One of our fellow hunters killed a cow elk on day 3. He showed me a cell phone pic of a bear track he found near his kill site on day 4. He was gracious enough to tell me where his elk kill was, and encourage me to hunt there.
On the morning of day 5, I waited for daylight, and slowly hunted my way toward the elk carcass. I found the bear tracks frozen in the mud and snow of a two track road. The bear traveled on the road a good ways to get to the elk.

I found the kill site, spent about an hour there, but couldn't be satisfied with my view or the wind. I decided to move out of the heavy timber the carcass was in, and back out to the more open view of the two track road.

As I emerged from the dark timber into the open sage, I glassed my surroundings. I got distracted by a line of trees hooked and rung off by a bull elk. I just felt a presence, and slowly turned my head to see a 280 lb chocolate bear in the road 30 yards away. We locked eyes and stared at each other for a couple of seconds.

He whirled and turned the corner of the road he just appeared from. I ran after him in the literal sense of the word. He wasn't blown out of the country, but just gently loping away. I found a hasty rest and brought my gun to bear. Hammer back, I just needed him to stop. And he did. But the shot wasn't good enough for me, and away he went.

The bear acted like it still wanted to go to the carcass, and work around me. I quickly moved to a better view and settled into a solid position as the bear moved down the next finger over. As the bear approached an opening, I let out a "whoop-whoop", and the bear stopped. Again the hammer came back and the crosshairs were settled...

but only the top half of the bear was visible above the sage and brush. I gave thought to shooting the bear where the brush stopped, but chose the mature option, and let the bear walk. Out of my sight for this trip, to haunt my dreams forever.