Ok, here is how my bear hunt turned out this year. First off we pulled my 30 foot camper 1300 miles from Pittsboro, Indiana to Washburn, Maine. That took us two full days. We had great weather. The roads were terrible in New York until we got close to Albany. Oh yeah, we also got caught up in a two hour stop and go in Connecticut because--of all things--an air show. We meet up with our guide, Pete…great guy! Parked the camper and went to sleep. In the morning we set up the camper and headed to town for supplies and got some breakfast. Pete had a cookout and a talk and wanted everyone to shoot their weapons to see that everyone could hold their own. Now let me tell ya, the temperatures in Maine were the hottest they have been since 1953. So it was hot, hot in the 90’s the first 2 days. My bait didn’t get hit either day or night. Here is what it looked like.
I had to look through these two little holes
And no air made it through the blind cloth either.
So on Wednesday he moved us up to Van Buren. When we got out of the truck, I said hold on Pete, we may get lucky so I loaded my weapon. As we moved to my site, we bumped a bear off my bait. Pete stepped off the path thinking I was going to shoot. I was 5 feet behind him…I’d have deafened him if I had shot my 375 H&H. It was kinda funny seeing him do that. I moved in to my ground blind and I got to looking around and thinking that the cover was a little thin. If I was to move and a bear would happen to be there looking at me and I didn’t see it, I’d be busted.
So I decided that if I sat on the ground and made a little peep hole through the cover I would be able to take a shot if the opportunity came. I made this little hole.
Well at 4:15 a bear came up behind me on my right and let me know he was there with a pretty good growl. Let me tell ya, it woke me up! I looked around a little bit and I grabbed my weapon. At 4:30, I saw a bear about 10 yards behind the bait and it moved from left to right and out of my line of sight. In just a moment, there was a bear moving from right to left in front of the bait. It had what looked like a pretty good head and the height looked good too. It turned to the bait, I had a perfect shot so I took it and the thing went 10 yards and fell. As it let out the death moans, I headed to it…one of the main things all guides tell us not to do. But as everyone who knows me, knows I have a hard head and have to learn everything the hard way. So I headed straight to the bait to look at the blood splatter and there was only a few spots of blood, but as I look in the direction that the bear had ran there was a tree that the thing must of bounced off of that had a bunch of blood on it.
Here’s the tree it bounced off of and here’s where it lie.
