Assessing a bear hunt situation

Knowing how to handle a bear hunt situation can be crucial to success or possible going home empty handed. If you haven't had a lot of experience with black bear hunting, this type of situation could cost you a beautiful trophy bear. Usually, it is a senior adult male bear that will stand up inspect a suspicious situation. The young black bears are careless, and like all species haven't adapted yet. You are sitting there motionless on your bear stand, the last time you shuffled yourself around was an hour ago (in reality it was 10 - 15 minutes ago), you see the head and shoulders of a black bear slowly appear, as if on a hydraulic post. When a bear can't smell you, but knows something is wrong, he will often react in this way. The black bear and most other species of bears as well will stand up and try to smell while looking straight at you, piercing a hole straight through you. The bear's senses seem to work this way. If he can't smell you, he seems to need more than one sense to back up the danger element. When a bear stands up and pierces a whole right through you he couldn't have smelt you and seems to have a delayed reaction in his brain to take action and go this delayed action last for 15 - 20 seconds. During this time a bear hunter can get away with a action of slight movements without inserting instant fear and the bear bolting. The correct procedure, would be to slowly deliberately, take deadly aim and fire. If one was to wait much longer than 20 seconds the bear and especially a trophy bear would slowly drop out of sight in the thicket and 99 times out of 100 you would never see it again. Another bear hunting situation that could arise is encountering a bear about to cross a trail in front of you and gets scared back. Knowing how to handle this situation correctly can bring success to your bear hunting trip. Here again, black bears are a creatures of habit and constant action to a danger element. The normal reaction for a bear when, it encounters the bear hunter when crossing a trail and providing the bear did not make the intend crossing and bolted back. What he will do is scamper up along side the trail in the cover to the first corner or if it is a straight trail with no bends he will cross on the narrowest place but preferably if there is a bend he will be sure to cross there. It seems, that if a bear has got it in his mind to cross a trail or road he is going to cross. The bear hunter knowing this, will hurry to the likely spot, get down on one knee and get ready, one thing for sure, when he crosses it will be soon ( within a minute or so) and he will be moving at full speed so it gives you little time to check for trophy quality and the type of shooting should be only done by well experienced sharp shooter. This next bear hunting opportunity to get your trophy bear is common, but here again if not handled properly can end up in total disgust with oneself. The situation that I am referring to is a bear coming strolling down the trail and not aware of a hunter present. The time to shoot a bear is when you have a good opportunity, do not wait until it gets to the feed destination, bear bait or walks into a specific clearing where it will be broadside like the centerfold of Outdoor Life Magazine. But don't of course, hasten a careless shot because there is plenty of time to get the job done right. Quite often I hear a bear hunter say "I was waiting for the bear to go to the feed and it just disappeared and I never seen him again, I wished I had taken him earlier, when I had plenty of time". Again, I will say, the time to shoot a bear is when you have a good opportunity. To read more tips and techniques like the ones in this article on bear hunting. Go to  http://www.bearhuntng.com