Back in the 1980s, I was young, dumb, and — have to admit it — a bit arrogant. Invited on a black bear hunt — my first ever — in Oregon using hounds (legal in that state back then, illegal today), my first thought was, How tough can it be? The dogs tree a bear, you walk to the tree, and shoot the bear. Big deal. Boring! How wrong I was.

To make a long story short, when outfitter Dave Handrich turned his dogs loose on a rainy morning in the steep mountain near Medford, I didn’t realize it would be a grueling 10 hours later before we finally reached the treed big boar and I made the shot. It was another hour of packing hide and meat back to the truck. We’d followed the dogs to Hell and back, and at the end of it all I was shivering cold, soaked to the bone, my legs were shot — and I had a healthy respect for both the amazing hounds, and the houndsmen themselves.

As something of a black bear hunting fanatic — I am not ashamed to say I have personally taken 58 black bears over the years, as well as being a former black bear hunting guide — to this day, I still love hunting bears with hounds. It is the antithesis of sitting on stand over a spring bait, and very different from traditional spot-and-stalk hunting.

“It’s really as much about the dogs, watching them do what they love more than anything else on earth,” said Angie Denny, co-owner of Table Mountain Outfitters (www.tablemountainoutfitters.com), with whom I’ve hunted successfully many times. Angie and her husband, Scott, have outfitted black bear hound hunts in Idaho for decades. “You never know where the chase will take you, or how long it will take. And nothing is guaranteed. Just because the dogs take off on a fresh track does not always result in a treed bear. It’s also a great way to selectively harvest boars only.”

Where Can You Use Hounds?

Hound hunting is not legal in all states. According to Brian Lynn, VP of communications and marketing of the Sportsmen’s Alliance, it’s currently permitted in only Alaska, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Maine — where the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) tried to end it twice via ballot initiative, first in 2004, and again in 2014 — North and South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan and Wisconsin, along with Montana, where it was made legal in 2021 via the state legislature.

You don’t pursue black bears with just any dog. It requires hounds bred and raised specifically for the purpose. Thus, successfully hound hunting essentially requires you to book an outfitted hunt. Pricing is reasonable. For example, a 5-day spring Idaho hound hunt with Table Mountain Outfitters, including food and lodging, runs $4,350, plus $185, $231.75 and $81.75 for a nonresident hunting license, black bear tag, and archery permit, respectively.

In Maine, Foggy Mountain Guide Service (www.foggymountain.com; I’ve successfully hunted with them, too) offers two 5-day, 6-night hound hunting packages priced at $3,300 or $4,000, plus a $100 land access fee, depending on the plan, plus a $115 nonresident hunting license, a $26 6-day nonresident archery permit, and a $74 nonresident bear permit. That’s very reasonable when you consider the outfitter has to feed and care for his dogs year-round, plus utilize heavy-duty mountain road-ready trucks with specially-built dog boxes in back.

What to Expect

You’re in the truck, dogs loaded in the back, and cruising the roads right at dawn. You’ll often spend hours in a truck, driving roads waiting for the hounds to strike the scent of a bear, which they can amazingly do from the truck bed. If and when the strike dog sounds off, the experienced guides stop the truck, get out, and look for a track. They do this to determine if the bear is big enough to turn loose the dogs. This is a critical decision, for once the hounds are released, you’re committed for the remainder of the day. 

Top outfitters equip their hounds with GPS collars, so they can both follow the dogs on the chase, and make it easier to recover them once it’s over. This is a big improvement over the “old days,” when no GPS collars were available and gathering up the hounds after a chase could take the rest of the day; and, at times, some dogs were not recovered until the following day. The GPS collars also show you where the dogs are with a treed or bayed-up bear, so you can plan the best route to get there. Of course, hearing them sound off also lets you know their location.

A chase can take a half an hour, or half a day, depending on all sorts of variables, and it doesn’t always result in a treed or bayed-up bear. This is why most hound hunters won’t turn their dogs loose after lunchtime. In the Denny’s case, they also have bear baits set out in their guide area, so hunters who have not treed a bear on any given day can sit over a bait in the evening if they so choose, while the hounds are resting up for tomorrow’s hunt.

Fickle spring weather can play a factor. In the Northeast, heavy rains can flood swamps, making passage impossible. In the Rocky Mountain West, heavier-than-normal snowpacks can block mountain roads, restricting access to prime territory. You just have to be prepared for whatever conditions Mother Nature decides to throw at you.

