Arrow placement on a sitting bear.

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• willie332 Member Posts: 23 ✭✭

  May 2014 edited November -1

  Ive been guiding bear hunters for 15 yrs now. With about 250 clients under my belt, I always recommend NEVER shooting a bear while its in the sitting position. Reason being are two fold. 1) The size of a 200lb black bears lungs are about the size of your hand (end of fingers - wrist, yes they are that small) (you can add another inch for every 100lbs over 200) So it is a much smaller target than deer lungs, which most hunters are used to seeing. 2) In the sitting position, the front left extends back more covering more of the rib cage and most, if not all of the lungs. Now in the pic your asking about, if you were on ground level, as this photo was obviously taken, and the bears front leg is extended like it is, then you will have no problem killing this bear. However, if you were to shoot this bear from a treestand, I highly doubt you will hit the back of the near side lung. Best case scenario is you put it through the liver and out the guts. Still a killing shot but here is the problem with that. The blood caused by a bullet or arrow hit has to pass thru the rib cage on its way to the ground in order to be tracked like any deer but here is the difference, the blood also has to travel thru any wear from 3 inches of fat on average for a 200lb bear to as high is 8 inches on a 550lb boar we shot once. After this blood travels thru the fat, in then has to soak thru about 3 inches of thick hair before it hits the ground. I cannot tell you how many bear have been shot and lost due to hunters taking shots like that. Because we could not find blood. When a bear is sitting on the ground like a dog eating from his food dish, trying to get a arrow thru that front leg bone and into the chest cavity is nearly impossible with a bow if you miss squeezing it past it and stick it dead center in the bone. That bone is twice as thick and dense that a deer. So in closing, any bear sitting while either digging thru a barrel like the picture here or like a dog eating his Purina from a bowl, is in no hurry to go anywhere, just wait. If you have a problem with bears taking big chucks of food and walking off with it to eat elsewhere (which they prefer to do) use small granular food like cereal or granola or dog food while hunting and save the large chunks of bread, clumps of donuts or beaver carcasses for when you bait but are not hunting, just know your state game laws for legal kinds of bait. Good Luck

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