Looks like that arrow zipped all the way through, and he may not have had any idea he had been hit, let alone what hit him.
Is it possible that he collected himself, realized that he was not being attacked by anything, and returned to the barrel? Or is that not a Thing Bears Do?
Looked like a very favorable placement to me, anyway.
Looks a little lower than I would like on a bear, and hard to tell on the angle, etc. I'm guessing he went at least 100 yards and maybe even double that due to the height of the arrow.
Here is the answer: That big bear went too dang far! Much of it was downhill, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t cover 450 yards or more.
In hindsight, that bear really needed to be slightly more broadside and I believe the shot was a little low too. The entrance location was about right, but due to the angle I doubt the offside lung was caught.
Without the aid of video, it would have been easy to doubt the quality of the memory of the shot. Blood was spotty much of the time. The bear clearly bedded multiple times too.
An hour after the shot I decided to look for blood and found little. We then backed out and came back in the AM with help. Having many sets of eyes on that blood trail proved to be the key and after about an hour we found the bear in a creek.
I took this bear last week at Mike’s in Alberta. His skull was 20 1/16 and he weighed in the low 300’s.
I learned a lot from this event and thought I would share this so everyone can see just what a game of inches good and marginal shot placement truly is.