The author's first boar was estimated at 10 years of age and scored more than 18 inches, the kind of bear hunters travel to Vancouver to shoot.

At first there was no shot, not one I was comfortable with anyway. I couldn't see the left shoulder, nor was there a good angle from which to try to drill him between the shoulder blades, and I remembered Darren stressing the importance of taking shots that will break a bear's shoulder or otherwise immobilize him.

I cranked the Zeiss up to 9X so I could place the shot more precisely. When I looked back through the tube, the bear had paused briefly, and he swung his head to the left as he nipped at blades of green grass in the road. Right then I felt a breath of air on the back of my neck; if the shot didn't come now, the bear would quickly realize he wasn't alone. Just then, he slowed and swung his entire body slightly to the left, giving me a decent quartering shot at 75 yards.

At the blast, the bear upended, rolling on his back with all four legs in the air.

"Hit him again," Darren urged calmly, and I sent another 180-grain Core-Lokt Ultra into the boar's chest. The second .30-06 slug rolled him onto his side, and he stretched out without a sound.

The sun had yet to slide behind the mountains, and we admired the deep jet black of the hide glistening in the late afternoon light. Darren estimated the bear to be 10 years of age, and the teeth in the old boar's big, blocky head were worn down and broken from a lifetime of feeding and fighting. He was rubbed slightly on his flanks and a bit on his front legs, but otherwise he was a perfect specimen.

I was fortunate to have a second tag, and this time it fell to Glen Wallman to show me around. We covered a lot of ground over the next two days without much luck.

For a change of scenery, we traveled to the west coast of the island where Glen wanted to explore a remote valley. We hadn't gone more than a couple hundred yards from the truck, though, when a huge bear stepped into the road in front of us less than 30 yards away.

"Shoot that bear, shoot that bear, shoot that bear," Glen chanted as the bear stared back at us, just his top half visible.

I slammed a round home and threw the rifle to my shoulder. There wasn't a lot of leeway, and I took an extra millisecond to ensure that the bullet was going to hit the bear's shoulder and not plow into the dirt. The first shot dropped the bruin in his tracks, but I quickly reloaded and on Glen's advice pumped two more into the bear in rapid succession.

Some bear hunters go a lifetime without taking a bear measuring over 18 inches, and I'd just taken two in less than a week which surpassed that mark. Quite a testament to how good--and justifiably famous--the bear hunting on Vancouver Island is.

Back at the lodge, my tags filled, I walked down to the Somas River and sat on the bank as the sun dropped limb by limb behind the giant cedars and firs on the far shore.

In the slack water by the shore, tiny fish leaped skyward to nab even tinier insects. These steelhead smolts, two to three inches in length with blotchy gray markings, will spend a few years in the river before making their way to the Pacific Ocean, where they will grow to immense size and return once again to this very river. The bears will be waiting for them as they, too, grow larger year by year.

For more information on bear hunting, contact Vancouver Island Guide Outfitters, 250/724-1533, www.vancouverislandguideoutfitters.com.