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John's Journal...
Entry
127, Day 3
CANADIAN BLACK BEARS
The Persistent Bear
EDITOR'S
NOTE: Ryan Hack of Stony Mountain, Manitoba,
Canada, guides for white-tailed deer and black bear for both archers and
gun hunters each season. Yesterday we learned about Hack's guiding adventure
with two fathers and their sons for black bear. After trying to get the
other bear to move more than 40-yards away from his party of hunters,
here's what happened.
QUESTION: Did you try to get close enough to the bear
to spray him again?
ANSWER: Yes. I could get within 20 yards of him, but at the same time
I couldn't scare him off the site. He had only strayed about 40 yards
from the original spray site. I intended to spray the bear a second time,
but I could never get that close again. We resumed skinning the dead bear
while the other bear stayed within that 40-yard distance. After we finished
skinning the bear, we carried the original carcass back to the bait site,
which was about 600 yards away. We dumped the carcass there with the rest
of the bait. The second bear, we'll call it Ken Broman's (one of my hunters)
bear, followed us as though it were a dog waiting for its food. The bear
trotted right behind us, following us all the way down the trail back
to the bait site. After we dropped the carcass, Ken Broman's bear was
on it almost immediately. We were still within 25 yards of the bait site,
and that bear was feeding on the other bear's carcass already.
QUESTION: What did you do with the trophy bear's head
and all that?
ANSWER: We carried that out.
QUESTION:
So you packed the head first and then came back to retrieve the carcass?
ANSWER: No. There were four of us there. So, after giving the pepper spray
cylinder to Matthew, Ken Broman and I proceeded to carry the carcass while
Doug Otte carried out the hide and the head. We carried everything out
in one trip because we didn't want to risk going back in there with the
bear. At least we were able to use the carcass to lure the bear back to
the original site, which was equipped with a tree stand and everything
else. The shock of the whole situation didn't really hit us until we got
back to our boats (it was a lake system that we were hunting), which was
about an hour or so after the encounter. We composed ourselves and went
back for breakfast that morning. When we returned to the bait site later
that day, Ken Broman's bear was still feeding on the carcass. We proceeded
to walk in, hoping to harvest the bear from the ground. However, we couldn't
get within the 20 yards that Ken needed to make the shot, so he went ahead
and climbed up into the tree stand.
QUESTION: Did the bear back off when you and Ken came
in to the site?
ANSWER: He retreated back into the undergrowth to take cover, but he never
totally left. Ken said that within 10 minutes of my dropping him off,
the bear came back out to the carcass. He then was able to harvest it
with his bow. The bear ended up between 11 and 13 years old and weighed
about 350 pounds. He was a boar, which was strange because normally two
boars wouldn't be traveling together like that. It makes me wonder why
that bear wanted that carcass so badly.
For
more information about hunting deer or bear in Manitoba, call Ryan Hack
at (204)-467-2164.
TOMORROW: SAVED BY PEPPER SPRAY
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