How long a run?

[red owl]

I know- anywhere from a few hundred yards to 20 miles BUT on average (if there is an average) how far does a bear run before treeing or being bayed? You do follow on foot? Vehicle?

[chris lavoie]

Here in Western Ontario it seems the bear's run forever. The reason why outfitters here don't use hounds is because the bear's more often than not would end up in another outfitters licensed bear management area, if they don't tree or bay right away. As soon as the bear goes into someone else's BMA they must unload their weapons and collect their dogs. Resident bear hunters don't have to worry about it if there are no Non resident hunters in the group. We have 9 large bma's and I'm sure it would still happen to us. A neighboring outfitter tried hounds for a couple of year's and the bears would quite often run into my bma. His clients were getting frustrated and stopped coming.

[treetalkingjp]

Most of the time where I hunt in the smokies they run 1 mile 2 miles top but you can usually get within 300 yards by a road if you follow your garmin

[Tbblue]

Wow that's what we call opossum bear. I have longer cold trails than that.

[treetalkingjp]

Tbblue our group will pass up a track if its older than 7 hours . So we usually have them jumped at 7 o'clock and treed by 9 .where I live there's no where to run , straight up laurel thickets or straight down.

[treetalkingjp]

That's why I messaged you bout dogs that can take a track 12-14hours .

[treetalkingjp]

Well 1 to 2 miles the way a crow flys up to 4 miles about it now like i said some go 18 miles but rare up here

[red owl]

Thanks. On the 1-2 miles- what kind of terrain. In other words if you are at the base of the smokies and the bear runs parallel to the base- you are just runing through the woods but if you need to be up high to find any bears and it's 2 miles up and down a mountain- big difference.
The reason I ask is there is a guy that does bear hunts- stand and dog- and I was trying to figure out what was involved on the dogs and he was saying just follow the dogs. Well sure, I understand that and I wasn't trying to put any one on the spot but I was trying to figure out just how far a "run" I might have to face. I walk about 3 miles every other day and could step that up to 6 miles a day before a hunt- to get ready.
If you pick up a scent, how often will you actually tree a bear? Every time? 1 out of 4 times? Thanks for any help.

[Hounder-]

Where are you going to be hunting?

In Wisconsin, if a bear decides to run (not the 500 yard pop-up bears, which are less common) they seem to last 12-14 miles before they think about treeing, with good dog pressure. Most bear hunting is done by truck in order to keep up to the hounds. Bears line out of the country too fast (like Chris Lavoie was saying) making walking behind them tough. Depending on where they tree in regards to a road, you may have a good walk into the tree.

The type of run you will exert the most energy in is not a treeing bear at all. If you get a bear that decides to fight on the ground and "walk" in front of the dogs(generally a bigger bear), that is where you get the 5-10+ miles of walking. You need to keep up with the dogs in order to get the shot and that may take some hiking until you get a view and the right shot. This is my favorite type of hunt, I personally really like the bush whacking part.

And as far as how often you tree, completely depends on the hunter and quality of hounds. Also depends on how "hot" the scent is, not all cold tracks end in a jumped bear (takes a good dog to warm up a cold track). However, if you jump the bear from the cold track or start with a hot track, if you have good dogs, eventually it should tree. Not 100% but 75%ish (if the bear doesn't decide to stand on the ground first), again that is IF hot track with enough time/daylight AND good dogs.

Just my humble opinion, no expert, but just answering your questions as I've seen it in my experiences.

Cheers.

[red owl]

So more like 5-7 mile hike in after the dogs?

[Hounder-]

I'd say at most, depending on the road density of your country.

[treetalkingjp]

[chris lavoie]

in our part of Ontario there are so many roads that are inaccessible (wash outs) by truck. If you didn't have an atv you would have to walk for many miles. Loaded with bear's, just hard to access by truck. In the 70's logging roads were just being built. Access in those days were EASY.

[Bayemup34]

Must be nice to walk 400 yards from the truck to the bear. Where I hunt its closer to a mile or more after you walked 5 that mornin to find a track in the first place

[bowtech36]

Yeah it's always at least a mile to the tree where we go and i'm happy with that because its straight and straight down most the time. Very very rarely do we pop one up by the road and i'd say we have a good road system.