It took him three attempts, but Clay Newcomb finally scored on his recent journey up to Montana where he went black bear hunting with a mule.
Not surprisingly, the owner of Bear Hunting Magazine has quite a passion for hunting bear. Clay has successfully hunted bears in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, and a few places in between. Unfortunately, he's had some tough luck on hunts up in Montana and couldn't quite close the deal with a bear up there on his previous two hunts.
However, he was determined to harvest a Montana black bear. So he made plans to head back up there this spring with a new trick up his sleeve: mules. Staying true to his Arkansas roots, mules are another one of Clay's passions right up there with bear hunting.
As you'll see here in a minute, a couple of well trained mules can really help a hunter access some new and remote areas that would be much more difficult (if not impossible) to reach on foot.
So, with that in mind, Clay and his hunting buddy Colby made the long drive up to Montana from Arkansas with two mules (Izzie and Smokey) in search of black bear on public land.
That looked like a heck of a hunt!
With the help of Izzie and Smokey, Clay and Colby were able to access some hard to reach country and find a really nice boar on day one. While it took several more days of hard hunting for Clay to finally connect on a bear with his .300 Win Mag, he managed to take a good sized boar with a really nice hide.
It looked like they had a really fun hunt, but they clearly put in some serious work, especially when you factor in all the driving they had to do to get from Arkansas to Montana and back home again. However, this also demonstrates the value of persistence. Like he said in the video, Clay is pretty sure that he ended up killing the bear he missed on the first day of the hunt. So, don't give up if things don't go your way at first!
This video also shows what an adventure black bear hunting with mules can be. Great work guys!
Like what you see? You can read more great articles by John McAdams on the Big Game Hunting Blog. Follow him on Facebook & YouTube and subscribe to his show: the Big Game Hunting Podcast.
NEXT: YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A BLACK BEAR FIGHT LIKE THIS ONE IN SASKATCHEWAN
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