Live for the season...

2008 Bear Hunt Recap (Updated)

Well, I finally feel as if I'm back among the living!  We landed in Birmingham around 9:30 Sunday night.  It was a VERY long day after only 45 min sleep the night before.  I cannot believe how smooth all of our flights went!  A total of 6 planes & all but 1 were either early or on time.  Our very last flight from Chicago to Birmingham was delayed about 30 minutes leaving due to some maintenance issue, but we made up most of this time during the flight. 

This hunt was truly an adventure - from the beautiful country, to the variety of game spotted, to sharing the nighttime woods with some grumpy bears - memories I will never forget! 

Our success was pretty unbelievable - between the 5 hunters in camp, we killed 7 bears, shot at 2 more, and saw a total of over 100 from the stands.  Personally, I was just a little disappointed at not being able to close the deal with my bow, but I was absolutely thrilled at being able to mark off another of my long-time hunting goals by bringing home a big bear! 

Oh my... what to blog about now that turkey season is closed & the bear hunt is over??  Never fear - check the counter on the front page of the blog - ONLY 118 DAYS TILL DEER SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day 6 Bear Hunting

Again, day 6 (the last night) of the bear hunt was pretty uneventful for me.  I went back to the stand where I had shot at the monster on Tuesday night, hoping that he would return.  He didn't - I only saw the same small bear that had threatened to climb my tree on Tuesday.  This time he casually sauntered through & then laid down & took a nap about 50 yards behind my tree.  He was still there when I climbed down.

[Side note - heard from bear camp on Friday after I got back home.  A hunter from Alabama killed the big bear that I had shot with my bow.  He WAS truly a monster - 440lbs!  Just as I thought, my arrow had only cut him across the bottom of the chest - never penetrated the chest cavity.  I haven't heard the other measurements yet, but at 440 lbs, the hide has to be close to 8ft & the skull should be pushing Boone & Crockett.  Oh well, at least I can say that I once was 15 yards from a bear of this caliber :(( ]

Day 6 did end up being a great night in bear camp.  Will killed his 2nd of the week with a bow, Loyd also killed a nice bear with his bow, and Jeff killed another beautiful colored bear.  This one was more of a chocolate-milk brown.  Gorgeous hide & a brute of a bear also - 320lbs!   

Well, by the time we told bear stories, ate supper, packed, and made plans for the trip home, we didn't get in bed till 4:15am.  And with the alarm clocks set for 5am, it made for a very SHORT night & a LONG day of traveling on Sunday!

Day 5 Bear Hunting

Friday night was pretty uneventful (as far as bear sightings).  I went back to the stand down the long mud road.  Larry had ridden in with me but the plan was to just leave a 4 wheeler back in the bush with me & I would ride out to the road to meet him after dark.  This was probably the neatest looking spot I hunted.  When I thought about "bear woods" before coming to Alberta, this is what I pictured.  Thick, spruce forest with just a few poplars mixed in - looked very "beary" to me, not that I know anything about bears...  Like I said, maybe I don't know a good spot when I see one, didn't see anything here but 1 small boar and a Pine Martin (really pretty member of the weasel family). 

Did have a little excitement after I got down though - got back to the 4 wheeler & discovered that a bear had been there too.  Once again, they had tried to raid the oat sack that I'd been using for a rear seat!  So I made a little noise to be sure that the oat-raider was gone, start the 4 wheeler, & head back to load up my stand.  Get back & just let the 4 wheeler idle so I'll have the extra light while I'm loading up.  Almost done & the 4 wheeler dies - out of gas - no problem, I'll just switch it to reserve - uh oh, it's already on reserve!  So here I am, 1 mile back in the bush, carrying around 50lbs of bear food, thinking I'm stranded!  OK - don't panic - I finish loading up, get on the 4 wheeler, rock it back & forth, choke it, and it starts!  Of course I'm thinking that I have over a mile to go & that it is probably going to die right in the middle of one of those waist-deep mud holes...

Anyway, I did manage to make it out of the bush & almost back to the rendezvous point before it died for good (it only quit 2 more times on the way out).  I ended up having to wait on Larry for an hour in the dark.  He was delayed helping Loyd look for a bear that he had shot with his bow right before dark.  At least I was waiting on the side of the road & not a mile back in the bush or at the bottom of a mud-hole!  Quite the exciting evening to have only seen 1 bear!

