The clock was ticking for John Sanders.
The last Saturday of archery elk season was shaping up to be a bust for the Aurora resident hunting from a tree stand near Steamboat Springs. He had spooked a few elk that were already bedded down before dawn and was preparing his stomach for a bowl of cold “tag soup” when a black bear sow with two cubs passed by to further mock the bow hunter. “That figures,” he thought, pondering his bear tag for dessert.
After seeing 11 black bears wander through their hunting grounds the year before, Sanders and his hunting buddies picked up tags this fall. But of the eight bears they counted in September, all of them had been unhuntable sows or cubs.
At about 9:15 that morning, the hunter’s luck turned. After hearing an ursine commotion rumbling through the forest, Sanders looked up to see something large and black lumber into range. Lots of black. He drew his bow as the big target passed behind a bush, settled his 20-yard pin and let fly with an arrow as the bear slowly crossed over a log. The shot landed true and the bear expired within a minute.
“I couldn’t have shot him any better,” Sanders said. “It wasn’t much of a tracking job. I found my arrow stuck in the ground where I shot him.”
Knowing he had harvested more than your average bear, Sanders collected the skull from Larry Triplett’s Wilderness Taxidermy and brought it to Denver Bass Pro Shops, where Stan Grebe was taking official measurements for the Pope & Young Club over the weekend.
Minimum entry requirement for a black bear in the Pope & Young bow-hunting record book is 18 inches. After the requisite waiting period, Sanders’ bear measured 18 15/16 inches, qualifying as a rare Colorado entry into the book for black bears.
“That got me excited all over again,” Sanders said. “I knew when I saw him that he was big, just because I’ve seen so many up there. But I didn’t know he was that big.”
The bear measured a true 6 feet from nose to tail, putting it in the 8-foot realm standing on hind quarters. The hunter estimated its weight at 450 to 500 pounds, animal enough to compensate for the lack of an elk. “I know it’s not a state record or anything, but it was legit,” Sanders said. “We don’t use bait or dogs or any of that stuff. And it almost killed me packing it out.”
