Alberta Bearhunt - Day #2
Slept in until 9:00AM this morning. It wasn't hard given that we didn't get back to camp until after midnight and it was after 1:00 AM when we finally shut down the generator and hit the sack. I don't know if the cot is real comfortable or I was just real tired, but I slept well.
During a hardy breakfast Jeff and I made plans to hunt to the bait early. We figured that the bear is coming in several times during the day, so why not take advantage of the situation and get some extra hours on stand. The plan was to go out after breakfast and sit until just before supper (no sense missing any of Eric's great cooking!). Jeff would then come get me with the quad, bringing me back to sit the evening hours after supper, if I didn't get lucky during the mid day sit.
By the time we got to the stand at 10:30 AM the bait had already been hit "hard". Jeff re-baited and put the logs back on the crib while I spun my stand slightly for a better shot angle and got settled in. The plan was for Jeff to keep making baiting noises until I was settled, then leave on the quad so a bear near by would think that this was just a routine feeding mission. The weather was great, warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to keep the bugs down.
I didn't have to wait too long for the action to start.
The tell tale branch snapping first happened just before noon. I stood quietly and waited for the bear to arrive with my bow at the ready. It didn't take long! As before, he came in deliberately, making a good deal of noise along the way. Watching him amble in gave me the time to size him up.
My best guess is that he'd go a little better than six and a half feet, with a wide head that would yield a skull in the 19 to 19 ½? range. Not the 20" bear I was looking for, but a real nice trophy none the less, and I have two tags. He got to 15 yards, behind a spruce, and just sat down on the trail and looked around. A minute or so later he pulled a meat scrap out from under some leaves and proceeded to chow down. This was not what my nerves needed! He was close enough to shoot, but the angle was bad and his vitals were partially blocked.
I had to wait him out.
After 30 long minutes he finally finished the first course of his lunch and decided to come to the bait crib for the second. Jeff had not only filled the crib with all sorts of "goodies", he had tied a beaver carcass we got from some trappers on to a tree beside the bait. Bears love beavers! I figured that I'd get a shot as he worked at freeing the beaver from the tree. He came in slowly looking from one side to the other as if suspecting that something might be wrong, but never looking up at my stand.
I was as still as a bronze park statue for fear of spooking him worse than I had the day before. After taking all sorts of time making the comitment to come in, he literally marched in, grabbed the beaver, ripped it off the rope, and kept right on going! I never got the bow drawn. He then went out about 20 yards, laid down, and proceeded to devour that beaver.
Again, he was in plain sight, but giving me no shot opportunity. He crunched bones and ripped flesh for almost forty minutes before I heard the quad coming down the trail. The bear didn't even look up until the quad was in sight, then he just picked up the small section remaining of the beaver and walked off into the bush.
It was good to hang my bow and sit down to settle myself from the better than two hours that had been spent in close proximity to this trophy bruin. I relayed the story to Eric (he was my ride for the afternoon while Jeff checked more baits down by the river) on the way back to camp, and we both hoped that he'd get hungry again before dark.
After another amazing meal (who expects perfectly roasted chickens with all the "fixings" in a bush camp?) I changed up for what I expected would be cooler temperatures on the evening sit, and we were off again on the quad. One of the many striking things about this area is the amazing amount of waterfowl. On the way to my stand we counted six species of ducks in breeding pairs and saw a pair of sand hill cranes. Eric was a working biologist for a number of years and could identify each species either on the water or in flight. There was one pair of buffleheads that let us get real close as we drove by a small pond coming and going to stand every time out. I finally had to stop and get a photo.
By 7:00PM I was in stand watching Eric drive off on the quad after re-baiting the stand and hanging yet another beaver. It wasn?t twenty minutes before I heard a wolf howling. That is one eerie sound when you're all alone in the woods and dark is approaching! He howled steady for five to ten minutes and then all went quite again.
Ten minutes later I heard a branch break and looked up to see a large light colored wolf approaching the bait. Things were really getting interesting! He came in to about forty yards and stopped to pick up a bone on the trail. He then proceeded to lie down and chew on that bone for ten minutes.
Over the next forty minutes or so he worked his way around in circles about 40-50 yards away eating bones and meat scraps that had been dragged off by my bear. I was standing with the bow ready the whole time, hoping he would come either into the bait or one of several shooting lanes I had located in a couple directions. Alas, it wasn't to be. He finally walked off the way he had come in, howled a good-by, and was gone.
Things were quite for a time, and then another branch cracked, causing me to again stand at the ready.
With-in a few minutes my large bear was headed toward the bait. I decided that if he came in I wasn't going to miss the chance by not being ready. As soon as I felt sure he was committed to the bait I came to full draw and settled into my anchor.
As he approached the log pile I picked a spot and slipped my fingers from the string. Thwack!
The bear wheeled and ran off the way he had come. I saw the hit and the arrow as he left. It looked very close to the front leg/shoulder and didn't get good penetration. A combination of rushing the shot, and the bear being "on the move" at the time of the shot, combined to put the arrow a few inches forward and lower than ideal.
Did the arrow pierce the heart and stop on the far leg/shoulder bone? I could only hope. I waited on stand until Jeff came on the quad and brought me back to camp. It will be a long night tonight, but we'll go right after breakfast in the morning to see if we can find him.
Hope you'll join us.