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