2024 - Issue 2 - March/April

French Canadian Black B Good Friday

Hunting in BC

Bear University

The Science of Aging Bears

Legendary Bear Hound Part 54 | Hatchet

The bear hunting authority for 24 years

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202 4

Full Circle Arizona Success

Legendary Bear Hounds Part 45

Cooking Bear Medium Rare

Tennessee Monster!

Buddies, Bears, & Treeing Walkers

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Bear Hunting

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Mar/Apr 2024 Volume 25 - Issue 2 Cover photo by Paul Bruner

By Josh Kirchner

Full Circle

By Brett Benton

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Eating Black Bear Medium Rare

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By Matt Geiger

Bear University!

20

Use of Leashed Tracking Dogs

By Paul Bruner

A True Tennessee Monster!

By Bernie Barringer

24

By Steve Fielder Legendary Bear Hound: Part 54 - Hatchet

Is Bigger Actually Better?

By Kevin Bustard

28

Good Friday

38

Age is Just a Number | Aging Black Bears

By Timothy D. Fowler

34

Baked Bear Steak

By Dr. Jenn Ballard

Columns 46 Bowhunting Bears

Bear Hunting Magazine Trail Camera Contest Winner Win a Moultrie Mobile Camera!

by Bernie Barringer - Bear Professor

Who Ordered the Buffet

48 Blood, Sweat, & Bears

-North Carolina-

by Douglas Boze - Bear Dude

50 Black Bear Biology

by Dr. Jenn Ballard - Animal Doc

52 Western Bear Hunting

by Jana Waller - Western Hunter

54 Bruin Desinations

by Al Raychard - Bear Hunting Veteran

Submitted by: Doug Temple

To enter, submit a unique trail camera photo to info@bear-hunting.com or post to our Facebook page: Bear Hunting Magazine

56 Sacred Pursuit

by TL Jones - Hound Pro

58 In Hot Pursuit

by Barry ‘Bear’ Siragusa - Hound Dude

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Bear Hunting

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Bear Grease The Editor’s Note Kolby Morehead

@kolby_morehead

It’s time for the spring to grace us with the promise of another year of rewarding memories in the great outdoors. For some it’s almost time to get after some spring bears and for many it’s time to chase some gobblers. Whatever your pursuit is, we wish you the best of luck! Make sure and tag @bearhuntingmag on Instagram with whatever success you find!

Speaking of tagging on Instagram, we’re doing a fun new thing with Double U Hunting Supply (See images to the right).

Share pictures of your hunting dogs on Instagram or Facebook and tag @DuSupply and use #DuSupply on it for an opportunity for your hound to be shared in the magazine. You can see the inaugural one on page 60.

We also want to share some exciting news. We’re starting a new podcast..... well HUNTCAST! The Bear Hunting Magazine Huntcast will be launching March 2024. We’re going to dive deeper into the stories, tactics, gear, etc... that you read about in this magazine. We’ll be reaching out to some of our favorite articles over the years. We’ll dive into other interesting topics along the way. Your sure to know the first guest, Clay Newcomb will make a return for the inaugural episode.

SUPPLY For me, this year is turning HUNTING out to be one of unplanned adventures. I got a call yesterday out of the blue about an opportunity to go on a conservation goose hunt and I leave this afternoon thanks to my supportive wife. By now I would typically have a few hunting trips lined out but I’m focusing on hunting close to home and being open to spontaneous adventures. It should keep things exciting.

Recently, we had a post on Instagram regarding bear meat and one of the responses we got was that bear meat can’t be the best because you can’t cook a slab of meat medium-rare.

Low and behold we have a great article in this issue about how to eat bear meat medium-rare. We can’t wait to try it ourselves with our own sous vide. It’s becoming a must have tool for a bear hunter. It’s become one of our favorite tools for cleaning bear skulls too.

As always, we wish you success in your pursuits this year. #GuardTheGate.

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Bear Hunting

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Full Circle October Black Bears in AZ

by Josh Kirchner

8

Bear Hunting

@dialedinhunter

Mar/Apr 2024

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting

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The author uses his OnX Hunt app to scout his hunting area.

After experiencing a roller coaster of events during

summer and fall bear hunting season last year, I sat on a rocky outcropping in early October reflecting on it all. There was no shortage of humid nights spent in the tent throughout the previous August and a healthy shortage of bear sightings. The period at the end was a wounded bear with a fruitless blood trail. I had almost quit bear hunting that year.

In just a few short minutes on that rocky outcropping, everything changed and a great jet-black boar sauntered out beneath me for a drink. I shot that bear.

Not only was he my first bear, but he led me to my first ever article getting published. It was right in this magazine, and that also changed the course of my life.

Ten years later, I sat on that same outcropping soaking in the pool of nostalgia that surrounded me. My memories of this area were rich; it’s essentially where I became a bear hunter. With that said, spots change. Only time would tell if the bears still favored it as much as I did. Regardless, I was just glad to be sitting in that place again.

Scouting 10

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Back in March 2023, I decided to hike my way to a spot deep inside a wilderness area I had been eyeing for years—it screamed bears to me. My hope was not to necessarily find bears, but to really try and nail down a fall food source in order to hunt them the coming October. This is paramount for scouting because you want to hunt them where they are going to be.

After crushing a 16-mile day, things were looking great. A main food source during the month of October is acorns. The ridges that surrounded my camp were loaded with oaks and old acorn shells from previous seasons. They had to be in here. The variable in the equation would be if the oaks actually fruited or not this year. Some years, acorn crops are thick and others they are almost nonexistent. And while there was plenty of water along my hike, that would be another variable. It was a long way between March and October, and during many years these water sources dry up.

Backcountry Bust: Opening Day Even though there were a few pretty hardline variables at play, you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face heading into the backcountry the day before the opener. I had been thinking about this hunt literally all year long and it was finally here. My plan was to get to camp earlier in the day and I’d be met by a friend there after dark.

It was incredibly hot outside and after five miles of hiking, I came across zero water. This was concerning and it made me wonder what the food looked like back where we were planning to hunt. Bear hunting is all about finding the right food source. If it’s not there, the bears won’t be either. Also, a fella has to drink and things Mar/Apr 2024

The author used his tent to block the harsh rays of sun. That evening, he glassed looking for bears.

weren’t looking good.

After getting camp set up, I honestly spent most of the day sheltered under a tarp trying to escape the unforgiving rays of the sun.

This spot is a burn area from many years back, so there is almost no tree canopy for natural shade.

It gets brutal fast. Thoughts of bears stomping their way through the basin behind me fueled my enthusiasm, despite the sweat on my brow.

Unfortunately, that evening did not end with any bear sightings. I couldn’t believe it and was questioning if we’d be leaving the area sooner than later. My buddy Brian worked his way into camp after dark, but I didn’t want to inform him of my concerns just yet. We’d give it until the morning, and if no bears were seen, then I’d lay it on him.

No matter the scenario, opening day is always something to look forward to. It’s a hunter’s Christmas morning, if you will. Finally, we got to take to the field and bask in the passion we hold so dear. We enjoyed the cool air that the night brought and sipped hot coffee behind our optics. Through every nook and cranny our eyes peered, we saw nothing: no bears and no food either. It was time to break the news to Brian.

Luckily, Brian is a logical thinker and didn’t comwww.bear-hunting.com

The author breaks the news the second morning to friend, Mark, that there’s no bear sign in this area.

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The author and his friend get their base camp setup in a new area.

plain a bit, even after busting his butt to get there through the darkness of the night. We didn’t waste any more time, loaded Second Bear Sighting A few minutes after that young boar disappeared, up, and made our way back to the trucks.

I noticed a black dot about 800 yards out. This was no small bear. It was a giant jet-black boar making his way down into Now We’re Talkin’! the canyon we were hunting. I hoped that he would make his A few hours later and a carne asada burrito deep, way over to the water beneath us. If not, this was a bear we we arrived at our new bear camp. Well for me, it was old. I could try and set up on later in the day. At that moment, I had had spent the better part of the last ten years hunting bears here. It’s a special spot that I don’t take many folks to willing- an idea. ly, and right before dark it was confirmed why. Acorns were everywhere and we found a big pile of bear scat not 300 Third Bear Sighting yards from our camp.

With two boars in front of us offering no shots at the “Now, we’re talkin’,” I said. Sleep came real easy moment, I decided to pull out a diaphragm turkey call I still had that night because I had a great feeling about what was in my bino harness from the springtime. A few dying screams going to happen the following day. through this couldn’t hurt and might pull one of these bears out Waking up the next morning felt like opening day, part two. We made coffee and breakfast via tailgate and reminisced about the hunt to come. It was cooler here too and felt nice to not be baking in the heat as we hiked to our glassing spot. It took about an hour from our camp and we used our headlamps to navigate our way there before the sun came up.

I have made this hike an incalculable amount of times. No matter how much I do it, though, I can’t help but get excited. Brian had no idea what he was in for as we crept our way down to the rocky outcropping where I’ve probably shed just as many tears as I have sweat in the past. I informed him to be extremely quiet upon our arrival—the bears could literally be right below us. Slowly, we put our backpacks down and set up our rifles. Not ten minutes into our sit, my camera guy said, “Hey, hey, hey, hey.” I knew what that meant.

First Bear Sighting Down below us, as if he was trying to prove me right, a bear lurked through the oaks. It was a younger jet-black boar 180 yards away. We watched as he fed on acorns and made his way down to a pool of water for a swim. I had him in my crosshairs and debated pulling the trigger. After all, it had only been 10 minutes. He then worked his way into another oak thicket and decided for me.

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Bear Hunting

The author used a diaphram call left in his chest harness from turkey season to call the bear.

Mar/Apr 2024

The shot was sent, the bullet hit its mark and the author got his bruin!

It’s time to pack out heavy.

That’s some premium grade, free range protein!

of their hiding places and closer to us. So, I began to sing a song of suffering hoping to entice the bear’s stomach. Then, I heard a rock roll to my left.

A few minutes later, a cinnamon bear appeared out of nowhere down below about 180 yards away. He was standing pretty much in the same footsteps as the first bear we saw, feeding off of the same oak tree. However, this bear was much larger and I immediately grabbed my rifle.

Resting my rifle on the rock in front of me is something I have done numerous times. It felt like riding a bike.

And watching my crosshairs rest on the bear’s vitals was like watching a movie of my past. My shot rang through the canyon. Again, a sound I was all too familiar with. At that, the bear ran a path into an oak thicket that owned a piece of my heart.

Full Circle Making our way through the canyon bottom, I tried to fight the tears and did a good job until we arrived at the oak thicket. I could see the bear lying motionless, and he was not ten yards from where my first bear ever died ten years beforehand. I admired every aspect of the bear, from his www.bear-hunting.com

hefty paws to the beautiful coat he wore. There was no shortage of scars on his face either. He had seen his fair share of battles and likely won many of them. A warrior had fallen, and I wore my gratitude on my sleeve.

As we worked on the bear, I got to show Brian the whole process—something that I didn’t have the foggiest idea of ten years ago working on my first bear in that very oak thicket.

That was another reward for me here. Brian is a new bear hunter, so showing him the ropes brought a smile to my face as did the pack out to follow. It was a route that I knew by heart: every turn, every tree, every game trail.

For the next five days, we’d try to get Brian his first bear. Mother Nature had other plans, though, and decided he wasn’t ready yet. The weather shifted and we only saw one more bear the entire trip with no shot opportunity. “That’s ok,” I told him. “You can’t just waltz in here and shoot a bear. You’ve gotta suffer a little bit like I did all those years ago.” He smiled and knew it was true. It was a full circle hunt for me. From the spot to the bear to bringing Brian along the way, it was perfect. Not to mention getting to write this article in Bear Hunting Magazine where it all started for me. Just like my enthusiasm for opening day, you can’t wipe the smile off of my face as a result.

