Legendary bear hounds Bellar’s Leroy
Bear Necessities
Picking a pup The Devil of it all st 2 023
Ain’t No hunt like a bear hunt
Legendary Bear Hounds Part 45
The bear hunting authority for 23 years
Jul y/A ugu
French Canadian Black B
Guided Through Grief
Carrying Heavy Burdens Into the Wilderness
July/August 2023 Volume 24 - Issue 4 Cover photo by Dan Towsley
By Dan Towsley
Guided Through Grief
By Trevor Hubbs
10
18
Fear
By Johnny Mack
Ain’t No Hunt Like a Bear Hunt
22
Use of Leashed Tracking Dogs
By Russ Murdock
Houdini
Stephen F. Fielder
28
By Dr. Jenn Ballard
The Devil of it All
Legendary Bear Hounds Part 50: Bellar’s Leroy
By Timothy D. Fowler
34
Black Bear Peppercorn Tenderloin
52
Picking a Pup
By Jana Waller
50
By TL Jones
Bear Necessities
Bear Hunting Magazine Trail Camera Contest Winner
Columns 46 Bowhunting Bears
Morning stretches before breakfast
48 Becoming a Bear Hunter
Win a Moultrie Mobile Camera!
by Bernie Barringer - Bear Guru by Douglas Boze - Bear Dude
50 Black Bear Biology
Submitted by: Robert Smith Idaho
by Dr. Jenn Ballard - Animal Doc
52 Western Bear Hunting by Jana Waller - Western Hunter
54 Bruin Desinations To enter, submit a unique trail camera photo to info@bear-hunting.com or post to our Facebook page: Bear Hunting Magazine
by Al Raychard - Bear Hunting Veteran
56 Sacred Pursuit by TL Jones - Hound Pro
58 In Hot Pursuit
by Barry ‘Bear’ Siragusa - Hound Dude
38
56
www.bear-hunting.com
Bear Hunting
5
Guided Through Grief
Carrying Heavy Burdens Into the Wilderness by Dan Towsley
10
Bear Hunting
@dtowsley
July/August 2023
Grieving the loss of his son, Scott takes his grief into the backcountry alongside Casey Lavere & Logan Butler from Hush.
www.bear-hunting.com
“We loaded our horses with hopes of packing out heavier than when we headed in. Emotions on our sleeves, we grew closer to the adventure of a lifetime, but this hunt was about more than harvesting a spring Wyoming black bear; we carried a heavy burden up into the wilderness,” recalled Scott Knap. Bear Hunting
11
Ain’t No Hunt Like a Bear Hunt @soulseekersnation
By Johnny Mack
22
Bear Hunting
-Mentorship is Conservation-
July/August 2023
There are very few hunts in this life that challenge a man’s soul, grit, and determination quite like a backcountry bear hunt. With the mission of “Mentorship is Conservation” at the foundation of everything we do at Soul Seekers, it is always exciting and extremely refreshing to have adults who want to reinvent themselves and create a new legacy who reach out to us for support. It is even better when their lives are impacted enough for them to go full circle with sharing the mission themselves and passing on what they have learned, which in turn sharpens their own skills. Ultimately in the end, there is no better way to reach a level of mastery quite like teaching others what you know. In February of 2020, I received a direct message on our Instagram account from a guy that was interested in learning how to hunt. This message jumped out to me unlike other messages that we receive because a mutual friend forewarned me that this guy, who we later nicknamed “Iron Will,” would reach out at some point in time. Sure enough, he messaged at a www.bear-hunting.com
Bear Hunting
23
Legendary Bear Hounds: Part 50
Bellar’s Leroy Owner, Steve Fielder by Steve Fielder
@stephen.f.fielder
Owner, Brent Evitch
Evitch’s daughter, Autumn, and Leroy after a good hunt.
