Arizona Unit 23 Bear
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Arizona Unit 23 has a good population of Bear. Unit 23 does have very nice bears but,like all bear hunts, the success rate is failry low because the country where bears live is rough. You have to put in your time if you have any hope at seeing a bear on the spring hunt especially.
The fall bear hunts have much better success, but still most of the bears are in steep and remote areas, but they like to come out onto flats and ridges that are covered in prickly pear catcus and eat the fruit. Areas with with a mixture of prickly pear (fruit) and juniper (berries) are great spots to look for bears, especially if there are few roads and a water source nearby.
Spring bears will not move around in search of food as much as they will in the fall. Concentrate you efforts around streams in deep canyons that are away from roads and see little to no human activity. That means hiking in some pretty nasty country sometimes. The easy access is going to be where a stream crosses and road. You can start you hike there, but most likely you will have to hike a fair amount away from the road before you start seeing bear sign.
When bears first come out of their dens in the spring, they will want to drink a lot of water. Look for tracks around the stream bed and along game trails that parallel the stream.
They will want to eat new spring mushrooms, fresh tender grass shoots and other easily obtained and digestible foods. Once they get back into their normal eating routines, they will start looking for other food sources like winter killed game, turning over rocks and logs for bugs, etc.
