Bernie Barringer spent eight years completing a color phase bear slam with a bow.
Black bears exhibit four different color phases across their range in North America: black, chocolate, cinnamon, and blonde. Well, Bernie Barringer not only wanted to complete a color phase bear slam, but he also wanted to do it all with a bow. It all finally came together for him on a bear hunt in Saskatchewan.
Berine is a pretty experienced bear hunter (and he also took this video of a bear coming out of hibernation in Minnesota). However, it still took him nearly a decade of work to take bears from all the different color phases.
The blonde bear in particular was a really tough one to find. This isn't surprising because blonde bears are also the most rare of the bunch. He eventually got in touch with an outfitter hunting up in an extremely remote part of Saskatchewan that was seeing a decent number of blonde bears and decided to head up there during the spring of 2018 and try his luck.
After all that work, you will never believe how his hunt, and his quest to complete the color phase bear slam with a bow, finally ended.
Pretty wild right?
Who would have thought that after all that work he put in during the course of eight years that it would all end less than five minutes into the first day of a hunt. Heck, he hadn't even gotten a chance to unpack his gear yet when the bear finally came out!
Congratulations on the achievement Bernie! There can't be many other hunters who have taken black, chocolate, blonde, and cinnamon bears, never mind doing it all with a bow!
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