Hunting

  It was opening day of muzzling of the 2016 season. Which was about 2 weeks ago. I was hunting for deer as always. But this time I shot something unusual. It was about 20 degrees that morning. I had to walk all the way to the top of the mountain. It was about too long of a dang hike to hunt. But when you have to put in work, that's usually where the big deer are. Some people will get lucky and shoot one from the truck, but not all the time. It takes me about an hour to get all the way to the top of the mountain. On top of all that, I had to wake up at 4:45... But I started up the mountain side and when I got right near my stand, I heard a deer in the leaves. I had already scared it, but the good thing was that it never saw me. I could best tell it was probably a doe or something. It blew a bunch when I means danger to a deer. So I was like you have got to be kidding me. But I climbed up in the stand anyways. I hooked my backpack down on the rope and climbed in. I got up and hung my backpack up and sat my rifle on the gun hanger. I continued to hear that doe blowing all the way around the ridge. So I figured for sure that I wouldn't see anything. But I got up in the stand anyways and decided to sit for the morning. I just sat down and got ready to put my coveralls on and I looked out the mountain and seen somethings black moving. Once I got a halfway decent look on it, I could tell it was a bear. It was bear season and if the shot came available I was going to try to make it happen. He came almost a run out the mountain, that I never could figure out why. He came on around until he was like 20 yards from me and I was afraid that he was gonna get by me. I got the muzzloader off the hook and held right behind his shoulder and fired. After the smoke cleared,  could see the bear roll of the side of the mountain. I just knew I got him. Well I waited about a hour, because I didn't wanna track a wounded bear by myself. So I gave him plenty enough time to expire. Well I climbed down and went over to where I shot him at. I found some blood and began tracking. The further he went the more and more blood I found. He was really starting to bleed good, so I figured not too much further and he would be laying. Well I kept tracking until I hit a laurel patch and I wasn't gonna go in that thicket by myself. So I decided to pull out and get some help. I got back to the house and ate lunch and went back. It took us an hour to walk all the way in there, but we finally arrived to where I made the shot. We tracked that bear for miles it felt like. We went a long long way and I told them boys that we would probably never find it. The further and further we went the less and less blood we found. Until it got to the point that we couldn't find any at all. So I was disappointed, because I've always wanted to harvest a bear. But it was an unfortunate hunt for me and being unable to kill this bear.