Record Bear!

Bear season traditionally begins the last Monday of August. Bob Watkins, Steve Mudgett, Mike Stafanik, Mike Farrell, and Al Anza arrived, our week-one hunters. Kayleen Bruce will cook for us. We “discovered” Kayleen during the wedding weekend when she was so helpful and at home in our kitchen. Wayne and I have always done all the cooking and housekeeping ourselves but with a fully-booked fall ahead of us we decided it was time to get help. Kayleen brought lobsters up from the coast and we served a traditional lobster dinner to welcome our hunters.

August 30, opening day of bear season, sunny with a high temperature of 88 degrees! Definitely not the weather we’d hoped for. In this business there are some things you can control such as food and lodging. We give 100% to preseason baiting and work as a team with our clients to make their hunt as memorable, enjoyable, and successful as we possibly can. We can’t control the weather. I ran baits in the morning and we immediately realized what a huge asset is is to have a cook. Wayne and I are able to enjoy a more relaxed pace and have more time to enjoy our hunters. Since it was so hot we didn’t have to hurry to get our hunters on their stands early; the bears wouldn’t be moving until the sun started to set. At 7:40, as I was picking up my hunters, I got a call on the MURS radio from Wayne. Mike Farrell had shot a nice boar, sporting a white bib on his chest, with his muzzle loader.

In the morning we took photos of Mike’s bear, skun it, cut the meat, and had it in the freezer before lunchtime. Another hot and sunny day, not good bear hunting weather but we’ll have to work with it. After we got the guys out on their stands Wayne and I met up with George Pooler (guide at Track Down). We visited a bit then got in position for our night sit. We put our guys out so that we can get to them easily when they shoot. All have radios and are instructed to call us when they shoot so we can determine of we should go right in to drag out dead bears or strat tracking when necessary. That night I watched a couple of moose foraging in a clearcut. At 7:40 Mike Stefanik called on the radio to tell me Wayne was tracking a bear he’d put an arrow in. I picked up my hunters and Al Anza then we met up with Wayne and Mike. The bear was wounded so we returned to the lodge, ate dinner and went back out to recover the bear. We chose our “search and recovery team” which included both Wayne and I, Mike (the archer who shot the bear), and the most able-bodied guy to help drag – Al Anza. We also brough “Alli the Wonder Dog” to help us work the track. We entered the woods at 10:30 p.m. and temps were still in the mid 80s. We knew if we left the bear overnight the meat would spoil if the coyotes or another bear didn’t eat it first! Alli worked with us to the last known sign of blood and within minutes completed the track to the 200+ lb. boar. While Wayne went back to the truck to gather his drag team, Alli and I waited with the bear. While we waited we had another bear circling us as we sat under a fir tree alongside the dead bear, illuminated by my headlamp. I was sure relieved when the bear departed and Wayne and Company arrived! We had the bear hung and gutted by 1:00 a.m. The bear weighed 225 lbs.

By reviewing trail camera photos we learned most of the bears were not feeding until temps dropped to 70 degrees or so, which meant they were frequenting the bait sites in the wee hours of the morning. Steve Mudgett wanted to try an early morning sit on the 1st. No bear but they watched a lynx on the way out of the woods. That afternoon I picked up Tom Webber at the University. He is a freshman enrolled in the criminal justice program. He wants to become a game warden. I figured he’d enjoy spending a day as an “apprentice” guide and hoped we’d bring in a bear that night. No bear at Fish River Lodge so I stopped at Track Down in Wallagrass where they might have a bear. Sure enough Rene St. Onge was skinning a small boar they’d gotten that night.
We were blessed with cloud cover on the 2nd although temps remained in the 80s. None of the three saw bear that night. Steve Mudgett did another morning sit on the 3rd and shot a 150 lb. boar at 7:30 a.m. Bob Watkins passed on a small bear knowing there is a large boar coming to his site. Al Anza still has not seen a bear through five days of sitting.

Saturday the 4th is the last day for our last two hunters. Hurricane Earl dumped a lot of rain overnight but it cleared off by afternoon. Wayne took our last two hunters out. I waited for our week two hunters to arrive. Arrive they did! Uncle David brought a load of lobsters up – enough for all of us to feast on Saturday night and still plenty for lobster rolls later! Ann and Cliff Baker, and Bob and Sue Ormsby who were camping at Old Mill Marina in their RVs joined us for dinner and a tour of the lodge. Mom and dad arrived along with Duane, his son Tom, and friend Jeff Morrill. We cleaned up from our lobster feed just in time to get dinner ready for a steak feed with our first week hunters. At 8:45 Wayne was overdue and we knew they had “something”. Finally, at 9:15 they pulled in and the guys piled out of the truck. In the bed, they had a HUGE black bear sow! Al, who had sat all week and seen nothing, shot the bear with only 10 minutes remaining before the end of legal shooting. Since he’d shot it with his crossbow we immediately checked state records and learned it could become the state crossbow record black bear sow! We celebrated late in to the evening as I called around looking for a certified scale to weigh it on. Sunday morning we weighed it at North Star Variety in New Sweden and it tipped the scales at 325 lbs. The state archery record was 328! We submitted Al’s bear in to the record books and on September 19, Harry Vanderweide confirmed Al’s record crossbow sow.

Our week two hunters (Dad, Uncle David, Duane, and Jeff) suffered through a week of rain and wind. Uncle David shot at a bear, Jeff passed on one, and neither Dad nor Duane saw a bear but we all enjoyed each others company and the opportunity to hunt together again. Mom and Aunt Teri kept us well-fed all week. Duane will be back later in the month when he participates in his father Ron Webber’s cow hunt. My dad is Ron’s sub-permitee and will shoot Ron’s cow.

Week three hunters: Bob O’Connor, Al Gardner, Dave Mrocek, and Pat Dolan in to camp on the 12th. Alec Watson and his wife from Georgia are in for some fall fishing. They had good success catching brook trout and a few salmon. By week’s end we had a couple bears on the game pole, Dave has bloodied his eye with the scope when he fired his .358 (he loves that rifle!), and Al had collected many specimens of moles, voles, and mice. Al is curator of North American wildlife for the National Museum and Smithsonian. They all were characters and we shared many laughs and interesting stories. As always, they arrived as strangers but left a part of the Fish River Lodge Family.

Wayne and I worked our “real jobs” the 20th-24th. Russ and Carole Dyer, Russ’s sister and her husband joined us for a half-week of late-season brook trout and salmon fishing, then we got ready for our September moose hunters.