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Eating Bear Medium Rare

by Brett Benton @brettbenton_

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Bear Hunting

Addressing Trichinosis with a Sous Vide

Photos By: Henry Hawkins | @directorhidef

Mar/Apr 2024

W

hile the bison is widely recognized as the iconic American animal, I feel that Ursus americanus deserves more credit for its part in laying the groundwork for early exploration and settlement into the United States. Even the name says it all! Black bears have long been a key component in American history. Along with bison, they were a staple first in the everyday life of many native cultures before Europeans later arrived and similarly hunted bears for all they had to offer. Their hides are tough and durable, their thick fur provided warmth through hard winters, their fat was used for leather goods, candles, soap, and more, and—no differently than why many of us hunt them today—they are a plentiful and sustainable food source.

We have come a long way since those days of old.

Yet with information more readily available than ever before, bears are still subject to the “word of mouth” that surrounds them. It is not uncommon to hear folks strongly voice their opinions about how you shouldn’t or why they don’t eat bear.

This is a folkloric concept that bewilders me. How can an animal, once so highly valued for their delicious and nutritionally dense meat, now be considered not worthy of taking by so many within the hunting community?

It seems there are two primary misconceptions when it comes to eating bear today. The first being that bears are no good to eat, usually described with more expressive language akin to “nasty”, “disgusting”, or my least favorite, “inedible”. If I am being truthful, I almost find statements like these offensive. Nevertheless, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, which are usually based on personal experience. I have personally been eating bear year-round for nearly four years now and have never once had a single piece of bear meat that was off-putting. A major factor to consider is that bears are what they eat, and I think it’s safe to say that a bear from Northwest Montana that has been grazing on spring grasses, summer grubs, and fall riparian berries will probably taste better than their coastal Alaskan, salmon-eating relatives or their urban, trash-eating counterparts found all over the U.S. It is also worth mentioning that a hunter’s due diligence (or lack thereof) when field dressing and processing can ultimately make the biggest difference in the quality of meat. Bears run hot because of their higher fat density and thick fur, and for the same reasons that our forefathers chose these hides for warmth, one should do everything in their power to get their bears cooled off as soon as possible when harvested.

Mainly I feel that there is a widespread lack of experience and education when it comes to eating bears.

Now, thanks to people like Clay Newcomb, in recent years the hunting and eating of bears has seen a rise in popularity and, at the very least, curiosity. I believe our culture wants to reconnect with the old ways like raising or hunting your own food and partaking in activities like rendering bear fat for cooking and making common household items. As a matter of fact, my curiosity about bear fat was a driving factor in why I learned to hunt them in the first place.

This does lead me to the second most common misconception about eating what should be considered a modern-day delicacy: that you must cook bear meat to 160°F before eating it. This is complicated, because it is somewhat true, although not entirely. I’ll start with addressing why this has been standard policy when it comes to eating bears. As we all know, our furry friends are carriers of the trichinella parasite. Trichinella is a roundworm that can cause a horribly excruciating illness called trichinosis, with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, muscle weakness and joint pain, face swelling, and more. As if this wasn’t bad enough, some of these symptoms may not show up until weeks later and can last up to months or even years. Basically, trichinosis is caused by eating undercooked meat that have trichinella www.bear-hunting.com

larvae embedded in the muscle tissue of the animal, and when ingested the larvae are emancipated by stomach acid, travel to the intestine, and eventually reproduce.

Then, more larvae enter the bloodstream and travel to their final destination: the muscle tissue of the host. They are a nasty little parasite. While it used to be found in domestic pork, nowadays it is mainly found in carnivores like mountain lions and wolves, with bears being the most common culprit for reported cases of trichinosis in the United States today.

So why on God’s green earth would anyone want to experience that? It seems far-fetched that someone would read about something so cringeworthy and be willing to take that risk, and for most people I think the idea of it is farfetched. It was for me too, but I’d be lying if I said I never thought about eating medium rare bear.

I hold steadfast in my opinion that bear is worth so much more than the grind pile. I do love bear sausage, but in doing our own processing over the years my wife and I have made bear ham, used necks and shanks for roasts, taken whole shoulders for smoking bear “butts”, smoked bear ribs, and a lot more. Almost all of my bears have been harvested in the fall and, as previously mentioned, their fat is incredibly useful. We use it for baking, searing steaks, cooking eggs, grinding our meat with bear fat instead of pork, and the list goes on. While much leaner than beef or pork, the added fat marbling in the meat of fall bears makes the meat almost like a more robustly flavored beef, and I’ve found that you can substitute bear in almost any dish made with domestic animals.

Yet with as many ways as we have eaten bear, I knew I would never be satisfied eating well-done bear steak. Aside from backstraps and tenderloins, I refused to process bear steaks like I would deer or elk. This bothered me, but the risk of trichinosis outweighed the benefit of truly tasting bear for what it is; at least it did until a few years ago when my brother approached me with the idea of cooking bear steak via sous vide.

“What the heck is a sous vide? Absolutely not,” I initially told him. But out of respect for his intelligence and culinary background, I at least let him make his case. He explained to me that the method of sous vide involves vacuum sealing food that is then placed in a water bath with a machine that precisely regulates the water temperature for extended periods of time. I still didn’t understand what he was getting at until he mentioned the most important piece of information: ‘The FSIS Compliance Guideline for the Prevention and Control of Trichinella and Other Parasitic Hazards in Pork Products’. In 2018, the USDA directed the Food Safety and Inspection Service to publish an updated guideline concerning tested temperatures for effectively eliminating trichinella in pork. He then directed me to the temperature chart in the guideline: at 144°F trichinella is eliminated instantly, at 142°F it’s one minute, at 138° it’s two minutes, at 134°F it’s six minutes, at 130°F it’s 30 minutes, and so forth.

Then it clicked. It was like the lightbulb had finally turned on and in that exact moment, I felt like we were two scientists on their way to discovery. He was proposing using the precise temperature regulation of sous vide to accurately sustain the proper temperatures of getting rid of trichinella. His proposal was backed with real scientific testing, and although the idea of it was theoretical, it did make sense.

While I could not hide my excitement at the possibility of eating Bear Hunting

15

Season Seal

What is a Sous Vide?

Sous vide (soo-veed) does sound complicated but it’s a really simple cooking tool for consistent outcomes in the kitchen. Sous vide is french for ‘under vacuum’.

It is the method of vacuum sealing your food in a airtight bag and putting your food in an extended hot water bath.

Why Use a Sous Vide?

The benefit of using a sous vide with meat is that you can get your preferred, perfect center every time. Simply fill a container with water, put your vacuum sealed food in the water, and set the sous vide to the temperature you want the center of the meat at and leave the meat in the water bath until it is that temperature throughout the cut of meat.

Once you pull the meat out, it is already cooked and all that is left is to sear it on a hot pan. This method gives you a very juicy piece of meat and takes any guess work or the need to use a meat thermometer while your meat is in the skillet.

sous vide 16

Bear Hunting

Mar/Apr 2024

Sear Let it rest

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting

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slice & serve bear cooked less than well-done, I was still skeptical of such a crazy idea. I started firing off questions like “how accurate is it? What temperature would we try? Is the parasite different in bears? Who pays the medical bills?” We continued to discuss and research over the next few days, and at the end of the week I grabbed some tenderloin from a recent bear and made the three-hour drive to his house. When I arrived, there was excitement with an underlying nervousness in the whole matter. We decided to set his sous vide at 144°F, let it cook for five hours to be safe, and agreed that this was an experiment that our wives would not be participating in.

If successful it would be a game changer, but if not then we were potentially due for months of illness. Around the five hour mark, we took the tenderloin out, took the temperature of the meat, seared it in bear fat, sliced it, and tried our first bite of medium rare bear steak.

It was game changing. Words cannot accurately describe how glorious it was to truly taste bear for what it is: the slight sweetness of huckleberry, the juiciness of marbled fall fat, the tenderness. It is something I will never forget. I tell folks it will change your life when you try it this way, and I say so because it truly changed mine. In our household, we eat bear steak cooked around 140°F or so nowadays, probably once a week. We process not only backstrap and tenderloin, but now we take the hindquarters and cut sirloin steaks, eye of round, bottom round, and the like. We cut flank and skirt steak as well. Eating primarily fall bears, I leave a thin fat cap on as much of our steaks as I can for flavor and a texture more like beef. The opportunities that using a sous vide has opened for us has truly enhanced our culinary fare and I promise you, I could never go back. I have seen the light.

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Bear Hunting

I do want to clarify that there is a method to this madness, and the details here matter. I would recommend letting the meat thaw out before it goes into the sous vide, and I would also not put the vacuum sealed package into the water bath until the water has reached the set temperature.

Still-frozen meat and cooking before the water has reached temperature will result in less accurate cook times, particularly if you want the end product cooked at less than 144°F. Also, it is imperative that you use a meat thermometer and check multiple parts of the meat before searing and serving.

I cannot stress this enough! We check the temperature of our bear steaks every single time without exception. Lastly, give it time. The FSIS chart is based on not only temperature, but temperatures sustained for certain amounts of time. The only way to be confident that the meat has been sustained at the desired temperature for the appropriate time needed is to just let it be for as long as you can. The plus side of this is that the longer a cut of meat is in the sous vide, the more tender it gets.

While we have been eating bear this way for years now, I strongly advise proceeding with caution and in doing so, remember that you are taking your own risks. I am no food safety expert, but we always make sure we are leaving as little room for error as possible and have enjoyed medium rare bear for years without incident. Bears are fascinating creatures, and I truly feel they deserve to be valued in the same way as deer, elk, and any other big game are. When processed and prepared as such, the diversity they can provide in the kitchen is absolutely rewarding. My hope is that we as hunters will revisit the value once placed on them and when we do, we can all reap the benefits.

Mar/Apr 2024

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Bear University A Wisconsin Bait Story

by Matt Geiger Fifty hours is a long time to sit in motionless silence, longer than the most devout monks’ meditation sessions and longer than it would take to circumnavigate our planet in an airplane. There have been entire countries that rose and fell in less time. And that’s how long I spent this autumn, perched in a tree stand, staring at a pile of bait in Wisconsin’s 68,000acre Black River State Forest, thinking about bears. Spread out over the course of a week, I sat and waited, watching the hours creep by.

I tried not to move my feet or my head. I tried not to blink. I fought the terrible compulsion to check my phone every few minutes. I tried not to scratch the various itches that sprang up out of nowhere the moment I climbed into the stand each day.

Most non-hunters assume the pursuit of big game is a rollicking, action-packed adventure. But my first bear hunt was more of a spiritual journey than a physical one. I experienced various crises of faith, eventually deciding that I believed devoutly in God, to whom I immediately prayed for a bear to saunter into the clearing in front of me. The all-powerful deity instead chose to send me 500 heavy-footed squirrels, each of which made my heart thud in my chest, only to fall with disappointment.

I lived in a remote old farmhouse during much of my trip. Each night, I would go to sleep discouraged, rereading Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing as I drifted off to sleep. I would wake up with my well of hope ever-so-slightly replenished by some trick of the night.