Day 4 Bear Hunting (Updated)

We had winds of 30 + MPH this afternoon. Most of the guides were saying that they had never seen winds like that here before, so apparently it was really unusual weather for this part of Alberta.  Dwain really didn't want to sit in a tree that was rocking back & forth and made a good point about messing up an area if a big bear caught scent of us in the high wind.  Honestly, I was content with pretty much anything at this point - having killed a great bear Wednesday night & shot at another the night before, I had already had a great trip!  So, we decided not to hunt & to just help Larry check some stand sights.  Let me tell you, it was LOTS of fun and we saw a tremendous amount of bear sign.  One particular mile-long ATV ride in to a stand was worth the price of the hunt alone!  The entire ride was 1 big mud-hole after another.  Dwain & I were in front (doubling on a 4-wheeler) while Larry was behind us on another 4-wheeler pulling an ATV trailer.  We should have known that we were in for a treat when he tied a tow-rope between the two 4-wheelers before we even got started!  I'll just say that 1 out of the 2 riders on my 4-wheeler was having a blast!  Anyone who knows Dwain can imagine the look on his face the first time the bottom dropped out from under us & the water came up to the seat!  I think his words were something like "OH S#%T, this ain't good!!"  Of course I was very sympathetic to his concerns as I mashed the gas & let out a roar of laughter! :)) 

 

Jeff did go ahead and hunt and managed to kill an absolutely beautiful blond color phase bear. Prettiest colored bear I have ever seen. 

 

 

 

 

At this point, I was really hoping to get to see a few more bears - I'd seen fewer than anyone - only 3 from the stand. But it had already been an incredible hunt and I would have gone home happy if I'd seen nothing else.  And I was really starting to be ready to get back - couldn't wait to see Brandi and the kids !

 

Have to tell you another "Will" story here.  For those who don't know, mature boars are notorious for killing cubs.  So the sows have learned to send their cubs up a tree for protection whenever the sense danger.  Well when Will & his guides got to the stand Thursday night, they spotted a lone sow but really didn't think anything about it.  Joe & Blair (the guides) helped Will get his climbing stand around the tree & then left him as he began to climb.  You just have to know Will - he is a really funny guy.  He had just gotten settled into his stand and was doing his daily video diary entry when you can actually hear some sticks falling around him on the video.  He then pans the camera around and a cub is climbing DOWN the tree right beside him!  Next thing you see on the video is him pointing the camera strait up at 2 cubs in the top of his tree!  Yep, he had climbed a tree that already had 2 bears in it!  You know looking back, it really was a dangerous situation, but hearing him tell the story - it was absolutely the funniest thing I'd ever experienced!  The best part was his narration on video as the camera shook, including his call to the guides "Joe get back here RIGHT NOW!".  Of course Dwain & I were still riding around with Larry when we heard about it.  The initial story was that a bear had climbed to the top of Will's tree so we were all thinking "how did it get past his stand??" - not knowing that Will had actually climbed the bear's tree!  I know you're wondering how this could have happened - who wouldn't notice a bear in a tree that you are about to climb?  Well these cubs will climb to the very top of a Spruce tree, stretch out on a limb, and go to sleep.  So they may be 80 - 100 feet up on the other side of some dense cover - it could happen...  Joe & Blair made it back & stood guard over him as he climbed down.  They waited for the cubs to climb down & then sent him back up the same tree!  To say the least, I think he was just a little nervous for the rest of the night!  :))

Day 3 Bear Hunting (Updated)

We loaded up around 12pm to go back & look for the big bear that I had shot with my bow the night before.  Dwain & Larry (the Outfitter) went along with Ash & me to help look.  We quickly picked up the blood trail from the night before, but it completely fizzled out after another 100 yards or so.  I am completely convinced that my arrow didn't even penetrate his chest cavity - it was just too low.  Unfortunately, all he got out of the deal was a nasty cut under his brisket. :((

On a positive note, we were tracking him in some of the most beautiful country I've ever been in.  The relatively flat farm land we were hunting quickly became mountainous as we got to the Peace River valley.

Dwain & Larry taking a break from tracking.  We spotted elk & mule deer from this slope.  I also found a moose shed just below this spot.  This country is FULL of game!

