Bear 2003

The area had been hunted very hard in recent years and we were only allowed to hunt over our assigned bait site.
This was a situation that I found totally unacceptable. But there was nothing I could do about it once  I was there.
 

My first outfitted bear hunt was in Québec, in a very large logging corporation timber grant through which there was no access other than with the authorized outfitter.
After leaving the public dirt road, travel was another 15 miles into the camp on company road.

Camp here was a small company-owned retreat on a large lake.
We fished during the day, then went out late afternoon to the various bait sites.

Only one bear had been visiting the bait site all week.
On the last night I shot him, only so as not to go home with an unfilled tag.
 

My next outfitted bear hunt, in 2004, was in northern Alberta. Camp here was a ways off the beaten track.

We were put up in tents with small wood stoves for heat, which the cook always had going when we returned at night..
 

The Cook Shack was the center of activity during the day.
That’s where we killed time while waiting to go out later in the afternoon.
 

We used both trucks and four wheelers to get around to the various bait sites.

The fire lanes and survey lines normally would have been good traveling, but most were flooded now, making just getting to the bait site an experience in itself.
 

On one site, I had 2 one- year-old cubs climb up to my tree stand. One kept trying to climb around me;  I had to hold him back with my foot and then push him back down.

The other cub ran into the bottom of the tree stand and climbed back down. That is, he climbed back down after the sow, who was right behind him, climbed back down.

Guess you’ll have to take my word that it was kind of exciting there for awhile.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a movie camera  and my still camera batteries soon went dead (with my spare batteries back in camp).