“Today’s the day!” I said to my fellow hunters as I ventured into the woods again. I was correct. Each day was “the day”: the day I didn’t see any of the state’s 24,000 black bears, the day my legs fell asleep, the day I almost died trying to hold in a sneeze, and then the day I flirted with madness. And each day I sat and thought about bears, chewing on the countless facts and stories I had consumed about them over the course of the prior six months like some kind of hunting ruminant, gnawing on the cud of all the information I had gathered as I prepared for my trip. I thought about the way they move, the way they think, the way they experience the world.

I applied for my first bear tag on a whim while buying my annual deer licenses. I figured it would take a few years of preference points to draw a tag—it can take a full decade in some parts of the state—and was pleasantly surprised to receive a bright orange card from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources 20

Bear Hunting

While preparing for his first bear hunt, the author came across the Ainu people from northern Japan in his studies.

Mar/Apr 2024

This is an Asiatic black bear. The Ainu people hunted these bears along with the Ussuri brown

The Ainu People of Northern Japan During the author’s research he came across the Ainu, an indigenous people native to the northern islands of Japan.

The Ainu’s lives were centered around bears. Bear’s were so important to them that bears are a part of their religion.

Bear Hunting The Ainu people traditionally hunted Ussuri brown bears and Asian black bears alongside many other critters and fish with arrows and spears with poison-coated points. They hunted in groups with dogs and set spring traps loaded with arrows.

They also would hunt bears in their dens.

Rituals

The Ainu practice arctolatry, or bear worship. While they have many rituals involving animals, the most shocking of rituals involves getting bear cubs out of the den and women raising the cub as her own child. They would hold a ritual called lomante every five to ten years and sacrifice the bear with ceremonial arrows. The act was outlawed in 1955 for animal cruelty yet became exempt in 2007 due to its cultural significance.

There was a dance in lomante that mimicked the movements of a living bear. The belief was that the bear would help care for them in death.

a few months later, informing me that I had earned the chance to go bear hunting that very fall. The only hitch was that I knew almost nothing about bears or how to harvest them.

I did the only thing you can do when you are completely clueless about a topic. I turned my attention to anyone and anything that might teach me, any guide that might help me inch closer to the summit of this mountain. I read every article about bear hunting I could find. I listened to podcasts about food sources.

I watched countless YouTube videos about shot placement, learning quickly that there are various passionate debates about whether or not you should aim for the middle of the middle or a spot a few inches back toward the front of the animal. I read The Ozark Journal of Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Gerstäcker, reliving his various accounts of market hunting with his dog, Beargrease, in 1841 and 1842, my jaw dropping as he chronicled one bear hunt in which an enraged bruin killed his human hunting companion and five of their best hounds. I reread William Faulkner’s The Bear, in which a group of men in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County pursue Old Ben, a legendary boar, year after year. Even my nine-year-old daughter walked down to the library and took out all the books about bears she could find, bringing them home to us to read together.

We ventured to zoos, where I gazed intently at the bears, trying to see through their heavy fat and fur and glean the exact situation of their vitals.

I also read everything I could find about the Ainu people, the bearded, tattooed indigenous people of Japan’s northern islands, who worshiped bears and practiced animism. Despite centuries of attempts

by Japan’s predominant culture and government to erase the Ainu and their history, they persist today in small numbers, offering glimpses into a culture that is 20,000 years old. In the Ainu faith, the world is filled with spiritual beings capable of helping or harming people and their pursuits. The most important religious ritual in Ainu culture involved the capture of a bear

The Ainu’s beliefs deeply involved bears and nature.

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting

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The author found a lot of bear sign in the area he was hunting.

cub that was then raised as a member of a human family and home practiced arctolatry, the worship of bears, just like the then ritually killed. The belief was that, because humans had Ainu. Sculptures and pictures of bears are placed promitaken in and cared for the bear in life, the bears would take nently across the landscape, from splashy water parks to the people in and care for them in death to return the favor. quaint lawns outside private homes. They are on coffee mugs In addition, I watched every video I could find about and bank signs. Stuffed bears gaze at you with ancient eyes rendering bear fat, asking my wife if we still had plenty of from the walls of local restaurants. mason jars in the pantry. I boasted that my cast iron skillets When baiting, I saw their signs everywhere. Every would soon be glimmering, my boots would be divinely water- tree oozed sap where their claws and teeth had plunged through the bark. I saw tracks and scat, and even smelled a proofed, and my baldness would be heartily cured.

I learned how incredibly rare black bear attacks on nearby bear while filling one bait site.

And then on the eve of the autumn hunting season, I made a humans are, but also gave significant thought to the fact that “rare” and “impossible” are not even remotely synonyms. fatal mistake, committing the worst sin a hunter can commit.

I was reminded of my favorite line from Bill Bryson’s A Walk in “I just hope it’s not too easy, you know?” I said to a friend as I packed up my gear, “I hope I don’t shoot a bear right the Woods, “Black bears rarely attack. But here's the thing: away. I want to spend some time in the woods and get the sometimes they do.” I also thought long and hard about the full, authentic bear hunting experience.” I can’t believe my old proverb, “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes hubris: the ridiculous, quixotic optimism that went into that the bear eats you.” statement.

I learned all about the laws and ethics of baiting I actually did have an authentic bear hunting expebears in my home state. I read with pleasure that the number of black bears here has essentially tripled in the last 15 years, rience. In fact, despite the surging population of bears here, and their range is slowly moving back southward. If you drive two of every three bear hunters each year do not fill their around the communities of central or northern Wisconsin, you tags. I never even saw one. All the other hunters I spoke with see bears depicted everywhere. When our present civilization blamed the acorns, which dropped from the trees at the exfalls and future beings dig through our rubble, they will unact start of the season, as if startled by the opening gunshot. doubtedly think the people who called this part of Wisconsin Or maybe I shifted my weight too much in the stand. Maybe I 22

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The author made a bait out of a stump.

checked my phone too often. Perhaps I didn’t apply enough cover scent or apply enough layers of unscented deodorant.

Maybe they were right there, and I somehow missed them.

Maybe that one sneeze was my undoing. Who knows?

When the season ended, a friend heard of my failure and offered the old cliché: “You don’t have to kill an animal for your hunt to be a success.”

I rolled my eyes. Killing a bear was the whole point, right?

But maybe the cliché does have some truth in it because the lack of a carcass does not mean I came away empty-handed. I have everything I learned over the course of six months of intensive study. I wouldn’t have done any of it had I not drawn that bear tag: not the reading, not the trips to the zoo, not the phone calls to various universities to ask questions about bear worship, and not the special moments with my young daughter reading about ursine behavior and taxonomy in Bears of the World for a midsummer bedtime story. Sure, I’m still balding, my boots still leak, and our mason jars will have to remain vessels for jams and jellies, for now.

I spent 50 hours in a stand, but far more time studying the animal I planned to hunt, which is the oldest and best way to get to know a fellow creature of this earth.

I’m not a bear expert, not yet, but I know a lot more about them than I did a year ago. I appreciate them more because of it, and I’m more aware of all we share with these animals.

And there is always next year, and the one after that. So, I’d better keep studying. The final exam is still to come.

I just hope it’s not too easy.

The author logged over 50 hours in a stand but never saw his target bear.

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting

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A True Tennessee Monster Buddies, Bears, & Treeing Walkers

by Paul Bruner

A couple of buddies and their walker hounds.

The morning of December 12th, 2023 started out like most normal days, but was far from what we had expected. We all woke up around 4:00 a.m. and sent our texts to each other to make sure everyone was awake and getting ready for the day. I went to Matt’s house to meet him and Austin. We let the dogs out of their kennels to run around and stretch out before their long day started. After everything was loaded and ready to go, we began our routine drive to a local diner, The Burger Hut, to eat breakfast.

As we were eating, we were producing a plan about where we were going to hunt and who was going to cover certain areas. We decided on a place we had success in last year but had not hunted yet this year. So after eating and collaring the hounds, we hit the road again towards the hunting area we had chosen for the day.

Once we arrived, the sun had started to come up and it was a cold 20-degree morning. We hit the mountain quickly to get moving around and warm up. We started up a ridge about half a mile and decided to drop off the side into the holler just because we had never tried finding a track there before. We made it about halfway down when the dogs started leaving our sides and prancing around with their heads up, smelling the wind. After a moment of checking the wind, our four hounds Karen, Cruze, Twitch, and Covid were gone and on the track followed by two of our pups Oz and Cash. The hounds only ran about 150 yards when they changed over and went to baying, and slowly walked up the creek. We knew by the way things were happening that they were probably on a good sized bear, but we had no idea what we were getting ready to see.

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We finished our climb down to the bottom of the holler and started closing in on the dogs.

As we were walking up the creek behind the hounds, we started to see this bear's tracks and knew instantly this was not your average bear. After seeing the tracks, we started in but, as any bear hunter knows, a big bear gets big by being smart and surviving. Matt got within 40 yards and the bear knew he was there. The bear then turned and started walking up a rock and laurel covered ridge.

Matt directed us to get up the creek as quickly as possible. He and another friend of ours, Wyche, were going to go to the top of the ridge to cut him off or push him down to us. At this point, none of us had been able to lay eyes on this bear due to the thick laurel and rock, but that was about to change.

When Matt and Wyche started from the top of the ridge down to this bear, he knew they were there, just like we had planned. The bear turned back to the creek where Austin and I were waiting. The hounds went from barking and baying to screaming again. I was watching the yardage drop on the Garmin and we knew he was coming. Things started to happen fast after this, so we got ready. With our guns raised, the sound of the hounds screaming and baying grew closer. We could

The group prefers using lever guns when hound hunting.

Mar/Apr 2024

start to see the laurel moving and swaying around. We then knew exactly where he was going to cross. Austin and I positioned ourselves to be able to get the shot.

When the bear finally stepped out, we could not believe what a mountain monster we were really looking at. Just as quickly as he stepped out and we saw him, he saw us. The bear turned to retreat back into the laurel, but the hounds knew we were there and what was about to happen.

The hounds tightened up on him, causing him to make his mistake. The bear went to turn and run at the hounds. As soon as the dogs spread apart and gave us a split second, we took our shots. Austin pulled the trigger and I quickly followed. We both put two 30–30 rounds behind his front shoulder. The two shots dropped the monster, but did not kill him. He rolled off a small hill into the creek, then slid down a small waterfall with the hounds all over him. Anyone that bear hunts knows this is a dangerous situation for the hounds. So just as quickly as he went over the hill, Austin and I pursued him.

We went off behind him and as he was fighting the dogs back, I sent the final round to end this hunt of a lifetime.

As we all regrouped and caught our breaths, we started to really look at this beast. We realized he was an absolute stud of a black bear for these eastern Tennessee mountains. We then got on the radio to call for our good friends and hunting partners James Babb, Ralph Lawson, and Johnny Webb to tell them what we had just harvested. They hiked into the mountain towards us with ropes and scales. The bear weighed in at 614.2 lbs. It www.bear-hunting.com

The scale speaks for itself! Wow!

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took all seven of us about six and a half hours to get the bear out. We had to take turns doing certain things since it was very tiring for everyone out there. And none of it would have been possible without the help of our friends.

We were beyond blessed to be able to harvest such a beautiful animal of that size and to accomplish it on the last day we could hunt for the year.

We would like to thank our friends Eddie Patterson and Michael Ewing at Notellum Outfitters in California. Without the great hounds they provide us with, hunts like this would not be possible. We would also like to thank Brian Puryear with Dynamics Taxidermy in Camp Creek Greenville, Tennessee for doing the full body mounting on this bear for us. Each year is a blessing for all of us being able to hunt and provide food for our families. We have an excellent group of men and women that all hunt together. We have people from other states that come in and hunt with us as well. Without support from all of them and all of us working together, it would make days like this hard. We are all grateful for the opportunities given to us in the mountains we call home.

