Alberta Bearhunt - Day #3
It was a sleepless night! Thoughts of the events of last night along with reviewing the shot pictures in my mind made sound sleep impossible. I lay in my cot for hours waiting for the sounds of others stirring around camp in the morning. I thought breakfast would never come!
After a hearty breakfast Jeff and I headed off on the quad to try to find my bear. The more I thought about the shot, the less sure I was that the search was going to have positive results, but I kept my fingers closed. When we got to the bait site I climbed to my stand and gave Jeff directions as to where I had seen the bear travel after the hit. Once I was sure he was on the right trail I climbed down to help with the tracking job.
For those who have not yet hunted bears, there are a few things I should mention here. Because bears have very thick fur in the spring, and leave the bait site in a "huge" hurry when hit, it is not unusual to have a very poor blood trail for the first 20-40 yards. It is also very probable that there will be several bear trails leading to/from the bait making tracking very difficult based on tracks. For these reasons it is important to watch carefully which way the bear goes when hit, and concentrate on any/all aspects of the trail so you can get a good start to the correct trail when you start the tracking job. Of course, the very best idea is to use a string tracker devise (just make sure you practice with it to assure it doesn't effect arrow flight). Back to the story.
They was no blood what so ever for the first 30 yards and then only the odd small speck after that ... things were not looking good! At about 50 yards I found my arrow. The blood sign on the arrow confirmed penetration of less than six inches, which meant that the arrow did not go through the chest cavity and stop on the far side shoulder as hoped. This was bad news for me, but decent news for the bear as no vitals were probably hit. The blood trail got a little better, perhaps due to the arrow removal, perhaps because the bear was walking slower. We kept going. After another forty yards the blood trail got real good and our hopes soared!
We took the trail another couple hundred yards until we hit a huge swamp. Before the swamp the trail had gotten so weak we were on hands and knees for ten minutes at a time to find a single spot of blood to keep going on the trail. It was clear that the wound was superficial enough that it was closing even as he kept moving. Another tell tale sign was that the tail had started to circle and he was actually headed back toward the bait.
He not only wasn't hurt bad, he wasn't leaving and didn't know what had happened. This would not happen in an area where the bears come in contact with humans/hunters! After almost two hours, and with no trail left to follow, we gave up the search and headed back to camp.
Having to tell Eric that I had screwed up for the second day in a row was a bitter pill to swallow, but Eric took it easy on me. He didn't have any other real active baits, and had three more clients arriving the next morning, so we decided that I'd take a break from hunting and help set stands and check baits. Jeff headed down to the river to check baits while Eric and I loaded up the quad with bait and headed further into the country to check baits. About six miles from camp on the winter road (bog path!) we ran into a pair of Sand Hill Cranes doing their courtship ritual in the middle of the road. They didn't want to leave, and kept moving along in front of us doing their thing. It was like something right out of the Discovery Channel!
Shortly after passing the cranes we pulled off the main road onto a side trail that ran through a pretty grove of aspen poplars. These look a lot like our white birch trees back home and were an interesting contrast to all the swamp poplar and spruce everywhere else. Shortly after pulling down the side road we came around a turn and found a large bear standing at the bait. In spite of the noise of the quad, he was reluctant to leave. We turned and left deciding to check this bait again on the way back. There was one other stand further in that had not been checked in a few days. Eric was going to see if it was hit before deciding how to split up the bait.
The stand furthest in had not been touched. It was much further into the hills and at a higher elevation. There was still snow on the ground and the bears had obviously not started moving about yet. That made splitting the bait easy, it all was going to the active stand! On the way back to camp we stopped at the poplar grove stand and ran the big boar off the bait again. We re-baited and put the crib back together as fast as we could and got out of there. The plan for tomorrow was made; we'd come in and build a stand here for sure.
Back at camp we found that Jeff had found nothing promising at the six baits on the river, but had found one not far from camp that had been hit. They also found that a bear had gotten into the bait storage area at camp during the day and something would need to be done about this. We moved the bait closer to camp and set a bait site up in the woods on the trail the bear used to approach camp. Eric figured this bear had to be dealt with, and what better way then to put a hunter on him.
We finished the afternoon building a stand for the "camp bear", and having a large diner. As soon as I get this installment off I'm turning in early. Tomorrow has to be a better day!