Friends,

Just returned from a fantastic hunt in Northern Minnesota, Vern Boer of Wild Dakota was invited to go up there to shoot a video production; Vern invited me to go as a camera man. First 2 days we spent together but day 3 we separated to double our chances of getting a bear on video and possibly get a kill shot on video as well. Quite a few hunters tagged out by the first 2 days. Vern and I hadn’t seen a bear yet, on day 4 I was at the same stand, around 7pm I heard some movement to my right. I looked over my shoulder and could see a bear walking very slowly. He disappeared in the brush so I hit record on the camera. Now it was just a waiting game, I remained very still and quiet as these bears are extremely skittish, if they hear or see you the game is over. The bear finally showed up at the bait station, she slowly walked over to the bait and laid down. I videoed her for several minutes; I started to position my gun on the rest and it made a small noise. She jumped up rather quickly looked at me and took off. I wasn’t totally disappointed as I wasn’t sure if I was going to shoot her anyway. However since it was day 4 I figured if she came back then I better get serious about taking her. She had run off out of sight but was still in the area. She waited about 20 minutes or so and finally came back. She was really wary at this point but the food was too much of an attractant. I made up my mind at this point to shoot her but I wanted more video. A little time went by, she heard something approaching and started getting really nervous again, I knew at this point it was do or die, she started to leave the bait site and I quickly squeezed off a round behind her shoulder. She lunged forward and out of site. At that point my heart was really pounding; I had to take a few breaths just to calm down. I started to question the shot because things happened rather quickly, it became dark and I waited for my guide to show up. I wanted to go and check the area where I last saw the bear but figured if I didn’t make a good shot I could have my hands full so I sat and waited. The guide showed up and we slowly made our way towards where I last had seen the bear, we walked about 10 steps and looked into the dark forest, we couldn’t see a thing. Then I noticed some blood, good sign of it, not more than a few feet from the blood there she lay under a tree not far from where we were standing. It was a big relief to see her as other hunters had to do a track job and some of them didn’t find their bears. 

The bear was a dry sow; she weighed 190 lbs which is nice size for a female. I was using a Remington bolt action 300 Win mag, shooting 150 grain Federal Power-Shok Speer Hot-Cor bullets using a Leupold 3 x 9 scope.

I have to especially thank Vern for the invite, my family for the time off and the guides who did a really good job of setting up the sites. It’s that time of year again so have a safe and great hunting season.

Mike Pankratz

Sept. 9, 2009