Most importantly we are thankful for the hounds we have. It takes a lot of heart and soul to perform the way they do daily. They are the true athletes and warriors of this sport. We want to encourage any youth interested in hunting to keep a positive mindset. There will be hard days, but the work you put into this sport and lessons you learn will always pay off. You may be the one to catch the next 600-pound bear.

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Bear Hunting

A true giant! It took the whole group six and a half hours to get the bear out.

Mar/Apr 2024

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Bear Hunting

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Signs of success. Despite passing up a huge bear on the first day, the author is satisfied with his overall experience.

the wall tent I would be staying in. The leaves were just beginning to turn green and the ice had just gone out of most of the local Duck Mountain lakes within the past few days. Spring was in the air and nice weather greeted me as I climbed into the stand that first afternoon.

A few hours of watching birds and squirrels felt really good after a long winter and after a drought of several years since my last Canadian spring bear hunt. It was still a couple hours until dark when I saw a tell-tale patch of what appeared to

By Bernie Barringer be black fur in the brush behind the bait. A moment later it disappeared, and I slowly reached up to turn on my video camera The early spring of 2023 found me once again in the since I was filming the hunt for my YouTube channel. Cautiously, Duck Mountains of Manitoba, one of my favorite places for a the bear made his appearance, and he was a big one. I honestly spring bear hunt. That time I hunted with Scott Smith of Canadid not want to shoot a bear in my first hours on stand, but it bedian Wilderness Outfitters. I have hunted with Scott previously came obvious as soon as I saw it that this one was going to test and killed a big bear there in the Spring of 2018. my restraint. Now if you have followed my hunts for any length I went North with no expectations and no pressure of time, you know that I have a history of resolving not to shoot a on me to get a big bear, or a color phase bear, or anything bear on the first day and then going back on that discretion by specific. I really just wanted to enjoy my first spring bear hunt arrowing a giant and ending my hunt in the first few hours. since Canada's response to COVID created a nightmare for Here I was again. This bear had a big, wide head, a both outfitters and hunters alike. When asked what I was hoping swagger like he owned the place, and the overall look of a large to shoot, my response was simple, “I’ll know it when I see it.” My mature male. He eventually made his way to the 55-gallon bait only real plan was to spend some time in the stand enjoying the barrel and started eating from the top of it with all four feet spring season—breathing the fresh air—and hopefully watching still on the ground. Yeah, he was huge—clearly well north of 300 a few bears with some interaction, one of my favorite things to pounds, which for a spring bear is… well, if you’re reading Bear do.

Hunting Magazine, you’re a serious bear hunter and I don’t need I arrived at Scott’s place in early May and settled into to tell you any more.

Is Bigger Actually Better?

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I took lots of video as he fed. Several times, a puff of wind hit me on the back of my neck and his head would come up and he would put his nose in the air. I got some good video of him pulling the air across the roof of his mouth as he sorted out what he was smelling. In case you have not heard of it, bears have an olfactory organ towards the back of the roof of their mouth called the Jacobson’s organ. Some other animals have it as well, including you, but it is very well developed in black bears. They can open their lips slightly then sip the air, which draws the molecules across the olfactory receptors of this organ.

Not many people have observed this behavior and most wouldn’t recognize it for what it was if they did see it. I was very excited that I got it on video.

After about 15 minutes and three of those episodes where my wind slapped him in the face, he’d had enough and just walked off. Just like that, gone. I had to ask myself if I was going to regret passing up that bear, and I didn’t have an answer to that question.

Day two was a hot one. The unusually warm weather did not slow down bear activity much. I hunted a different bait and sat for six hours. I had several bears come and go, saw some interaction, and even thought about shooting one male that came to the bait twice, but both times didn’t stay long. He was very cautious in every way.

Day three was quite an experience.

The temperature had moderated quite a bit and I took a heavier jacket to the stand with me rather than just the hoodie I normally strap to my backpack. I hunted yet another bait in a really cool spot. I found some brown hairs on tree bark near the bait so I knew there was a light brown bear using it.

The temperature plummeted while I was on stand. I am certain it dropped 5-10 degrees an hour and by the time the first bear came to the bait just a half hour before dark, I was battling bouts of uncontrollable shivering.

The bear was about a 200-pound male and I had no interest in trying to shoot him when I was so cold. At dark, I had a 4-wheeler ride back to the truck for a few miles and I turned up the heat in the pickup for the long ride home, marveling at the fact that I had been hot on the stand the previous day.

The following morning, I got a good fire going in the wall tent then stepped out to a light snow on the ground with more coming down. I have the most bizarre things happen to me on bears hunts; at times I ask myself, “Does this stuff happen to everyone, or just to me?” But the temperature moderated during the day, the snow melted, and by the time I headed to the stand for day four, it was fairly comfortable again, even though I was wearing more clothes than the first two days of the hunt. I have learned to bring clothing for any weather on these spring hunts. I just have to learn not to leave it in camp like I did on day three!

I was given a choice to go back to the day one stand where I saw the big one or www.bear-hunting.com

the bait I hunted on day two and saw more bears. I chose quantity over quality I guess you could say. I settled in on day four, back in the stand I had hunted and seen several bears on day two. The action started up early with a couple small bears coming and going. Then a couple hours before dark, I saw a black spot in the swamp about 75 yards on the other side of the bait. I focused on it intently, trying to sort out what I was looking at. I do not take binoculars when hunting over bait, but this was one of the rare times I wish I had them. After a while I became convinced that I was looking at a bear that was staring right at me. 20 minutes later, he disappeared.

In a few minutes, the small bear that was at the bait became edgy, his body language showed he was nervous and he often looked off to his left, so I knew another bear was coming. Sure enough, the small one walked off just as the bigger one appeared in the brush. The bigger bear cautiously approached the bait area but would not commit. He laid down and watched the bait area for 15 minutes without moving. This was probably a 4-5-year-old, 200 to 225-pound male, but he was showing the caution of a much more mature bear.

When he finally committed to the bait area, I could tell he wasn’t going to settle in and relax. He was just too nervous and he kept looking at me in the stand. He definitely knew how to play the game. He took a couple bites of bait with his head facing away from me, which gave me time to draw my bow. He just couldn’t relax and turned to leave, taking a few steps towards the safety of the bush before stopping to look back at me, standing broadside. That was his fatal mistake.

He was a nice male bear, but not nearly as big as the one I passed the first day. Do I have regrets? I would say no, because bear hunting to me has become much more than just trying to shoot a bear, or a big bear, or a color phase bear. I am at a point in my life where I am more about the experience than the kill, and this hunt fits that expectation perfectly.

This bear is sipping air through his mouth in order to interpret the smells with the Jacobsen’s organ in the back of the roof of his mouth.

- Large and color phased bears.

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Good Friday Freezer Filling in BC

by Kevin Bustard

As I smelled the vital rot of the forest floor, just He created particular creatures, unlike rabbits, deer, or cows. after the snow melted, I angled precipitously down a mountain He established large carnivores for the prey animals because mining trail to intercept a bear I had glimpsed from over a kilo- the classes ultimately belong together. Prey species require meter away. It was early springtime hunting for me, which runs predators to remain true to their best wild selves. Like a tiger or leopard, the creation of bears was on the order of imagining a tight second to fall and the smells are identical, mushroomy a tornado or a Nor’easter. He was making something which and gamey. The landscape was steep, varied, dry, and rocky, with lodgepole pines and aspen above lending to riparian tree acts solely on its behalf, without consultation, without the want for approval, with personality and fervor, and devoid of species near the river. Flanking the path was alder, the trees malice. A storm levels the coastside town, but not because it here and there rooted within the trail twisting into a sinewy mess—which would make it barely passable by an ATV but okay hates towns; the tornado disassembles a farmer's barn, but not because it dislikes agriculture. for walking itself. Areas with less understory were composed That’s what a bear is, a beautiful and impersonal, of douglas firs, ponderosa, and white pines, offering shooting sometimes frightful force of nature. Caring for no one, mindful lanes, while these gave way at the river bottom to more alder of nothing but its solitary need to be what it is created to be. and cottonwoods. It was dry above, wet below.

Look into a bear's eyes, and what’s there has scarcely more I had just a quick glimpse of the bear and just as for you than a glance from a hen. I’m not suggesting bears are quickly plotted his course. We would likely meet with him side-hilling the shale-strewn incline above the riverbed. I might stupid, but I am insisting they hold other creatures with a fierce disregard. hear the clatter of stones or catch him in another opening.

I was still moving quickly and without effort to be quiNearby mountains capped at 8,800 ft, with the river bottom being the lowest elevation at 1,800. It was Good Friday, too soon et, only mindful of the sometimes swirling air currents. I judged in the season, but I was hopeful for this region's earliest ursine myself to be over halfway now. Drawing closer to a predator so indifferent to other life that they will eat their progeny while risers. I moved quickly because the afternoon was over, and I would soon run out of light. The first frogs were starting up, so still alive places the bear hunter on a singular footing. It's a it would happen soon. I felt confident the bear was a male and grand drama, old as time.

I think people get bears wrong. A bear is not a big he looked to be a big one.

Bear hunting is a family thing for us. My family of seven dog; oddly enough, they share more than a few characteristics with cats. Watch the wary approach of a bear to see if I’m lives on black bear meat, harvesting many large and average wrong. If you believe having an observably nervous disposition bears, even small bears. We eat every part, from skull meat to means that they pose little threat to a man, then you have their feet. Our children go for seconds of liver and heart. We break them down and pack them out in the dark through grizzly never attempted to contain the freedoms of a feral kitten. Then country because their flesh has great value for us, and preserv- pick up a dead cat or try to carry a bear, which is like lugging a great mass of jello. Languorous when alive, more so after ing it is our most sacred trust. We have never once lost any of that precious meat to bone sour, rot, or flies. That fact alone is they expire, battling either is contesting a profoundly armed the one great highlight of my hunting career. Sometimes, I won- physical being in near liquid form.

The scripture says a record is kept of every life, man, der how, at my age, I remain as physically strong as I do, but in and beast until the day the scales are balanced. How did each the end it makes sense. Living almost entirely on bear meat, I live and die? Do they remember grappling with their siblings? am composed of bears.

I don’t know. I know an old bear remembers their mother, or I believe God created bears because there is someat the very least, her lessons. They are solitary creatures from thing special about them, the idea of them. On the sixth day, 30

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the time their mother drives them away, but they never forget how to seek safety within a large tree, just as she taught them.

I knew it would happen quickly, and my opportunity would be limited by the thick undergrowth, up close and personal, with dying light. Was he as big as I sensed after one glimpse from a kilometer away? I hoped this bear would go home with me that night in coolers packed with frozen water bottles.

I hoped my history and his would cross so I could carry forward alone. Whatever brought us to this place was significant to each, but I wanted to merge our stories into one. Things I learned about hunting from my father and the cub lessons he retained from his mother were about to converge.

I was walking this same mining path while bow hunting two years before when a sow grizzly suddenly boiled out of the brush. I was nothing more than a footnote because she had more significant problems. In a hard lope, chuffing and blowing, she ran uphill while checking her back trail. The bear I was hunting now was chasing her off, something I pieced together later. As I encountered this black bear for the first time, which shared some characteristics with a brown bear, I was impressed by its size. I told my wife about the 600-pound chocolate colored black bear I’d witnessed chasing off an adult grizzly.