 

 

After a couple of hours tracking, we took a break in the bush (their word for woods) to eat lunch & rest before heading to the afternoon stands.  Dwain (on the 4 wheeler), Larry (on the ground), and Ash (in the trailer) taking a power nap.

Well, after everyone was refreshed, we headed out to our afternoon stands.  We dropped Dwain off first.  (I had a pretty good nap myself in the truck while they rode Dwain in on the 4 wheelers)  Then it was on to my stand.  This was the thickest spot I'd hunted yet.  I finally got settled in around 9pm.  Looked like a great spot but I was getting a little worried when I hadn't seen anything by 10:30pm.  I had decided to tote the rifle tonight.  I was just a little shaken at having lost the big bear the night before so I was afraid that I might have lost my confidence.  Since my main objective was to take home a bear, I decided to try to get 1 down with the gun then go back to the bow for # 2.  Finally had a big boar come in by himself about 10:50pm.  I knew he was big - very tall and very long but not near as stocky as the big bear I shot at with my bow so I had a hard time deciding whether or not to shoot him.  I actually watched him for at least 15 minutes trying to decide whether of not to shoot.  I finally made my decision when he stood up against a tree and I could tell just how big he was.  His paw was wider than the tree - I think that's what did it for me!  When I was getting the rifle on him I made a little noise.  When he heard it, he turned and started toward me and I shot him in the chest facing me at about 30 yards.  He only ran about 70 yards before crashing, but I had to wait for an hour in the tree for the guides to get there.  MAN he was BIG when we walked up on him in the woods! No one at camp could believe that I almost passed this bear.  He just didn't look that big in the woods in comparison to what I had seen the night before. 

 

For those of you who know nothing about bear hunting (me included till last week!), there are 3 ways to judge bears.  Weight, square of the hide, and skull measurement.  To square the hide, you lay it flat after it is skinned, measure nose to tail and front paw to front paw, add the two measurements together and divide by 2.  Most everything you read in hunting mags or see on the Outdoor channel talks about a 200lb 6ft bear being what everyone wants.  This bear weighed 242 & squared just under 7 feet!  Keep in mind too that these bears had only been out of hibernation for a few weeks.  These same bears would have been 100 - 200 lbs heavier in the fall!  I haven't measured the skull yet, but it should be between 18" and 19".  For perspective, Pope & Young records entry is 19" and Boone & Crockett is 21".  Not bad for my first!

Day 2 Bear Hunting (Updated)

Tuesday was another long lazy day.  We got up around 10:30am, ate a big breakfast, napped, shot our bows, ate lunch, and basically just hung-out till time to go hunting again.  We left the lodge about 6:30, dropped Dwain off at his stand, and then headed off to my spot for the evening.  I was hunting about 20 miles from Dwain & then had a 3 mile 4 wheeler ride in after we got there.  Larry (the Outfitter) said that there was a really big bear in the area.  He pointed out some BIG tracks to me - I could tell by the way he was acting that he thought wed get a crack at him.  I finally got settled in my tree  - 30 ft up a popular at 9:30pm.  Interestingly enough, there were fresh claw marks going up my tree, even higher than I had climbed.  I was hoping that didn't mean that this was one of their favorite trees to climb!

About 45 min later, I looked up across a small field just as a HUGE bear stepped out of the woods about 150 yards away!  Let me tell you, I had been worried about not being able to judge the size of bears since we booked this trip.  But, there was no question when I saw this monster!  This was the first bear I'd ever seen in the wild & he looked like a jet-black Mack truck!  [Ash was in the tree behind me with my video camera.  We later showed the video to the other guides & they all agreed that this bear would go over 400 pounds.]   Just after I spotted the big bear, a smaller bear (Ash said it was a sow) came up from behind me.   Wouldn't you know it, this bear walked strait towards me, sniffed the bottom of my tree, and started up!  Have to be honest - the old heart did skip a beat with the thought of sharing a tree with this bear, but I was really more worried about this bear getting half way up my tree & then causing some commotion that would spook the big guy before I could shoot him.  So I popped my foot against the bottom of my stand to scare the little guy down while the other bear was still 100 yards out.

