As the inky black object suddenly appeared out of a nearby thicket, I immediately turned to my wife, who was perched in a stand next to mine, and motioned that something was moving in our direction. While we were both hoping for a chance at a whitetail buck, we weren’t about to let this "target of opportunity" pass us by. Knowing that my wife had limited hunting days, I opted to let her take this bruin if given a good shot.

Creeping beneath her stand like a thief in the night, he was clueless to the fact that we were both there. While fooling the eyes of a bear is easy, fooling their nose is a completely different matter. They have an uncanny ability to detect danger with just a single whiff. But, as this WV black bear approached from down wind, he hadn’t detected enough danger to consider taking another route through the rough landscape.

Waiting for just the right moment, I watched as my wife brought her Mathews DXT to full draw and took aim. With my heart pounding out of my chest as if I were the one taking the shot, her bow string suddenly sprang forward and the Easton Flatline buried up in the thick, black hide; all the way to the pink fletching. In a blur of hurried panic, the bruin spun around, slinging earth and wood skyward, exposed his teeth in a vicious growl, and then crashed over the steep hillside like a runaway bulldozer.

Unsure of the lethality of the hit, and with nightfall approaching fast, we opted to let him lay overnight. Needless to say, my wife got very little sleep that night. The next morning, with the help of a close friend and my father, we found the beautiful black bear laying 150 yards over the rugged hillside. The Muzzy broadhead had done its job. The only question that remained was how we were going to get him out.