Bears of that size are a rarity in the mountains of British Columbia. Far from farms or towns, living on an arcane diet doesn’t produce fat bears. These are mountain bears who need to be able to scale a sheer rock face hunting sheep and goats.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to kill the same bear during twilight, and from just three or four yards away using a lever gun with iron sights. On April 15, right after the snow melted, I would kill this early riser.

The sun had now set over the Camelsfoot Range, and under the sprawling conifer canopy I was suddenly unable to see much. I slowed my pace to use my ears, feeling I was close. It was getting darker by the minute when I thought I heard something. I stopped and listened intently.

Had I heard a squirrel? Mixed with the smell of clay and rotted leaf matter was another odor. The whole effect was a bit intoxicating. I could smell a bear's coat and skin, the singular and pleasant aroma of a black bear.

I waited and tried to peer wherever I could into the dense alders. But there was nothing except for a wall of shadows.

I crouched and leaned from side to side while my feet remained planted. I could hear soft rustling close by. The darkness was thick, so I checked my hunting app for legal hours. I had thirty minutes to go, but under the great trees it was completely dark.

Behind the trunks of towering trees, the sky was a gray-blue slate, but near the ground all was black. I stood as I was for five or six minutes. www.bear-hunting.com

The author’s family of seven primarily eats bear meat.

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I realized my rifle had just three round nose 30-30 cartridges in the tube, while I had two additional in my pocket. I drew them from there without averting my eyes from the screen of alders and I fed one into the side gate. An explosion of noise and activity blew up in my face. Huffing exhalations and popping branches and limbs from the bear rocketed into the large pine hardly more than a hockey stick’s length away from me. What seemed impossible was the speed of his lunges and how much elevation was gained by each one. The size of the bear and the gains he made seemed incongruous.

I thumbed back the hammer and put the rifle up while the bear was perfectly silhouetted against the evening sky, and bang! I shot him once, through the heart. He made two more lunges, then his forelegs fell limp and he landed after a graceful reverse swan dive. That bear’s nerves failed him, and with his pads soft from his winter rest, he reverted into cubhood, treed in fear. It was his mistake and it cost him his life. The night was -7 degrees, and his fall from high in the pine upon that steep incline meant he would likely pile up a few hundred feet downhill. I put it to bed for the night so we could recover him the following day.

The next morning, we went as a family, babies and all, down to the riverbed where we could glass the hillside to look for him. After about an hour, my wife spotted him. We took a couple of pictures before dislodging him from a stump. One of his canines was broken off already and we let him roll the rest of the way down to land on the gravel below. I recognized him immediately as the bear I’d seen chasing off the sow. When we skinned him, there was a thick layer of fat, much more than usual for a spring bear, and his skull measured at just under 20 inches after drying. He was a successful animal in the prime of his life.

The author’s bear’s skull measured just under 20” after drying.

The author just after he found his bear the following morning.

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Mar/Apr 2024

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Bear Hunting

33

Legendary Bear Hounds: Part 54 Hatchet

by Steve Fielder

@stephen.f.fielder

Owner, Elijah Keller

Michigan Bear Hunters Association VP Elijah Keller with Hatchet and a western UP bear.

Hatchet treeing a bobcat.

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Elijah Keller, an outside salesman for an electrical wholesale distributor, is 35 years old. Married to his wife Megan, the Kellers have three children: Anders, age seven, and twins Henrik and Ada, age five. Keller was born in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan in Traverse City but was raised in Cadillac. Today he lives in Tustin, Michigan in Wexford County.

Keller, some could say, was destined to be a bear hunter and houndsman. His grandmother’s first cousin was Carl T. Johnson, an iconic Michigan outdoorsman for which the Carl T. Johnson Hunting and Fishing Center in Cadillac was named. Keller remembers meeting the famed conservationist as a child. Keller’s family came to Michigan in the late 1800s to early 1900s from Scandinavia, namely Finland, Norway, and Sweden as well as Germany. Farm and hunting dogs have been a part of Keller’s family from their earliest beginnings in the U.S. Keller’s hunting heritage provided many memories for the houndsman, whose 40 acre domicile butts right up to the Manatee National Forest. “We had a lot of snowshoe hares,” he recalls. “My great grandfather, Carl Kangas, enjoyed running raccoons, hares, and foxes with his hounds.

He ran a Walker and Bluetick cross-type dog and called them Walkers, although they looked like the English dogs of today. I never went hunting with him. His son, my Great Uncle Martin Kangas, hunted coons, foxes, and coyotes. I began coon hunting with my dad and Great Uncle Martin when I was very young. My dad didn’t have dogs until I got into hunting. In those days, they were hunting Black and Tan Coonhounds. Great Uncle Martin had a couple of registered Treeing Walkers, a Redbone and the Black and Tans. He never was a breeder but would pick up a good dog now and then.”

Mar/Apr 2024

From the start, hunting bobcats appealed to Keller. As a young man, he was consumed by sports and by running the hounds. “We began to transition more toward hunting cats,” he said. “I also wanted to run bears with the hounds at that point, but my dad said he didn’t have the money to let me be a bear hunter.”

After a brief hiatus to play right guard on his college football team, Keller explained that there was only one hound in the Keller kennel, a great Black and Tan. “By that time, I was sure I wanted to be a bear hunter,” he said. “I had gone bear hunting with friends and right away I got a Bluetick. It turned out good enough that I knew I wanted more. Keller liked his Blueticks to be racy: built with good footspeed, good mouths, and excellent cold-trailers. “They have to rig hard, hunt with their heads up, and run to catch,” he said. He had a pup named Jess that he got when he was hunting with his partner Ryan Luhrs. “She did pretty good,” he recalled. “Not the fastest starter, but well enough that I kept her.”

The man Keller calls his bear hunting mentor, Ryan Luhrs, can take the credit for producing the subject of our Legendary Bear Hound Series this month, the hound called Hatchet. His dame was Josey Wales; her family tree was strongly-rooted in the hounds of Clifford Garver who lived around Lake City and of John Ray, originally from Detroit, who moved to Lake City and then later to the eastern UP. “I hunted with Josey,” Keller says, “and she really excelled as a cat dog. She was extremely cold-nosed and very intelligent. If she opened, she was sure of herself. For a female, she was every bit as gritty as you would ever need. She could do it on her own. When on dry ground, on a running bear, she opened a lot. She had a bawl mouth on track: loud, clear, and clean. Josey was Left to right: Dale Null, Wendall Lybrink, and Elijah Keller.

Dogs left to right, Hank, Millie, Poncho, and Hatchet.

www.bear-hunting.com

a houndy-type Bluetick, long and narrow-bodied with low set ears and deep flews.”

“Hatchet’s sire, a hound named Buster, was owned by a local conservation officer,” Keller said. “Ryan knew the breeding and wanted to breed him for that reason. One hundred percent of the pups from the first cross of Buster to Josey made bear dogs. I want to say there were seven pups in the litter. Ryan originally kept three of them: Hatchet, a male named Ghost, and a female named Loki.”

“The pups started early,” he said. “Right away, we worked them on small critters and coons. They were hell on wheels from an early age. Due to life’s circumstances at the time, I couldn’t take Hatchet as a puppy,” he lamented. “The pups had been born in March and Ryan wanted me to take him that fall. As we went into cat season, the pups were eight or nine months old. The first cat they ran, Hatchet and Ghost stopped it in a brush pile. Hatchet worked his way into the cat and went through it like a buzzsaw.”

In the meantime, Hatchet had been sold to another hunter that continued to hunt the dog through the winter.

Bear season started on July 8th and the guy decided bear hunting wasn’t for him. He had talked to Ryan about taking him back. Ryan told Keller, “You don’t have a choice. You are taking this dog.” By that time, Keller had moved and was able to adopt him.

“From the first day I had him back,” Keller explained, “he ran and treed a bear with three other dogs. From that point on, he quickly escalated to being the first dog I pulled out of the box. I got him in late July, and before that following winter he was my sole cold-trailing dog, one hundred percent.”

I asked Keller how Hatchet performed as a rig dog (the dog that is used to strike a bear track while riding in or on top of the dog box in the hunting vehicle). “We hunt in Anders Keller with Hatchet, left, and Jess. All three are treeing on a nice Michigan boar.

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Hatchet cold-trailing a bear.

swampy areas with lots of creeks and in lots of plantation red pines on the higher ground,” he replied. “We can only bait up to 30 days before the start of bear kill season.

From July 8 to August 8, let’s say, we rig, looking for tracks. When he would strike off the box, Hatchet would indicate that he had scent by giving a weak, whiney yelp.

That was funny because normally he had a strong voice.

“From the time he was three years old, I wouldn’t have to look for a track. I knew when he opened that he had a bear. Oftentimes, he was winding the track. He was a little tighter with his mouth on a cold track. When his mom Josey barked, she had it. Hatchet instilled confidence because when he barked, I knew he was going to jump the bear. If he opened on a cold track, it wasn’t a matter of if but when we would jump the bear. When the bear stayed on the ground and refused to tree, Hatchet bayed hard and he bayed tight. He was smart. He would work the bear close and hard, but he wasn’t suicidal.”

“The number of bears that he treed on his own from start to finish, I couldn’t count,” Keller continued. “On one hunt in particular, which was about four years ago on the western end of the UP, it had rained hard in the early hours of the morning. We checked a bait and it had been hit before the rain. We checked other baits and it was the only one that had been hit. So, I told the rest of the group I would just take Hatchet in there. It was a rough bait to get to. He just seemed to know, even when he couldn’t smell it, where a bear would go. He would go to an area where he thought a bear would be laying up and he would start checking it. He opened one time.

“I had a young gentleman with me that was a first-time bear hunter. Hatchet barked once, right on top of the bear,” Keller said. “He ran and the bear circled a big lake. He came back around it, and for some reason the bear decided to swim in the lake. As it swam, about ten feet behind was Hatchet swimming after it. They 36

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broke out on the other end of the lake and went to a walking bay. I was too far away from the truck to get the other dogs in to him.” My adrenaline was pumping as I tried to keep up with Keller’s story on the keyboard.

Keller continued, “We got back to the truck and I radioed the other guys and told them which way the bear was going. I was experiencing major GPS malfunctions with Hatchet’s collar and couldn’t track him. We were in a very large section, so everyone in our party spread out.

Hatchet had such a powerful voice and the other hunters began to hear him, miles away through the swamp. Finally, I devised a plan; I had to figure out the GPS problem. It had to be getting interference from someone. Separated from the other hunters, I pulled out the long-range antenna and it picked him up on the GPS at 1.6 miles. He hadn’t been heard from in over an hour,” said Keller, the frustration still in his voice as he recounted the story.

“We were able to get within a mile from him in the vehicles and walked in from there. It turned out to be an average-sized bear of about 200 pounds,” he said. “I would like to say that was the end of the story, but it wasn’t.

“When we walked in towards the treed bear, our shooter, who was a first-time bear hunter, was nervous. The bear was also nervous, snapping its jaws. I told the hunter, ‘Don’t shoot until I tell you to shoot.’ The next thing I know, I hear the rifle go off. The bear bails out and I have no idea where it’s hit. Hatchet and the bear are tumbling together.

Our whole group was a mile into the swamp and we had no way to get help to Hatchet.” Hatchet walked and fought the bear for another hour and a half before Keller was able to put his tag on him. He told me that the bear tried to climb but Hatchet pulled him off the tree.

Keller also told me about a hunt he took last fall with Hatchet. “We had a bear bail out of a tree and land on Hatchet. It was almost like the bear targeted him. It broke every rib on his left side and collapsed both lungs. He still Mar/Apr a / 2024

Hatchet treeing solo in a big section on the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

made it across another whole section before I was able to pull him off the track.”

