not now. There was a long time suspicion that bear hunting and poaching revolved around collecting the gallbladder for illegal sales purposes, but that is long since dismissed.ba gallbladder of any bear usually only fetches $40.00-$100.00-ish on the black market here. The prices hike once it reaches asia. It is fiscally invaluable here and thus no concern. When you take your bear to be tagged, only the head and hide are required. These days, "pain management specialists (legal drug dealers) can prescribe opioids on the first visit. When a man can get them that easily and turn around and sell them $8.00 a pop, it eradicates the drive to collect gallbladders. Same for Xanex and Viagra. There is functionally no market for bear gallbladders in North America. It has basically ceased to exist since prescription drugs became the latest craze. Most men aren't willing to risk prison time for a hard collected $40.00 gallbladder. But a bottle of pills is a different story....


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## Outdoorstherapy10 (Sep 3, 2016)

Awesome advice on here! Tryin out bear Huntin this year for the first time with my bow. If anyone needs help draggin or trackin one I'd be more than happy to help!! Good luck to everyone


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## Bowhunter77 (Sep 3, 2016)

Every area on a map looks the same to an out of state guy. Thousands of acres of mountain terrain. My plan, and we all know how those go, to hike up, find white oaks that have claw and limb broken with mountain laurel patch and a terrain feature close by. Sounds simple right, somehow I doubt it but sounds good right now. 
I can't decide on a place to start. Cohutta , Swallow, all the stuff I look at all looks good on paper from 400 miles away. You locals have the advantage. Feel free to PM me with narrowing the search for a starting spot. If any of you all are coming to Ky I could fill you in on some great hidden public land deer spots.


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## Killer Kyle (Sep 3, 2016)

Just like you stated, one of the difficultirs of hunting the National Forest here and really anywhere is finding an animal like, day, a mature buck in suck large, contiguous tracks of forest. It sometimes can seem like finding a needle in a haystack. I try to think of it like this: say you have a large tract of national Forest, and 100% of it is pure forest. Rather than hunting certain tree lines, wooded funnels, and fields like you might otherwise, we use "terrain grade funnels" meaning we use the shape and the slope of the land to find funnels or travel routes. Game can be found pretty much anywhere in the NF, but they especially like to use the tops of ridges and leads as travel routes, much like a human would use a road to get to where they are going. They also like deep gaps because it is sort of like taking a shortcut across a ridge. Rather than take the long route up and over a ridge, they can conserve energy and time by just cutting through a gap. On the tops of these leads, fingers, ridges, and through the gaps you will usually find a game trail, and a lot of times you will find them just off the crest of the too on either side. These trails are often used by deer, hogs, and bear alike. So if you can get a topo map of the area you are interested in, and you can mark or hilight the tops you think game might use as roads, you can reduce the forest from a huge 100% blob of trees to maybe 15-20% mapping of places you're interested in looking at. It really carves out a lot of the riff raff type of terrain and helps you hone in on the areas game are more likely to be concentrated in. By doing so, you are saving yourself a lot of time and effort. You can go to one hilight ridgetops, walk it for a bit, and if you don't see any sign, check it off the list and move on to the next. Also, if you can find a point where say three leads converge, or two ridges converge and form an intersection, you can theoretically increase your odds of seeing an animal by four or five fold because you might catch an animal traveling in any given direction of say four or five possible directions. As for starting out, Cohutta is great and has lots of ground to cover. Swallow Creek is a consistent bear producer. Waterman has a lot of bears, but most of the terrain is very steep and 4x4 vehicle is necessary for a lot of the roads. Chattahoochee offers really great accessibility and has lots of great camping and lots of beats, but slightly higher hunting pressure. Old Lake Burton has lots of bears, light pressure, and a 4x4 is required for some access there. Lake Russell has bears, hogs, good accessibility and offers a slightly greater chance at a buck. Cooper's Creek is a great mix of steep and moderate terrain, and has a pretty decent deer population as well. Chestatee is also steep, but has plenty of bears and light to moderate hunting pressure. And then there are the endless tracts of NF acreage which has tons of bears and either heavy to zero hunting pressure. All areas have their pros and cons, so ultimately you are just going to have to pick one. I'd pick a place where you can snag a good camp spot along a creek somewhere, some place you can camp comfortably that allows good access to several interesting ridges and gaps within a 20 minute drive time or less.The WMA's are great places to start, and even the no longer open WMA's like Lake Burton and Coleman River (that's a good one). Those are now NF and have less strict dates during gun seasons, and get very light pressure while affording great access to some good hunting.


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## Bowhunter77 (Sep 3, 2016)

Thanks for the help , I appreciate it. I'm not really interested in deer, I never thought I'd see the day but it's true. I've killed several bucks from 130-160 and wife won't let me mount one under 170 anymore. I've got two on camera that come in regular that will go 160 or better, it's opening day of archery in Ky and my mind is on Georgia bear!!! Just goes to show how one guy in one state has a lot of one animal to hunt but is jeoulous of hunters in other places wanting something different and a new adventure.


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## tree cutter 08 (Sep 3, 2016)

Kyle gave some great advice. Pick out a WMA, bring your GPS and ride the roads. You can use the GPS to look for ridges as your ride. Look for slides along the roads. You can save a lot of walking by doing this. Bear sign will be where there's food. Fresh slides is a good place to start. I found over a dozen slides in a 50 yard stretch yesterday evening. The bears are wearing that out this week but soon as the foods gone the bear will to. If the sign is not fresh keep looking. I wouldn't hunt sign that's older than a day or 2 unless there's a lot of food still there.


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## Bowhunter77 (Sep 4, 2016)

I'm leaning towards Blueridge WMA or Cohutta due to the dates I'm there , 10-16 of October . I can bow hunt then take a muzzleloader later in the week if I'm reading the online book correctly. Lots of choices but you guys have given me great ways to narrow my search. This is a big help guys, thanks.


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## Cwb19 (Sep 4, 2016)

You might want to check those dates on cohutta  you won't be able to hunt on the 12th


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## Bowhunter77 (Sep 7, 2016)

Yes, the 12th I can't hunt Cohutta. Can you still scout that day or is it closed to all activity?


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## Cwb19 (Sep 7, 2016)

You can still scout on the 12th  the 13-16th is a check in rifle hunt


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## Bowhunter77 (Sep 8, 2016)

Thanks for the clarification. There is so much good stuff on here about bear hunting . I keep going back further and further reading all I can. This will shorten the learning curve, this stuff would have taken years in the woods to figure out. I don't think it will be easy to get a bear, but I have a chance with the stuff I've learned on here. Thanks to all those who post thier knowledge and field expierence .


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