Waidmannsdank, Kalunga, mange tak, Peter and thanks, Erik!

Yes, Kalunga, it is the best with my son there, too!

Erik, yes, looks alot like the pic's of Norge you post, except now is our dry season which I don't think you get? Mornings are around freezing, sometimes quite cold, and afternoons temps go to 90F/36C or even more in the bright sun. Fire danger very high. VERY heavy, deep and thick, choking dust, too on the logging roads. Rains are due in the next couple weeks, and then our weather changes dramatically.

Peter, I am not too tall; 5'10"/178cm, and weigh 175 lbs/79 kgs. Average male bear here go 165 lbs/75 kgs and they are real ridgerunners! Most of mine have gone less than 200, but I shoot for meat, average bears mostly, and don't hold out for the biggest which around here would be something like 350 lbs/160 kgs or so. This bear easily went over 200 lbs/91 kgs, probably more like 225 lbs/102 kgs. Maybe a bit more. Yes, you are right, they are hard to guess from pictures. I can make it look twice as big by laying it down and hunkering down some distance behind it!

For frame {bone} and muscle size it was not in and of itself a really big bear tho all have forearms that are stunning in mass and strength, but it was a bigger-than-average sow and then...the reason this bear was so heavy is the huge berry crop this year and her attention to it! It represented the Modern American Physique...GROSSLY OBESE!!!

Absolutely encased in the thickest fat, on its rump and back the fat varied and was as thick as 4 inches/10 cm in spots!

Pardon the picture, but this will give you an idea of how totally plated this thing was:

As for horses...

Good horses can be trained to take a predator on their backs, and some are used in other areas of Idaho, where they can be used for spotting more open ground and can get to a downed critter, but here, no. Almost nobody uses horses for bear hunting, for a variety of reasons. First, a whole day can be spent in the pickup driving breakneck speeds on narrow, twisting logging roads following a race that can cover many, many miles. Radio and GPS collar trackers are used to keep track of the dogs. No way a loaded horse trailer can be used safely under these conditions and no ridden horse can keep up with the pickups on the road portion of the hunt.

Brush is horrifically thick in many of the areas where bear live and tree or bay up and fight and are shot, and a person needs a really sick, masochistic sense of humor to even want to go down into these holes, and you about have to be suicidal to lug something out! Up till a few years ago, bear carcasses could be left in the woods and many hunted for the hides only. We love the meat, so we bone it and wrap it up and get it out.

Some use backpacks, we used a pole yesterday. I cut the pole with a swipe from one of my "hunting bolos" I made from a chainsaw bar, with fine, razor, shaving-sharp, left-handed {I'm a Southpaw} chisel-edge on one side and dull-"V" bonebreaker edge on the other:

Here is an example of the idiotic mess you encounter getting the critter out. I'm smiling here because I got to share the joy with my son who for most of the trip got the heavier end...

And occaisionally you have to go more UP than OUT:

My wife and I are planning a bear hunting trip not too far a ways from here {about 50 miles} this spring if I have time. We'll haul the camper to the snowline, then haul the horses, set up camp and spend a week in the saddle, spotting for bear on open slopes as they come out of hibernation and feed on the new grass.

Spring bear are incredible runners, and fall bear can be, too, but this one from yesterday was so fat it gave the hounds a very quick race and tho it went for the deepest hole it could find, didn't go far from the strike {start}.

A powerful, bone-breaking rifle is the thing for these things. I've seen well-hit bear come out of a tree looking for somebody to wreck, and sometimes shots must be placed through branches they are hanging on, too. The houndsmen here ALL carry .444's; Marlins or rarely Winchesters because they are most needed when the bear is fighting on the ground. These guys want devastating but relatively shallow penetration to minimize chances of hitting a dog that squirts around to the offside of the bear. I like a combination of penetration {...branches...} and fast opening, which the Prvi Partizan in both 9.3x62 and 9.3x57 calibers gives. Yesterday's shot was very tricky, and took quite a while to set up.