Notice near the truck door the brace I had to wear while black bear hunting. If you look closely you can see the outline of perspiration on my T-Shirt. This because the brace was insulated with foam.

This photo was taken moments after finding the black bear.

Brace yourself for this black bear hunting story. I certainly had to………..literally. The day is September 2nd and I had been monitoring a few good bait sites for three days now. Due to unseasonably warm weather, the bears had pretty much shut down all feeding. I was due to leave and return home the 2^nd. However, a quick check of the bait sites before I left for home had me making a phone call to clear my schedule for another 24 hours. While the bait site had been inactive for the previous three days, it was wiped out this particular morning. The resuming of activity was possibly due to the fact that the temperature had dropped almost 10 degrees to the mid 70s.

With my schedule cleared for another day, 4:00 finds me driving my vehicle to within three quarters of a mile of my stand for what I hoped would be a calm, liesurly and cool walk into the bait site. Temperatures these past few days had been hovering well into the 80s, so my plan was to park a close as possible ( I will explain why later) and walk slowly into the bait site area so as to not spook any bear in the surrounding area and to avoid getting sweated up in the walk to the stand.

Immediately that plan was dashed. The fire break I planned to park in was already occupied. Standing broadside, 100 yards away in the fire lane, was a HUGE black bear. I had seen tracks of this bear or one its size, near the bait site and all summer had imagined getting him in my bow sites. That plan was rapidly falling to pieces. To make matters worse, he was (and I emphasis WAS) headed in the general direction of my bait site. Had I ruined his plans for a quick snack below my stand? I don’t really know, but I do know it certainly ruined my plans for a calm walk into the bait site. Now I had to park further down the logging trail and quickly move into place.

My worry was twofold. First, I most certainly had ruined any chance today of scoring on this monster bruin. Secondly what if no other bears were visiting the bait site. This was a possibility considering the size of this particular creature. He certainly could dominate the site and keep other bears away. As it turned out, I never did see the big monster again that day.

Oh, but this isn’t a sad tail, no way. In fact I was scarcely strapped into my tree stand for 30 minutes when I could hear a swishing sound. At first it was difficult to imagine a naturally occurring "swishing’ sound. Then I realized I was also hearing "plops". Okay, I know the wilderness is teaming with a variety of natural sounds. However, until this moment I had not considered swishes and plops to be among the variety of noises I would be hearing this evening. It was the plops I figured out first. These I realized were frogs jumping from the side of the nearby stream into the water. This gives me my first clue I am being circled by a bear. The bear was scaring the frogs from the bank and making them jump to safety in the water. With this deduction, I soon made a 90% positive ID that the creator of the sounds was a bear. 100% Positive identification still eluded me because, although at times the creature was at my feet, I still could not get a visual I.D due to the dense brush. That swishing sound though was quickly explained. The terrain I was hunting was so thick; the bear could not walk around without brushing against the sapling trees. The swishing sound was the tree tops swaying wildly in the air. Watching the trees around me seem to sway out of there own volition was a disturbing event. Mostly so because I kept thinking back to a moment in the movie Jurassic Park when the characters are hidden in a tree top level blind and the trees below them are also swaying wildly as the T-Rex walks below.

Having done considerable research on bears, I know intellectually that most bears are never going to be in a position to harm you. However, as I think of the scene from the Jurassic Park movie I can’t seem to make myself fully appreciate this. I can tell you, hearing a bear under you, behind you, and to the side of you, but never seeing him has the ability to peak your senses in a way you never before imagined. Having tracked the bear’s progress every tree of the way, you would think I would not have been surprised to see its large black head appear 10 yards away from me in the 5 foot wide shooting lane. I knew precisely where it was every step of the way yet he still surprised me when he actually showed himself at the bait. One minute there is an empty shooting lane, the next moment a huge black head has inserted itself into the opening. How can they do that? One minute, empty space the next two square feet of fur and teeth. Slowly the fur and teeth turns to looks right and then left and then up, directly at my stand. I am reminded that this bear or one also visiting this bait knows precisely were this stand is. That was evident by the fact that the T-shirt I had left up in the tree, on a hanger, to acclimate the area with my scent was ripped to shreds, a notice from the bears in the area not to get too comfortable in their dining room. Yet the shirt and the bulky figure it left hanging from the limb have done the job. The bear is now used to seeing some form in the tree and doesn’t give me a second look. Which was a good thing, for the first look was quite enough for me.

