September 16, 2007

Saturday was the first day of deer archery season and small game opener, so there was going to be a lot of activity and pressure in the woods.  The cold front had passed as well, so the temperature was back on the rise.  I had little confidence in seeing a bear.  Heck, with all of the nocturnal activity on my scouting camera, I had NO confidence in seeing a bear.  In fact, I only brought out half as much bait as I usually do.

Before I even arrived at the spot where I park my truck, I counted three trucks and two four wheelers of grouse hunters.  All evening, there was a lot of shooting to the south of me; what I think were goose hunters because at one point they blasted off 19 shots in one single volley!  Half way through the evening’s hunt, I whispered into my video camera that I didn’t think we would be seeing much tonight because of all the commotion in the woods.  But I was wrong.  At 7:52pm Saturday night, seven minutes before the end of shooting hours, the bear that had been waiting for me to leave the stand each night, burst into the far end of the clearing on an almost direct route for the Stump.  I only waited for a broadside shot to squeeze the trigger.  One shot that passed through both lungs with the old reliable .308 at 15 yards rolled him sideways.  The rack and slide of my Remington 700 and the metal on metal bounce of the spent casing onto the platform of my stand rang through the forest canopy while the bruin crashed about 50 yards into the pencil brush as he tried to circle back from where he entered.  He had probably gone half that distance before establishing a considerable blood trail.  Unbelievable!  Nice!

This had to be the third bear that I had on the scouting camera that was the medium-sized bear.  He’s not the bigger bear I had on film, but he is the biggest I’ve ever taken, 175 lbs. field dressed (probably well over 200 live weight).  He is the first boar I have ever taken, and the first bear I have ever taken (or seen) beyond opening weekend.  Persistence had paid off, he had finally made his mistake, and I was fortunate enough to be there to take advantage.  After a dash back to town to pickup my lantern and atv (again, no confidence), and a buddy (Thanks Trapper!) to help drag him out, video tape of the blood trail, lots of pictures, and, the always interesting, drag out of the bear woods, we got headed for home at about 1:00am.  I apologize for the blood in the pictures!  The more I tried to clean him up the worse it got.  Once again the Ballistic Silver-Tips did some damage.  The first few pictures were from the previous night at the bait.

September 14, 2007

Just a little update from last night’s hunt, I had moved the camera closer to the bait to try to get more frequent pictures of the bears.  When I first saw these pictures last night, I thought it was the smaller one of the two from the previous email.  But after looking at them again this morning, I think this might be a third bear.  It is definitely not as big as the big one, but now it looks like it’s bigger than the smaller bear.

Also, the camera was still using the incorrect time stamp there should be about 35-45 minutes tacked onto each picture.  Nice feeding schedule… all night long!

September 12, 2007

We‘ve been having a bear hitting our bait pile pretty hard but still have not seen the culprit.  This is the best spot we have and we have been baiting it every year for all five years we have been bear hunting.  This is none other than the infamous “Stump”.  However, there is not much left of the ol’ Stump after years of bear thrashings, just a very tough shell at the very base before the roots.  It is the spot where we have shot all three of the bears we have taken in previous years, including both of my opening day bears and Butch’s brute.

I let Butch sit at this spot on opening weekend, he sat there four days straight and I have now sat there Friday, Sunday, Monday and tonight.  Every day for two weeks now, it has been getting thrashed and completely cleaned out of at least 2 5-gallon buckets at a time.  Yet, we’ve not seen the culprit.  Over the years we have also trained the chipmunks and raccoons, which come en masse each night.  When I get out of the stand, the pile is usually a glow with about a half dozen sets of raccoon eyes in the shine of my headlamp.  But I know for sure that it has been a bear cleaning out the pile because of the destruction and obliteration of the large logs we use to cover the pile; no coon that I have ever seen could move the larger logs.  Plus, he left behind a pretty healthy pile of scat not five yards from the stump.  I have had a feeling that it is a pretty good bear, possibly even the bear that I bumped off the bait when Brent came with me to bait it two seasons ago, which was a decent bear at that time.  However, once a bear has been bumped off the bait it will probably never come back or only come back late at night.  Which is my other fear, because if he is coming in at night there is very little if not nothing I will be able to do to change his mind.

So, Monday night I put out a scouting camera to try to find out when and how many bears are coming in.  When I got there today I only had three pictures and one was of me as I was walking up to check the camera.  First of all, I believe that the time stamp on the camera is about 45 minutes behind actual time because of setting it incorrectly Monday night in the rain.  So the first picture I believe is actually about 8:45 pm or about 25 minutes after I left my stand!  The bear in the first picture is probably a yearling or about the size bear I have shot in the past.  He is standing alongside the bait pile before it is destroyed and the pile is usually about waist high on me.  But the bear in the second picture is a much bigger, beautiful bear!  I am disappointed that I didn’t get his head and his big shiny teeth in the picture, and the camera should have taken more pictures than this so I moved the camera to a closer tree tonight.  I know it took a picture of a coon as I was getting ready to leave tonight and took a picture of me as I was walking out tonight as well, so hopefully we will have better pictures tomorrow!  Unfortunately, I don’t know if I will be able to tempt this guy to come a little earlier than 2am.  But hey, the weather is cooling down, the bear hunters are thinning out, and as long as the bow hunters and small game hunters hitting the woods this weekend don’t provide too much more stress, maybe he’ll make a mistake and come in early…