As I spoke with Keller, he told me that he wanted to recall as much of his dog’s story as he could so that he wouldn’t discredit the remarkable hound. “We’ve been through so much together, it’s hard to remember it all. The number of people that were able to see their first bear because of that dog would be impossible to count. He was my buddy—that was it, more than anything. He was the greatest hound I ever had the pleasure of knowing. At home, he wouldn’t leave the kids or my side. He was great in the house and I could take him anywhere off leash.”

Hatchet would have been 10 years old this year in March. “I put him down on Christmas Eve,” Keller said. “It was more painful watching him wither away. When healthy, he weighed 8590 pounds. It was very hard.”

In closing, Keller told me about the last bear they killed at the camp in the UP last fall.

Hatchet went from start to finish on the bear. “In later years, he was losing step when fighting a bear closely and got whacked in the early training season. I laid him up but in the first week of kill season, I dumped two staple guns into him while putting him back together.”

Hatchet was also an exceptional bobcat hound. He was very smart and would sighttrail a cat when he couldn’t smell them. The one thing I notice from doing these articles is that the good ones always have a common trait, namely intelligence. There’s no doubt that this was a hound that deserved the title Legendary Bear Hound in every way. www.bear-hunting.com

Hatchet treeing on a bobcat in the snow.

The Paper Trail

Sire:

NITECH Bluff Creek Drive (NPHA HOF) NITECH Weems’ Plott, John (NPHA HOF) NITECH Weems’ Plott, Susie (NPHA HOF) GRCH Weems’ Plott, Butch (NPHA HOF) Brandenburger’s Cherokee, Joe Haug’s Swampland, Star (NPHA HOF) Frake’s Swamp Queen, Sally Bear Pen Plott, Little Butch

NITECH Weems’ Plott, Dan Ursus Rowdy Plott (NPHA HOF) Brandenburger’s Sashay Moon II (NPHA HOF) Dam: Weems’ Plott Jill (NPHA HOF) Congo’s Bayoo, Pantha Weems’ Little Punch Burnett’s Punch Bear Hunting

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Black Bear Steak with Mushrooms, Leeks, & Marsala

by Timothy Fowler

@timothydfowler

I know my mother loved me because she made baked round steak or center-cut pork chops in mushroom sauce when I asked her to.

Now my wife cooks this kind of thing when she needs something specific, or she just wants to show me that she continues to enjoy my company. This is one of my favorite meals and has been since I was a little kid.

The marsala and mushroom-baked bear steak below is like this, but better. Marsala is a sweet, fortified Spanish wine and, in my opinion, more suited to select cooking situations than drinking. The combination of marsala, mushrooms, leeks, and cream yields a rich sauce that delivers more deliciousness than a can of mushroom soup ever will. The chock-ablock flavor of dried mushrooms is released by soaking them in hot water and the mushroomy flavor of that drained liquid forms half of the sauce.

The bear I used for this recipe is a chunk of sirloin removed from between the pelvis and the backbone. The sirloin is a fist-sized chunk of lean meat that works perfectly for this recipe. A leg steak would work fine too. This recipe serves two. Prep takes about 30 minutes followed by two hours in the oven.

Equipment • Measuring cups and spoons • Container to hold flour for dredging • Skillet • Casserole dish or small dutch oven • Knife • Cutting board • Oven

Ingredients • 1 lb of bear steak (sirloin or leg) cut into small steaks, 1/2inch thick • 1 leek, quartered, washed, and chopped coarsely • 2 Tbsp dijon mustard • 1/4 cup of whipping cream • 1/4 cup marsala wine (substitute cooking sherry or 1 Tbsp of liquid honey) • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour • 1 cup of dried sliced mushrooms, covered with boiling water to refresh • Coarse salt and pepper • Bear grease (substitute duck fat or butter)

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Boil the kettle and just cover the mushrooms in hot water.

Rinse thawed bear steak under cold water and dry with paper towels. Cut steaks to size.

Season steak well with coarse salt and pepper on both sides (this will be the only salt added to this dish).

Set the oven to 350 degrees F. Quarter the leek lengthwise and rinse in cold water, then chop coarsely.

Measure the other ingredients.

Dredge the seasoned steak in all-purpose flour.

Melt a tablespoon of bear grease in the skillet and sear the steak over medium-high heat until both sides are wellbrowned. Add steak to a casserole dish or small dutch oven.

Add the last tablespoon of fat to the skillet and toss in the chopped leek.

Drain the mushrooms, reserving the liquid. Then, coarsely chop the mushrooms.

When the leek softens and begins to color, add the mushrooms and the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, then pour over the steak.

Bake in the oven for two hours.

Check every 30 minutes or so and add freshly boiled water if required.

Serve with creamy mashed potatoes and braised red cabbage, or another vegetable of your choice.

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Mar/Apr 2024

Season steak with salt and pepper, coat with flour and brown well in bear fat.

The Marsala wine combines perfectly with creamy mushrooms and leek.

Braised sweet and sour red cabbage is a perfect accompaniment to the richness of the bear.

www.bear-hunting.com

Dice the leek, cover the mushrooms in boiling water to soak and brown the steak well.

When people (mostly hunters) ask me what bear meat tastes like, I say it is a cross between beef and pork––sort of a beefy pig with longer hair and bigger teeth. The bear steak in this recipe is richly enhanced by the combination of earthy mushrooms, the mild onion flavor of leeks, and the gentle sweet hit from the marsala wine. This will be a regular feature on our rotating game menu.

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Visit our website for one of a kind bear hunting tees! www.bear-hunting.com

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The American Black Bear is the premier big game animal in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This might come as a bit of a shock to hunters, to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, and certainly to the myriad hunting-related businesses in Virginia, but it’s simply fact. There is no other game animal that tips the record-class level so consistently and in multiple ways as does the bear.

Virginia bear hunters still go largely by weight when discussing bear taken. The average bear taken in Virginia is roughly 200-250 pounds. However, bears over 500 are taken each season in multiple regions of the state with behemoths topping 600 and even 700 pounds taken fairly often. That puts Virginia bears on par with some of the other big-bear-byweight states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

For western hunters who size bear up by square, taking a 6-foot bear is common as most any of the Virginia bears that break over 300 to 350 pounds will square that mark or very close to it, and 7-footers are not unheard of. When it comes to skull measurements for B&C and P&Y class scoring, Virginia has placed 64 bears in the B&C records over the twenty seasons from 2002 to 2022; nearly equaling the number of Virginia deer making the book while taken at a rate 100x greater. To put the Virginia record-book bear harvest in perspective, that’s 24 more bears than Idaho, 20 more bears than Maine (roughly 50% higher rates than either of those states), and nearly equal to the Canadian provinces of Ontario (65 bears), British Columbia (67). Considering that baiting is illegal in Virginia and that at least half of all VA bears taken are head shot which prevents scoring for B&C, it’s easy to see that Virginia is home to a great number of truly trophy class bear no matter how you determine a trophy.

The recovery of bear in Virginia is one of the greatest success stories in North American conservation history. Less than 100 years ago, black bear were nearly extirpated from the Commonwealth and the first regulated hunting season for bear in Virginia wasn’t until 1930. The first 500-bear taken season would not happen for more than fifty years, until 1986.

Virginia crossed the 1,000-bear-per-season threshold in 2000, 1,500 in 2003, and 2,000 bears were taken in 2008. The harvest rates have stayed above 2,000-bears-per-season since that time, even as they have dipped back below the record 3,400-3,600 marks set just a few years ago due to overharvest and a severe mange outbreak in the traditional bear stronghold counties of the Shenandoah Valley. Today, Virginia hunters average taking between 2,000 and 3,000 bears each season, making it one of the highest states as far as bear harvest numbers in the U.S. While the recovery of bear and bear hunting in Virginia has been remarkable, it’s faced with severe and growing threats. An outbreak of sarcoptic mange has decimated bear populations in areas of the northern and central Shenandoah Valley region. Areas that had previously produced 100 to 200 bears per county www.bear-hunting.com

are now producing one-tenth that many each year.

The scourge of mange is spreading with no known treatment in sight. It’s not just disease that threatens bears and bear hunting in Virginia. Virginia issues agricultural kill permits at a rate well beyond neighboring states and with little to no oversight or enforcement of those permits. Bears taken on these permits are not accurately counted and as such the impact on overall population management is unknown. The agricultural lobby in Virginia openly advocates for bear to be considered a nuisance species, leaving them open to harvest and waste at any time year-round, a move that would destroy the success story of bear recovery and with it the world-class hunting opportunity that Virginia presents bear hunters. Ongoing conflicts between landowner organizations and houndsmen put the tradition of hunting bear with dogs in the crosshairs of both regulatory and statutory changes. Roughly 60% of all bears taken in Virginia are taken with the aid of dogs, and given that Virginia forbids the use of bait, we cannot manage bear in the Commonwealth without the use of dogs. The ever-present threat of anti-hunting initiatives to outlaw hunting based upon emotion grows each year as the population of Virginia increases and becomes more urban and detached from our history, our traditions, and our conservation ethos. While the anti-hunters might today be focused on the use of dogs to pursue bear, we know that they will once-again turn their focus to bowhunters as they did in the early 1990s and eventually toward all of us no matter how or what we hunt.

Those successes, and those threats, are why we formed the Virginia Chapter of the American Bear Foundation. Our Chapter was created to preserve, defend, and advance bear conservation and bear hunting in the Commonwealth. No matter whether you use a longbow or crossbow, favor flintlocks or a semi-auto, run dogs or not – we are there for ALL bear hunters, and we are there by doing work that aids us all.

In less than two years, our Chapter has put $10,000 toward mange research to help fight that scourge and protect our bear populations so generations can continue to chase them. We have worked with the ABF Science Advisory Committee to analyze more than 15 seasons of harvest data so when we present to Department employees, the public, or decision-makers, we have the science and the data to back up what we say. We have and continue to work with other sporting organizations here in Virginia to raise the prominence of bear as the premier game species in the state. We have designed and taught the first ever Bear Hunting 101 courses through Virginia Hunter Education. We have educated the Virginia Board of Wildlife Resources and the public on the world-class hunting opportunities for bear in Virginia as well as best practices to reduce human-bear conflicts. We’ve presented recommendations to the Board to the to expand the bear chase season statewide and nearly double the current length of season. We’ve served on the Board’s Landowner-Hound-Hunter Ad Hoc Committee to try to find a future for houndsmen and landowners where we can live and hunt together, and to defend our traditions of hunting bear with dogs in Virginia. We’re just getting started, and we are working for the future of bears and bear hunting in Virginia. With your help, that future is bright. If you’re a Virginian, join us by joining the American Bear Foundation and by getting involved.

The North Carolina bear hunting season has been closed for the past 8 weeks, and winter has taken a grip on the state as a prelude to spring. During mid-January there were several anti-hunting articles that ran in opinion editorials in newspapers throughout the state. Our NCBHA members took exception to the content of these editorials and responded back, we have a series of responses planned starting with bear hunting seasons adjustments and followed by a response to the anti-hound hunting articles.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC), has proposed to expand the mountain bear hunting season by nine days. The bear hunting season has been the same since the 1970’s. Back then, there were less than 1,000 bears in the mountains and bears occupied less than 20% of the area. Now, there are an estimated 8,000 bears and bears are established in all areas of the mountains. The proposed season would help meet bear population objectives, which is to level out the rate of bear population growth.