Still, I only see the head of the bear. I take the time to judge the size of the head and the height of it over an established point. It looks good, really good! The black beast takes another step, the only one there is room for. One more step and he will be exiting the lane. This is a very small site in a super dense area. Still no shot though, now he is broadside to me. I could take this shot if I was rifle hunting, but no way will I take anything but a perfect quartering away shot with a bow. As if this bear has a death wish, that is exactly what he does. Instead of crossing the lane, it turns slightly to face the barrel that rests at the end. This was all I needed. Sometime in this process I had drawn my Mathews SQ2 to a full draw and I find the red dot scope point resting slightly high and behind the shoulder. A gentle brush on the release and the bear roars and spins out of site. I had the good sense to have a string tracker attached, so I worry very little as within seconds the string stops playing out and I hear a couple of quite wheezes behind me. The bear is down.

Now the hard part begins, actually the nearly impossible part. This part of the hunt is never easy when you have a bear down in the swamp. This particular time though is not made any easier by the fact that I have no intention of lifting a finger to drag this bear out of the swamp. If you recall at the beginning of this tale I asked you, the reader, to brace yourself. What I failed to mention was that I was already braced. Quite literally, 3.5 months earlier I underwent a spinal fusion. This left me unable to carry anything heavier than my bow. Fortunately the only exercise that wasn’t strictly forbidden to me was upper body movement in my arms and shoulders. So I could practice with my Mathews bow all I wanted. Let me tell you, the practice was needed because I was wearing a full torso body cast. I was sheathed in Kevlar from my belt to line to my neck. My movements were restricted in ways you don’t care to know about. And hot to wear, oh my! Now you know why I violated my principles and parked my vehicle within less than a mile of the bait site. All plans were for a slow, cool walk into the tree stand to avoid overheating and working up a sweat.

Now I had a bear down and no way was I going to be able to get it out of this swamp. No problem, by now you should be asking yourself how I managed to keep multiple bait sites active and filled while having severe restriction on my movements. Earlier in the day I placed a call to a friend to alert him to the possibility that he would need to come and get a bear out of the swamp. Actually I only told him the site was hit and it looked good. He decided to put the pressure on me by telling me he was driving the three hours up with some help, because he could tell by my confident attitude I would get a bear that night. Talk about pressure, you can imagine my worry when I saw that big black bear standing where I wanted to park my truck. Where my friends going to commit to a 6 hours round trip journey just to find out the bear was spooked away before I ever made it to the stand?

As we trudged through the swamp following the orange line from the string tracker, I reflected on how pleased I was with the hunt. To not only have this bear down, and to have dropped it with my bow, and to see it was indeed trophy in anybody's book. More importantly though was I was thankful to know I had such a friend that would lend his time not only to this moment but to the entire summer as he carried hundreds of pounds of bait through the swamp, put up stands in places I indicated, trimmed the branches and limbs I pointed to, all this to the somewhat fussy standards I personally establish whenever hunting. No it wasn’t the monster bear I saw earlier, but it was certainly big enough that I could see why it felt the risk was acceptable to trespass on the same bait as that giant bruin.

Lest you think I was abusive of this human mule I call my friend, don’t feel too bad for him. The deal going into the venture was he would get the next bear hide. And not just any hide but a "big bear hide". So I had to make sure his trip up to Canada not only wasn’t a wasted trip for him but after he arrived he still had to approve of the bears size. Turns out my friend also establishes high standards for my hunting. I was forewarned not to bother shooting an average size or small bear. He worked way too hard to settle for anything less than a trophy bear. Well there was no worry here about whether the bear was big enough to pay off the debt of labor I had acquired with my friend. So as much as this bear meant to me, I gladly handed over the 6 foot plus hide with a beautiful white blaze on the chest, to the best friend a guy could ask for. Don’t feel too bad for me though, this just means that the really big bear I saw in my parking space is still out there and his hide isn’t promised to anyone but me.

Obviously, a do it yourself hunt requires much more work than a guided hunt. Future articles will cover in detail how you can accomplish a successful bear hunting trip. Not only is it possible but the satisfaction you feel by you actually hunting the bear from the very beginning of the year, not just the season, is unbeatable.