Evan’s bear hunt

“I kept saying ‘tell me when to shoot’ and it was so hard to hear anything because it was so loud,” Evan Severson told me. “We were so close and the bear kept moving around so it was like a big scramble to get a good angle. It seemed like the gun was right at the bear’s head.”

That’s because Evan was standing 7 yards from a very large bear on the ground.

“I shot the bear and they all pulled me back and told me to chamber another round,” Evan said. “I think they were worried the bear would attack. I felt like I had the bear then. It seemed like my second shot was from farther away but I guess it wasn’t.”

It was more like 5 yards. “The bear dropped and I was sure I had him then. But they told me to take another shot,” Evan said.

“We felt that a third shot was a good idea,” Evan’s father, Jason Severson, told me.

“When he (Cody Akey) yelled to everyone that ‘he’s down,’ I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even believe I had hardly seen a bear much less just shot one,” Evan told me.

This bear showed up on cameras of the Young Guns Crew first in 2018 and they estimated his weight then to be around 600 pounds. They named him Gilbert Brown. He was easily identified by a V-shaped blaze on his chest and a split ear. The season previous to this year’s, they ran him off of one of their baits during the training season and got some good video. He still weighed around 600 pounds.

They trailed into him again this training season and he wasn’t quite as big. On the first Saturday of bear dog season he dressed out at 386 pounds putting his live weight at well over 400 pounds, over 100 pounds lighter than a couple months prior. This was the first time he had hit this bait and the first opportunity he had ever provided the crew during the bear hunting season.

“The dogs winded him as I was walking them to the bait, but I’ve been fooled by this before,” said Jason Frost, one of the Young Guns Crew. “I let the first dog go at the bait just after hunting light. He ran around the bait once and took off in the direction of what they scented off the trail. I walked back to that spot they winded him from not far away. The first dog bayed once. My second dog bee-lined for him and they started baying him almost right away.”

“Ben had just made it back by me and I told him to cut his two dogs loose,” continued Jason. “They went straight to the dogs and bear about 75 yards off the trail.”

“Gilbert never runs much,” said Cody Akey. “He just hunkers down around the edge of a swamp and acts like ‘now what’s your plan?’ He’s not aggressive, but what would want to mess with him? He is truly a once-in-a-lifetime bear for any bear hunter.”

The record books score bears by skull measurements. A bear must score 21 inches to make Boone and Crocket with the world record listed at 23 and 3/16 inches. This bear’s skull scored 21 and 7/8 inches.

Jason then radioed out to a large group of us including Evan, his dad, and his brother Max, that the dogs were bayed up and he was going to check what it was less than two minutes after turning loose. We all looked around and said “coon” and went back to chatting. A few minutes later Jason radioed that they had a bear bayed up and to send in Evan.

Think of a Volkswagen at a circus with the clowns piling in and out at that point. Except for Evan, Evan calmly got out of the truck and slung his rifle waiting for us.

“That’s basically what it was like (a clown act), I might have acted calm but in my mind I was excited,” Evan said. “We walked down the trail fast and met some of the guys. Then a couple guys (Cody Akey and Ben Hubbard) walked us into the swamp. They didn’t want too many people in there.”

“When I first saw the bear, it wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, I thought it would be as big as a buffalo,” Evan told me. “We tried to get a shot for a long time,” Evan said. “And then they decided to pull a couple dogs back.”

“After over 20 minutes of not being able to get him a clear shot Ben and I made the decision to pull two dogs back,” Cody told me. “That meant we would only have two dogs on a very large bear, so we called out to the group waiting outside the swamp to see if anyone had a second gun.”

That’s when Scott Bjork walked in with a pistol while Cody and Ben pulled two dogs back. They had Evan take a little break while Scott was walking in to keep things safe. It still took over five minutes for a clear shot to present itself.

“Five guys put the bear in a sled and started dragging it to the trail. It was hard and we kept sinking up to our knees in mud. When we got to the trail it started to feel real,” said Evan.

When the group made it back to the trucks three-quarters of a mile from where this all went down, Evan’s brother Max told me: “This was one of the greatest days of my life, and I didn’t even shoot the bear.”

Congratulations Evan and special thanks to everyone that worked to make this a reality. Everyone from the Young Guns Crew, Jody Apfelbeck from the Abbotsford Sportsmen’s Club and the tag donor.

Evan Severson and his bear.SUBMITTED PHOTOS