The NCWRC has been exceptionally good stewards of our bears. They, along with bear hunters and landowners, have played a key role in establishing a robust black bear population to the level they are today. Moreover, the bear hunters most responsible for this recovery were those who hunt with hounds, because these hunters supported the early concept of bag limits, weight restrictions, and creating bear sanctuaries in areas that had unique habitat most suitable for bears. The hunters and

NCWRC have worked hand in hand to conserve our bears for future generations.

North Carolina’s bear population is presently approximately 20,000. The increase in hunter harvest of black bears is in direct correlation to the increased bear population. Since 1980, the bear population has increased 12.4-fold, but the bear harvest has increased only 10.5fold. Our mountain bear population is outpacing our ability to harvest them with the current number of huntable days available. This graph illustrates the importance of increas42

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ing the bear harvest to balance the overall bear population.

We want to keep bears on our landscape and we want them to be scientifically managed to keep the population in balance with the environment. What happens when we get too populated with bear? Increased disease outbreaks occur, such as mange. And there is increased competition for natural foods, resulting in declining body condition, decreased survivorship of cubs and yearlings, increased fighting among bears that results in injury and death, and increases in infanticide, where male bears will kill cubs. If they can, bears will also search for food elsewhere, bringing them into developed areas where bird feeders and garbage are plentiful. This close proximity to people results in bears losing their natural fear of people and increased human-bear conflicts, as well as increases in bears hit and killed by vehicles.

A prime example is the Asheville watershed, where no hunting is allowed. The bear population has grown and spills over into Asheville and other nearby towns, creating conflicts and public safety issues on our roads and in our neighborhoods. Buncombe County leads the state in human-bear conflicts, vehicle-bear collisions, and in incidences in which a bear injures a person. And vehicles are the number one cause of death of bears in Asheville. These safety problems will continue to escalate until the bear population is brought into balance and maintained. The NCWRC’s proposal to modestly expand the hunting season is science based, measurable, and can be adjusted moving forward.

Counter to recent claims, the proposal does not stipulate more season for just hound hunters, but rather it is an extension for all methods of harvesting bear. Hound hunting has a long history in our state dating back before European settlers came to North America. It has a long and rich history with the Cherokee, and to this day, tribe members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian hunt bears with hounds. It is as much ingrained in our culture as football, but unlike football, hound hunting also plays an important role in managing bear populations and conflicts. This tradition has been passed down from generations in most hound hunting circles, including in my family. Unfortunately, hound hunters were recently vilified with fabricated accusations and false stereotypes.

However, I will address that on another day. For now, I want you to leave you with this; bear hunters are dedicated to the conservation and management of bears, and that includes continued support for on-going research and monitoring, as well as managing their populations responsibly through highly regulated hunting seasons, such as the one proposed by the NCWRC. Also, we want to make sure our members watch for any 2024 NC House legislation and N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission changes. We don’t have any specific items to call to your attention to, but we are tracking a couple things that could be of concern for bear hunters.

We invite you to join the only statewide association dedicated to bear hunting and hunting with dogs. Membership applications and renewals should be sent to: NCBHA Member Services, 130 Holly Mt Church Road, Mt Gilead, NC 27306.

Our website is www.NCBHA.com. Be safe!

Mar/Apr 2024

Legislation pending in the Michigan Legislature could be a win-win for sportsmen, helping to boost hunter numbers while spreading knowledge about the proper handling of firearms.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are backing bills introduced in both chambers that would allow the state’s schools to host firearm safety courses modeled on a program crafted by the Department of Education in coordination with the Department of Natural Resources.

The intent, according to sponsor Rep. Curt VanderWall, R-Ludington, is to teach “the safety and importance of understating what these weapons do and the fun purposes” they’re used for by sportsmen across the state.

“It’s another opportunity for a student through an elective to learn, respect and hopefully enjoy the outdoors,” he said.

Sen. Jon Bumstead, R-North Muskegon, sponsor of the identical Senate version of the bill, suggested the legislation “might help with our hunter numbers,” which have been on a decades-long decline with the exception of a brief increase during the pandemic. DNR officials said during a recent presentation that in the early 2000s the state had over 800,000 deer hunters, a figure that has dwindled over the 20 years since to about 550,000 in 2022.

Other benefits, Bumstead said, include better access to firearm safety instruction that can be lacking in urban areas, he said.

The legislation would amend the Revised School Code to allow schools the option of offering firearm safety instruction for students in grades six through 12.

“The instruction must be not less than 8 hours in duration, must comply with the requirements of the safe firearm handling course provided by the Department of Natural Resources … and must be taught by an individual who has been certified as a hunter education instructor by the Department of Natural Resources,” the bill reads.

It provides flexibility for school districts, stating they “may provide the firearm safety instruction as an optional extracurricular class for any pupil in grades 6 to 12 in the school district, intermediate school district, or public school academy, or may provide the firearm safety instruction as part of an existing course for the purpose of teaching self-expression and enjoyment of recreational activity.”

VanderWall pointed out the legislation comes with “no extra cost to the department or the school system,” with instructions and curriculum provided by the DNR’s existing program. The bill specifically prohibits the use of firearms or ammunition in school buildings. It would require instructors to cover topics including the proper use and handling of firearms, cleaning and maintenance, different types of firearms, and safe hunting practices.

“A pupil who completes the firearm safety instruction is considered to have completed the hunter safety course required to obtain a hunting license,” the bill reads.

The legislation aligns with efforts by the Michigan Bear Hunters Association to expose more youngsters to hunting and firearm safety, which included new hunter safety and trappers safety course offerings at the organization’s annual convention last year. www.bear-hunting.com www.bear-hunting.com

The MBHA is continuing with another hunter safety course at the 2024 convention at Shanty Creek Resort in Bellaire on March 1 and 2, as well as CPR and first aid training to help guides comply with new requirements approved by the legislature last year.

“Allowing firearms safety instruction in schools is something the MBHA fully supports, for the obvious benefits to both the hunting community and society at large,” MBHA President Keith Shafer said. “The more who respect and understand firearms, the better for everyone. Helping more students gain a hunter safety certification, and an appreciation for the role of hunters in conservation, are also great things for wildlife management in this state.”

While the Michigan DNR claims they “don’t yet have a position” on the legislation, Bumstead and VanderWall contend officials with the department and Department of Education have been supportive, as have many Democrats.

“We’re not getting much for kickback” beyond lawmakers opposed to hunting in general, Bumstead said. “We’d like to get this done by the end of the year.”

At Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the state’s largest conservation organization, the legislation is “amongst our top priorities for the remainder of the legislative session,” Policy and Governmental Affairs Manager Justin Tomei said.

Tomei said MUCC strongly backs the bill because “education is the best way to create the next generation of conservationists” and a great way to dispel “fear and ignorance” about firearms.

“This bill looks like it has some feet with high bipartisan support in both chambers,” Tomei said.

The MBHA has worked to get more students in the outdoors by offering hunters safety and trapping classes at its annual convention. Lawmakers want to give all Michigan schools the option of offering firearms safety courses for grades 6 through 12.

Join MBHA to make our voice stronger, and receive our association’s 16-page publication, The Bear Facts, four times a year, plus Bear Hunting Magazine, with its MBHA column, six times a year.

To get your membership (worth $20) and magazine (worth $25 more), send only a $20 check, made out to MBHA, to Phil Hewitt, and his address is 7796 Ainsworth Road, Lake Odessa, MI, 48849. Please include your name, address, email address and phone number.

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Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association Inc. Mar/Apr 2024 WISCONSIN BEAR HUNTERS ASSOCIATION 60th Annual Convention March 22 – March 23, 2024 10101 Market Street, Rothschild, WI 54474 WBHA Annual Raffle: You NEED NOT BE a WBHA member in order to purchase Annual Raffle tickets and you need not be present to win. Grand Prize- $15,000.00 cash. 50 additional prizes to win. Ticket inquires: Jim Hamilton, Ph: 715-460-3033, Email: jimhamilton@zimdarshardware.com WBHA Member Raffle InfoYou MUST BE a WBHA member in order to purchase Member Raffle tickets. Pre-purchased raffle ticket packages will be available for pick-up during regular convention hours. Pre-purchased ticket packages come pre-labeled with member’s ID# on each ticket. Ticket package increments include 200 for $200, 75 for $100, 25 for $50, & 10 for $25 (Single tickets will be available at the Annual Convention) All pre-purchased packages must be picked up no later than 10am on Saturday, March 23rd, 2024. WBHA Member Raffle will close at 1:30pm. WBHA Member Raffle drawings will be held and announced intermittently during the SOS Auction beginning at 1:45pm. Winners will have 10 minutes from drawing to claim prize. If you are not able to claim prize within 10 minutes, you will forfeit your prize and an alternate will be awarded the prize. Order tickets either on the website or mail in the order form below.

as a vendor can contact me by e-mail or phone and I will get you on the contract list. Contact: Jacob Trochinski, Ph: 920-203-3725, Email: jacob.trochinski@gmail.com Our Convention is a closed to the public!

Become a member at the door and join the WBHA for 2 days of fun, entertainment, education, and a chance to win many great prizes. For a complete Convention schedule and more information, including WBHA clothing, visit our website or find us on Facebook.

Convention Member Check-In: To expedite the member check-in at the convention have your valid membership card ready at the door. A worker will check your card, if valid, you will be given your wristband(s) and you will be able to enter the convention.

Those that need to renew their membership or are new members wishing to join, you will be directed to a membership table. Check your expiration date and renew ahead of time to speed up your check-in time. Yearbooks will be mailed before the convention this year to your residence if you were an active member on 12-31-2023, one yearbook was mailed per address.

Governor’s Bear Tag RaffleTickets for a chance to win a 2024 Bear harvest tag.

Only 500 tickets will be sold. Drawing will be held at the Convention on Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 4:00 PM. The winner must choose Zone of Harvest at the time of issue. Tickets can be purchased at the convention or purchased ahead of time using the form below.

Save Our Sport (SOS) Auction- A huge number of items as well as many puppies will be auctioned off on Saturday. All proceeds from this auction will be used to aid in the advancement and protection of our sport. We are in need of your donations please help save our sport! Contact: Send cash donations to: Carl Schoettel 414-5312296, for item donations contact: Eric Tuckner 651-7757296, for puppy donations contact: Mark Scheunemann 715-897-1417 Vendor Information: Any business or organization wishing to attend

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Bear Hunting

Mar/Apr 2024

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Bear Hunting

45

The Strategic Bear Hunter

by Bernie Barringer

How Bears Approach Bait

never seen a single one do a full circle. I’ve seen some that stay back aways and move back and forth, I even had one do nearly ¾ of a circle. But I believe these bears are trying to determine two things and they don’t need to do a full circle to learn what they want to know. The first thing they are trying to do is get the wind of the bait itself. Here’s a surprise to many of you: unless the bear has had a bad experience with a person in the stand, such as being shot at or being spooked, I do not believe it is very common for a bear to try to get downwind of the stand and see if anyone is in there.

They are most commonly trying to just get the wind of the bait because it smells good, and they want to know if any other bears or critters are on the bait. If you can set up your stand in such a way that the bears can sweep downwind of the bait and get a good whiff without getting downwind A lot of things must go right for of the stand you’re sitting in, you’ve got an advantage. Not a big, mature male to come to really a common scenario, but worth considering when a bait site during legal shooting setting up your locations. hours. They often spend quite The second thing the bear is trying to smell by “circling” a bit of time “casing the joint” before finally committing. before committing to the bait is your entry trail. I have seen this many times where the bear just goes over and smells the trail you came in on when you baited. He has Early on in my bear hunting, I had a mistaken idea of how bears you patterned and he’s just checking to see when you last viewed my bait sites. I thought I was doing them a big favor and showed up. He can tell if your ground scent is an hour old they should be coming in with enthusiasm and gobbling up all the good stuff I was putting out. That might work for yearlings and some or five hours old. He knows. If it’s really fresh, there’s a good chance he’ll be much more cautious in actually committing bears in remote parts of Canada where the bears have no expeto the bait itself. rience with hunters, but it sure doesn't work for big mature bears These big mature bears may be in the immediate area for where they get any significant amount of hunting pressure.