When I was hired to direct coonhound activities at
Ireland, and France. My task was to illustrate to those within the the world’s largest purebred dog registry, the American Kennel AKC Parent Club Committee that there were distinct differences between foxhounds and Walker Coonhounds, and I was ultiClub, I was assigned the responsibility of bringing all recogmately successful. Those obvious differences provide a gateway nized coonhound breeds—of which there were six at the time— into full recognition by the registry. Prior to my involvement only for our look this month at a legendary Walker Bear Hound and at his owner’s journey from coonhounds to foxhound crosses the American Black and Tan Coonhound, the old fashioned, with which to hunt, rather successfully as we will see, the North long-eared variety, was recognized. I faced many challenges in my seven years at AKC, but none more formidable than those American Black Bear. Brent Evitch, a 45-year-old lineman for Spectrum, the presented by the parent clubs for the Black and Tan and for tv cable and internet provider, has been at the job 27 years. the American Foxhound. The former feared a tsunami of field He’s also an avid outdoorsman that’s consumed by the hound type coonhounds overcoming the relatively few old-fashioned hunting lifestyle and has found great pleasure in leading hunts hounds in the registry’s files. The field type hounds used by in conjunction with the United Special Sportsman Alliance, hound hunters are more streamlined, shorter-eared, and more Inc. (USSA) organization. USSA specializes in sending critically fleet of foot than the AKC-type hounds. Judges in the conforill and disabled youth and disabled veterans on free outdoor mation show rings, however, have proven loyal to the original adventures of their dreams. Evitch has conducted more than type once the UKC dogs came in, dispelling the fears of the 50 such bear hunts with his hounds and prides himself in failing AKC faithful. only one time to fill the tag of his honored guest. He conducts Likewise, but for somewhat different reasons, the three or four such hunts a year. To quote from the organization’s American Foxhound group felt the Treeing Walker Coonhound to be essentially the same breed as theirs. Bringing UKC Treeing web page, “USSA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit ‘dream wish,’ granting charity that gives youths and veterans something to look forWalkers into AKC would, they believed, simply denigrate the ward to and to help sustain them in their time of need.” gene pool with non-typical dogs of the same breed. Granted, “I look at this way,” explains Evitch, “I’m not big into politics. I all coonhound breeds, other than the German Plott Hound, keep to myself. I’ve put my life into these dogs. Working with sprang from foxhound roots—dogs imported from England, 34
Bear Hunting
July/August 2023
them and with USSA is what I do. My fiancé knows that when the training season opens on July 1st for three months, we won’t go anywhere. If I’m not working, I’m running dogs.” Evitch began hound hunting when he was 15-years-old on coon hunts with his friends. He lives in Birchwood, about an hour north of Eau Clare, Wisconsin, and an equal distance south of Minong where I have personally hunted bears with hounds. “I went one time and I was hooked,” he recalls. “Friends from Indiana were up here hunting and they lost their dog. After they returned home, the dog was found. They drove back up to get the dog and my parents, realizing how much I had enjoyed it, leaned on them and bought the dog for me. He was a Treeing Walker named Smoke and was a silent trailer, but he was hard on coon. I killed more than 100 of them, some in the 30-pound range, when coon prices were pretty decent.” Evitch continued his coon hunting exploits for five or six years and bought dogs of other breeds, including some Blueticks from legendary Dave Dean of Michigan. “I drove all over the place getting dogs,” he said. “I sat in Dave Dean’s cabin a couple of times and I went to Del Cameron’s in Montana. One of the best dogs I have owned came from Dave. I was trying to coon hunt him and couldn’t get him off a bear.” Little did Evitch know that he was about to become a bear hunter. “I got the Leroy dog from my good friend, Kyle Small, who sold me the first hound, from Bancove, Indiana in the north central part of the state,” Evitch begins. “Kyle was
running him a little bit. I was always trying to buy something. He had a nice young dog that had potential and I ended up getting the dog from him. The Pac Man-bred dogs from renowned coon hunter, Russ Bellar, in Peru, Indiana worked well for him. I got him and he was treeing some coon but not lighting the woods on fire. I had a friend that I hunted with and I told him about Leroy. He said, ‘You should make a bear dog out of him.’ So, I started him on bears, thinking that in coon hunting I was staying up all night but I could try him on bears in the daytime. I was just going to start him on bears and sell him because I had no intention of being a bear hunter.” “I was hunting with a guy and we had become good friends,” Evitch continued. “His name was George Hrdlicka and he has since passed. He had a handful of baits set out and we went out and refreshed the baits. One of the baits was tipped over, a fresh hit. George had a few older dogs. We dumped them on it and the dogs ended up making a loop and they came across a dirt road. He put a young dog in and I put Leroy in. They raced a couple of miles. Leroy stuck with them and was in there treeing with them. It was during the July training season and that was his first tree (and mine). We were able to get within 500600 yards of the dogs on a road. It was nice to walk into the dogs without a light or stumbling through the brush.” This Leroy dog, whose registration papers bore the name Bellar’s Leroy, was a blanket back, red-headed hound with the kind of “tight feet” houndsmen want for good looks and top performance. He weighed approximately 50-60 pounds, about average for a hound of his breeding. When on the trail of a bear, Brent Evitch with Bellar’s Leroy and a large bear that was pursued from an early morning cold trail to a mid-afternoon walking fight.
www.bear-hunting.com
Bear Hunting
35