The big bear finally came in & gave me a broadside shot at 15 yards.  I knew the moment that I released that my shot was too low.  Not to make excuses, but let's just say I was more than a little rattled having a bear this size this close!  Plus, this was the highest that I had ever tried to shoot a bow out of a tree stand.  From the tree, I really didn't think I had hit anything but fur.  But when we got down we did find a little blood.  We followed it for about 500 yards but it was getting pretty scarce.  Then, when we walked up on the smaller bear in the dark and it started woofing & growling, we decided to back out & come back in the daylight.  Then when we got back to the stands to gather our stuff, we had another bear that made it quite clear that he didn't like us being in his woods after dark - not a good day to have left the gun at the lodge!

Day 1 Bear Hunting (Updated)

We slept-in the next morning, got up at 9:30am, and ate a big breakfast.  We shot our guns and bows a little after breakfast and really just hung-out and relaxed for the rest of the day.

My guide's name was Ashton (Ash).  Ash & I finally left camp around 6pm, checked 3 stands for sign, and finally got settled in around 8:30pm.  Normally, guides in this camp just drop off their hunters at the stand, but Ash was kind enought to sit with me for a couple of nights to help me judge the size of the bears since I had never bear hunted before.  It was a beautiful spot - we saw 6 elk and several deer on the way in, but unfortunately didn't see any bears.  Actually I was the only one in camp who didn't see a bear this night. Most of the other guys saw 4 to 6 but nobody shot.  I think there were a couple of good ones spotted but everyone was content to just watch for the first day.  We got out of the stand at 12:30am and in bed around 3am after a late supper & just a few stories. 

We made it! (Updated)

I was up at 2:30am Sunday morning, met Dwain and Jeff at 3:15am, and managed t o make our 7:30am flight despite having to take a detour. The interstate was shut down about 30 miles North of Birmingham due to a wreck. We flew from Birmingham, to Denver, to Edmonton, and then finally arrived in Grand Prairie Alberta at 7:30pm.  We rolled into camp about 10pm after a quick stop at Wal-mart and a 2 hour truck ride.

[I just have to interject a funny little story here - when we stopped at Wal-mart in Grand Prairie Alberta (why is it that you just can't go on a hunting trip without a stop at a Wal-mart??), we were wandering around the store trying to pick up some snacks and last-minute items.  You know how when you come around the end of an isle, its easy to almost bump into another shopper when one of you isn't exactly paying attention?  Well, Will rounded a corner & was just about run over by a fairly attractive young lady.  She immediately began backing up and apologizing.  Will said "don't worry about it, you're fine", meaning "that's ok, you're ok, you didn't do anything wrong".  Apparently they don't use the phrase "you're fine" in Canada the same way we do in the South because she immediately began to blush and said "thank you!"  So, a little perplexed, Will told Tannis (the cook from camp who had picked us up) about what had happened.  He asked her what she would had thought he meant if she had been the the Wal-mart girl's shoes.  She said "I would have thought you just told me that I was HOT!"  :))  Ha!]

We saw a ton of mule deer, a few whitetail, and 1 moose on the drive up.  Couldn't believe that it didn't get dark till almost midnight TN time!  We finally got in bed at 1:30am after being up for 23 hours.

Bear Hunt Recap

Well, I finally feel as if I'm back among the living! We landed in Birmingham around 9:30 Sunday night. It was a VERY long day after only 45 min sleep the night before. This hunt was truly an adventure - from the beautiful country, to the variety of game spotted, to sharing the nighttime woods with some grumpy bears! I was just a little disappointed at not being able to close the deal with my bow, but I was absolutely thrilled at being able to mark off another of my log-time hunting goals by bringing home a big bear! I'm going to go back through my posts from last week to try to fill in the rest of the details, and also to add some pics - so sit back & enjoy the story!

Day 4 bear hunting

We had winds of 30 + MPH this afternoon. Most of the guides were saying that they had never seen winds like that here before. Dwain and I decided to just help Larry check stand sights this afternoon rather than trying to sit in a tree in the high wind. It was LOTS of fun and we saw a tremendous amount of bear sign. Jeff did go ahead and hunt and managed to kill an absolutely beautiful blond color phase bear. Prettiest color bear I have ever seen. I will post pics as soon as I get back. 2 more nights of hunting. I really hope I get to see a few more bears - I've seen fewer than anyone - only 3 from the stand. But it has already been an incredible hunt and will be happy if I see nothing else. And I'm really ready to get back. I CAN NOT wait to see Brandi and the kids !