Gearing Up

As far as archery tackle, the same stuff you hunt whitetails with will cleanly kill the largest black bear. I’ve taken them with mechanical, replaceable-blade, and fixed-blade broadheads. Shots will be close, and of two varieties. Most likely you’ll either be shooting uphill at a treed bear, or, in some instances, at a bear that’s been cornered on the ground in some thick brush. In both instances, you’ll have to use patience to make sure the bear’s vitals are not screened by even the smallest limbs or branches.

I learned this the hard way. Back in 2012 I was preparing to go on a Cape buffalo hunt in South Africa, where the law required me to use an 80-pound-draw compound bow, which I took on a spring Idaho hound hunt for bears for some “batting practice” prior to heading overseas. I was shooting an Easton Dangerous Game FMJ shaft tipped with a 200-grain two-blade cut-on-contact broadhead that weighed a total of 807.5 grains that left the bow at a chronographed 214 fps. That shaft penetrated the 1,800-pound buffalo to the fletches — but when I shot my first arrow at a huge treed bear at 25 yards, the video showed that a miniscule branch the diameter of a zip tie deflected it into the stratosphere for a total miss. Fortunately he gave me a clear shot minutes later. But talk about an education in arrow deflection …

Be sure to wear well broken-in hiking boots, layer your clothing, bring rain gear, and minimize whatever you carry in your daypack, assuming the hike will be long, though you hope it will be short. Your outfitter will make suggestions on clothing and gear. It’s wise to heed them.

Hair Missiles 

A good friend who was a special forces hero during the war in the Middle East employed trained dogs to fight the enemy. He called them “Hair Missiles”, because when he launched them at the bad guys, they shot off like miniature rockets. I was reminded of this turn of phrase on my last hunt with the Dennys. The strike dog had sounded off, Scott and Angie determined the track was big and fresh enough to turn the dogs loose, so I got to the back of the truck with them as they opened the boxes and set the hyped-up hounds loose. They blew out of their dog boxes like they had been shot out of a cannon, sounding off at the top of their lungs and racing out of sight at warp speed. Hair missiles, I thought, smiling.

This is why hound hunting is such a special experience to me. Hunting with hounds goes back hundreds of years, and is still commonplace around the world. It receives a lot of bad press, mostly from anti-hunting groups who hate all hunting, but also uninformed people who think it is unsporting and mistakenly believe that the dogs catch prey and rip it to shreds. In America, hounds were raised to help with the fur trade in the early years of the continent’s settlement, and it has evolved over centuries from there. Serious hound hunters love their dogs, and make sure they get the very best food and care 24/7/365. They also know that these dogs have been bred to chase game. For the houndsman, the deep satisfaction comes not from the kill, but in knowing his hounds have generations of instinct behind them, a fresh track on their noses, and a day of adventure ahead.

It's a unique adventure I hope to experience many more times.

Sidebar: Could Hound Hunting Be Banned?

Hound hunting for all species — including black bears — is under constant attack from the anti-hunting crowd. “There are many legislative pitfalls constantly before us,” said Brian Lynn, VP of communications and marketing of the Sportsmen’s Alliance, the nation’s preeminent organization fighting for hunting rights on the legislative front. “These include bills that could restrict or outright ban the practice in any of the states at any time — Arizona and Nevada would be particularly susceptible to it. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) or another anti-hunting group could also push a ballot initiative at some point — Arizona, Nevada, Vermont, and Michigan are prime targets. Ballot initiatives are dangerous because they take the discussion out of the statehouse and move it directly to a popular vote of citizens. That danger, of course, is that most citizens have no clue about wildlife management or hunting, and are incredibly susceptible to propaganda from the animal-rights movement.

“When it comes to the initiative process, usually the side that spends the most money wins — it’s all about airtime and messaging. The other side has all the money, and hunters are left scrambling to scrape up enough to stay in the fight. For example, Arizona had a ‘wild cat’ ban a few years ago that would have banned all hunting of them — especially with hounds. Thankfully, they ran into legal issues with their signature collections and had a ‘Me Too’ issue with their CEO, Wayne Pacelle. Colorado banned hound hunting of bears in 1992 by ballot initiative, and in 2022 moved to reintroduce wolves and now faces a ballot initiative to end ‘trophy hunting’ of mountain lions and bears, which is really code for all forms of hunting and trapping.”

That’s why all hunters must stay in the fight 24/7/365, and supporting groups such as the Sportsmen’s Alliance is so vitally important. Contact: www.sportsmensalliance.org

Photos by Bob Robb