Needless to say, this disrupted many outdoor plans and the start to our summer! Combine this with me trying to finish my last class and dissertation defense for my MBA, and my summer got off to a busy start (and not outdoor related).
Between that chaos, I was able to setup and hunt our bear stand. We put in our gear a little later than normal (end of April) because for the past 5 years, the black bears haven't really showed up until the second week of May. Well of course, this was the first year the bears were out and hitting the stand before May. Unfortunately, we didn't plan on this and they had that barrel empty well before we visited for the first time. The odd thing was that the snow this year was deeper and more abundant than previous years... which made us think the bears would come out later. I guess not!
My buddy Kevin was trying to get a brown bear so he was trying to hunt before the black bears came out. He went down one weekend without me and had a black bear come to the bait one evening. He took a picture of it and texted it to me. When I looked at the text, I didn't really study the picture since I was busy working in the garage. Sarcastically, I replied, "shoot it" because I knew he was there looking for brown bears. Seconds later I got a response from him, "I need help." I immediately realized he didn't take that as sarcastic and shot the bear. After talking to him on the phone, he soon realized that I would not be able to get there to help him cut up his first bear or hike it out. Like a champ, he did it on his own.
When I met him at his house, we looked at the bear and it was a dandy! It was well over six foot and I'm glad I didn't sarcastically tell him to shoot a baby. I learned my lesson on that one!!
We headed back down together the following weekend. Kevin had conflicts so couldn't hunt most of the weekend and I ended up hunting the stand solo for three additional days. During that time, I saw plenty of bears, but being that I had the free time, I was being picky and trying to shoot a big one. I ended having to settle for an average sized boar with a poor coat to add as meat to the freezer. (the hide was donated to a guy at my church who wanted to practice tanning and creating a rug).
After I shot my bear, I let my other buddy Travis know he could hunt it for the next month. During that time, he was busy on and off with this fishing charter business. He would bait it, sit on the stand for many hours, but somehow never saw a bear. He knew there were bears there because the food would be eaten or gone... I joked with him that he likely stunk and that was why they never came in while he was there. To make matters worse, the game cam showed him filling the barrel many times only to have bears come in almost immediately after he left.
There bear on the left is the one I eventually took.
This is a view from our tree stand. There are two baggies of food on the ground. Kevin dropped his while eating and I made fun of him because he would be hungry. A couple minutes later I dropped mine, and I ate my words.
These two were bottomless pits! They would eat everything and scare off all the black bears. I hope they don't come back next year!
Face swat!
This grouse is near my bait stand every year! I may try to find and shoot his this fall because he flies in front of the game camera multiple times a day, wasting both battery and SD card space.
Here he is strutting his stuff! "Hey ladies"
The real trophy!
Went back to pull my gear before the July 1 deadline, and my trail disappeared!
Tundra hates mosquitoes (who doesn't). His defense is to get as dirty as possible so they can't get to his skin.
On our way out from picking up the gear, Tundra flushed a grouse (like he is trained to do). Unfortunately, this is the time of year where mamma grouse have little chicks. I saw this little guy run between my legs in the opposite direction of the flushed mamma grouse. I scoped him up and tried to reunite them, but I couldn't locate the mamma. I know there were other babies somewhere too so I chose to drop him in grass and hope they reunite... but not after texting Danielle and trying to convince her we had a new pet :)
Swimming in Kenai Lake is a must as an impromptu bath.
And here is the final result of the bait barrel. I have never had a barrel get completely ripped off the chains from the tree. I didn't get any footage of the bear that did this, but Kevin is hoping he comes back next year! ** You'll notice a bear in a video below pull the barrel off the tree. That was only ratchet strapped at that time and like a string for a small bear. He wasn't the one that did the original damage.
I took the following three videos from the tree stand:
And here are a handful of videos from one of the game cams that didn't malfunction:
No comments:
Post a Comment