BIG BEAR! No one is scaring him off of that bait That is a normal sized milk crate! 300-400lb bear looking at you! My preferred bear: one that comes out during the daylight My shooter. He came out at 6pm. I would gladly shoot him and be...
Lance and Lorri putting some bait into an empty bucket The good smelling bait... mmm strawberry I was sure that beaver was the grossest smell ever, but I was so wrong. It is easily rotten lobster bodies - the kind that are put into black trash bags and left out in the sun and forgotten about. I dont think any of us didn't gag, hold our breathe or pull our shirts up over our noses in an attempt to stop the smell from penetrating into our nostrils. We added it to one of the beaver carcases and for the first time, I really had to question a black bear's eating preferences. Of course, there is also the 'good' smelling bait that looks like it could be a bunch of $7 granola bars from Whole Foods dumped together and mixed...
Here they come! Site 1 and 2 now have bears coming in. Steve said that they are very good looking bears and healthy, too. These are from the trail camera memory chip that Steve puts into his camera. He then takes these photos, of the camera screen, with his phone. Don't worry - in a few weeks there will be a photo of the real thing 😉 ...
Dad has been gathering and rotating the camera memory cards for about a month now hoping to get a picture of something we like. There are a group of does hanging around which we think are the same group that has been there for the past three of four years. We kept telling ourselves that 'where there are does, there are buck' but it's just not the same. Finally! We saw what we were looking for. Just two pictures but this one is good enough to get us ready to take to the woods. Bring on deer season! I called tibs on this guy! A nice eight-pointer walking...
Steve went back out to the sites four days after we had and there were pictures at site 2. Not the best pictures but there are bears around and coming in! We have a couple more weeks until the hunting season starts and then it runs for 14 weeks. I'm trying to work my schedule to get out and help bait one more time before I head into the woods on the last week of August to try my hand at bear...
On left, unopened sweets. On right, the goodies ready to be put out. I was lucky that it was only 73 degrees out! I would have melted after we headed to the first bait site. I carried buckets filled with bait and some secret ingredients to keep the bears coming back again and again. While I was glad to not be carrying the bucket with the cut up dead beaver, I was reminded of my position down wind of it after every few steps. Making a bait barrel While I support bear hunting as it is now in Maine, I did not know a lot about it and felt that if I was going to support this fight, I should know what I was talking about. So, I told Steve that I would try everything, including preparing bait buckets. If...
Copyright Darrold Door. Picture found at: http://www.maine.gov/ifw/hunting_trapping/hunting/bear.htm Bear hunting. Just those two words can bring out some very strong emotion amongst hunters and non-hunters. I would tell you to vote NO on1 and I could give you a long list of reasons why but if you are reading this, chances are I am preaching to the choir when it comes to understanding why hunting is necessary to keep animal populations healthy. I have never gone bear hunting. I have really never had an interest. My friend Robin is an incredible outdoor woman who has been bear hunting for the past three years. I have been OK living vicariously through her with the hopes of trading my unwavering support for bear meat,...
My Sky Condo A recent piece in "Trout" by Tom Reed talked about place and what it means to have that one place where you can retreat to and forget all of your worries. It got me thinking about my place. Tom writes, "it is your place. We all have them. Places of heart home, places where we feel centered and right in the world... At that moment when you were there, you were all there." When I was little, I would sit by the stream heading out from the pond behind our house. I could sit and just listen to the birds, the stream gurgle over the rocks and watch the clouds bounce across the blue sky. It was peaceful and calming. When I hunt now, I can zen out pretty well. It may take me a week to get comfortable but after that, my 5-6 hour...
The following is an article that will be published in the Northwoods Sporting Journal in the August issue. Women are on the move! We are taking over the woods, fields and waterways to hunt, hike and fish. And we are doing it more often than men. An article posted in June on Ammoland’sShooting Sporting News, states that “the most recent U.S Census found that there are 13.7 million hunters in the Nation – 11 percent of them are women.” Slowing but consistently, women are picking up guns and rods and heading outside. We are getting into hunting and fishing and taking it seriously; it is becoming more than just a seasonal hobby for most women. According to a 2013 Nation Shooting Sports Foundation...