Turns out that big bears aren’t all that enamored with our bait sites a half hour or more before they fully commit to the bait. If you sneeze, swat a mosquito, pick up your phone, or make and view them in a different light. As soon as I realized that you any quick movements, you may actually spook the bear cannot manipulate bear behavior or force them to do something they do not feel comfortable with, my opportunities to put big bears without even knowing he was there. In low light conditions, I am convinced that a cell phone has saved the lives of a in front of me during legal shooting hours really increased. lot of bears. Remember, a bear’s eyes can take in about 50 A mature bear around the bait site, rather than feeling the extimes as much light as ours. You pick up your phone to see citement of free food, has an attitude more in line with this, “This that there’s 15 minutes of legal light left, or answer a text just isn’t right. It isn’t natural and it seems too good to be true. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Once you start to look at message, and your face lights up like a beacon that a bear can see for a long way off. bear baiting with that frame of mind, your success rates are going to increase because you now have a more accurate picture of how Those big bears often use what I call “staging areas” to observe the bait with their senses of smell, sight, and hearbears are viewing what you are offering.

I have written a lot about the importance of location in making a bear feel secure and comfortable enough with your bait to apMost hunters only see the moment proach it during the daylight, as well as the baiting techniques, the bear walks into view, but where timing, etc. that can increase their comfort level, so I won’t go into has that bear been for the past details about that here. Let’s discuss how a mature adult bear aphalf hour or so? Adult bears may proaches your bait and the extreme caution he uses. have quite a safety routine they go through before they finally step out.

First of all, it goes without saying that you must put your bait in a location where a bear has security cover to approach the bait, or he’s unlikely to come at all during legal shooting hours. They really do not like to cross open areas while approaching a bait. I have had people discount my fervent convictions on this issue by claiming they have seen bears feeding on open hillsides and even in farm fields during broad daylight. Well, so have I. But when that same bear is approaching a bait site, he is going to be super cautious and aware of his surroundings because he just knows this situation isn’t natural. This is a difference that you must fully understand in order to become successful at killing big bears. A bear may be feeding in an open area (like grazing on acorns during broad daylight) seemingly without a care, but that evening when he is coming to your bait he is using every stitch of cover and his senses are on a razor’s edge.

We have often heard that bears will circle a bait site. I have watched hundreds of bears approach a site and, frankly, I have 46

Bear Hunting

Mar/Apr 2024

The author’s son, Dawson, with a bear that had a staging area where it would observe the bait site for quite some time before finally committing at last light.

ing, and they can be very patient. I have seen them just lay down 40 yards from the bait and not move a muscle for 20 minutes at times. I have also found places where they will sit down and wait for dark to come on. Even when they cannot see the bait, they can hear and smell it. They may be 30-50 yards away when you climb down from the stand at dark and you never knew they had been there for half an hour. It’s no wonder that the first time you hunt a bait is the best chance to kill a mature bear. We all have trail cam pics of a bear that walks into the bait 20 minutes after we leave. Chances are that the bear was very close for quite some time while you were there.

I have also seen bears that have found an opening in thick cover where they can walk to and just look at the bait and the immediate area surrounding the bait. I had a bear up on a hillside poke his head out of the brush and look right at me in the stand. He had found that hole where he could observe, and he used the opportunity every time he came to the bait. When I watched it happen in person for the first time, I knew immediately by the way it happened that this wasn’t the first time he’d done it.

I have often said that if you hear a bear approaching the bait, it’s because he intended to be heard. They can approach without a sound over almost any terrain. But they often are trying to determine if the bait is a safe place and if there are other bears or critters at the site. I’ve heard many times (and even seen) them step on a branch to make a cracking noise to get a reaction from any other bears that might already be on the bait. I have also heard them pop their teeth and make other chuffing sounds to learn if other bears are in the area.

Small, young bears give hunters the idea that we www.bear-hunting.com

just need to feed the right bait in the right places and they’re not that hard to tag. But keep in mind that we’re not doing these bears any favors and the big ones know it. They look at the bait site as something unnatural, even dangerous, and they use caution accordingly. It's no wonder these big bears are so hard to kill. But if we are consistent and provide them with a safe, secure environment at the bait site, they do tend to settle down and relax a little over time. Once they let their guard down even a little, our chances of bagging them start to increase.

The signs of where a bear comes to your bait—the trails and tracks that show their final commitment (so to speak)---may not be telling the whole story about how that bear spent the last hour before he finally walked in and took MA_Lift_LaunchAd-4.5x3.5-2.pdf 1 12/8/23 12:21 PM a bite. Knowing these things can increase your chances of shooting a big one over a small one.

L I G H T E R .

F A S T E R .

Q U I E T E R .

Learn more at mathewsinc.com

Bear Hunting

47

Blood, Sweat, & & Bears

Predator vs. Predator

with Doug Boze

@bozeandbears

opposite side of the hill I was on, bugling a bit with various other We are still in the dead of winter right now, although currently it’s been a very mild one where I live in Wash- elk talking. I decided to let loose on a calf call I had, and the ington. I am writing this column on New Year’s Eve and, frankly, bull responded. Over the next few minutes, the elk continued to respond, and it sounded as if he was getting closer—at least there is no place I’d rather be right now than writing for you.

And there is no other topic I’d rather be discussing than preda- broken branches and brush seemed to be telling me that. To my right (the direction from which the noise was coming) was thick tor calling bears. So, let’s dive into the subject and have some and steep and led down to the creek, which was little more than fun with it.

80 yards below me. Black caps and rose hips choked the hillside.

This past Christmas, I received a new Foxpro Xwave The rustling of the brush kept giving away what I electronic caller which I am excited to get to try out. Now, I thought was the elk coming in, so I quickly placed myself next love calling with hand/mouth calls, don’t get me wrong. The satisfaction I get from calling in a predator using nothing but a to a tree and notched an arrow, ready for the elk to pop out.

To my very surprise, a black bear popped out not 40 yards from piece of bone or plastic with a reed is extremely exhilarating.

But ecallers (where legal) are certainly fun too. The Xwave looks me. Now keep in mind, this was before we could legally carry a to be a monster of a machine for some high level calling, and I pistol for protection when archery hunting, so I only had my bow.

The bear topped out over the berm, paused broadside momenam eager to get to know all the ins and outs of the device. tarily, and then continued up the hill past me to my left before If you are just getting started at predator calling bears, weldisappearing into some more black caps and such. I was stunned come! Once you get a bear running into your call slobbering, because I was not expecting a bear to show up at all; it just smacking trees, and kicking up dust, I think you’ll be hooked. didn’t enter my mind at the time. While I didn’t take a shot, I was Either that, or you’ll never call again. But I would place money stung by the bug that is bear calling. That venomous sting has that you will desire more and more of this adrenaline-filled yet to lose its potency. challenge. Calling can be about 90% boredom and 10% shock Fast forward to today, where I have called in countless and disbelief. bears, bobcats, coyotes, cougars, and even hunters, and you will The very first time I called a bear in, I was archery hunting elk and it was completely an accident. I was down in a still find that I have the same excitement for this hobby as I did steep canyon in eastern Washington; either side of the canyon on day one. I love it and I hope to pass along some tips to help you enjoy it too. So, what are some of the things I look for when held stands of pine which towered over dried grass and sage, calling? A proper habitat would be one of the main things. What but was fed by a trickling cool creek which in turn was shaddo I mean by that? Well, for example, I would likely not waste ed most of the day by the hillsides. I had heard a bull on the 48

Bear Hunting

Mar/Apr 2024

my time calling into a fresh clear cut where there is little brush, which equals little cover and little food. I might glass the cut for a short time or pay attention to the mature tree lines, but this is not ideal territory. When I first called in a bear, it told me that the bear was hanging out in the cool creek bottom to help avoid the midday heat, which can get to 90 degrees or more during elk season. Wearing a full black coat, I don’t blame the bear for doing so. Then as I started to learn places to call, creek draws were a go-to spot for me. They offer brush (cover and safety), water, and the overall temperature is cooler. This is a proper habitat which is likely to hold a bear somewhere.

Another example of proper habitat, or what I like to call “bearish” places, are older clear cuts of 5-15 years old. There is a sweet spot here, depending on where you live, where the cut is chock full of brush and food, but you can still have decent shooting lanes if you get up high. As the cut ages, it becomes more and more difficult—but not impossible—to call into these places due to the thickness of the brush and taller trees. They become almost impenetrable until you go in them and find bear tunnels all over the place. This can be a fun place to grab a shotgun (for potential close encounters) and call from whatever minimal opening you can find. Getting bears to come close is half the fun of calling.

Now, say you live somewhere where they don’t log commercially or have a more arid climate with less trees.

The same idea applies. If that is the case, it is likely warm or downright hot. Where would you go to get out of that heat?

Near water (creeks, ponds, etc) and steep, dark, shady canyons or draws. Try to put yourself in the mindset of the bear. If it is 85 degrees outside and food is plentiful (like in mid-summer), would you be out midday without cover from the sun? Maybe, if you were traveling from one food place to another. Or are you more likely to be hitting the shade next to a creek or rocky outcropping, eating at your leisure?

Now, what is the advantage to calling into a brushy draw as opposed to slowly walking through it? For one, you can pick your defensive or calling position. If you set up a call, say on top of a log pile, this gives you an advantage of being above ground level (for greater visibility) and you can pick your shooting lanes. More importantly, you are not running through a valley dragging your scent all over the place and creating a bunch of noise. Think of calling like casting a fishing line: you might not know what is in the lake, but you are pretty sure something is there. Toss a line (do a call set) and see what comes in to bite.

How long do I call for is another question that I often get. Again, much like fishing, things can happen almost instantly, or it could take a bit of time. I usually call it quits on a call set at about an hour (so I am no longer making noise from the call) and I will wait another 10-15 minutes or so after I am done calling before moving on. Sometimes a predator will wait until the racket has died down to come in and check out what was making all the ruckus. Make sure and wait a little after you’re done calling to see if something comes in. I didn’t follow this rule once and lost my chance at a chocolate bear who I saw a little too late.

Just like when you toss out a bobber and it hits the surface of the water then starts to bounce, indicating a lovely panfish waiting for you on the other end, when you start to call, things can pop out quick. I’ve called in a bear on a cold call set in under five minutes. I’ve also called www.bear-hunting.com

coyotes in under a few minutes too.

You never know what might be waiting for a meal to call them in.

Another really common question is what type of call do I use? Let’s just say, I never leave for a hunt (as long as there is a predator season open) without a hand/ mouth call around my neck or at least one in my pack. If I am going out to hunt deer, I toss a predator call on. I have even used calls to bust deer loose from their afternoon bed to make them stand up for a shot. I like to tell people that the raspier, more obnoxious the call, the better it is for bears. I don’t know why, they just seem to like it.

Remember, the animal you are trying to imitate during the call set does not necessarily have to be a local animal. It is the noise, not the species, that brings things in. For example, I might use an elk calf distress in an area without any elk. Why would I do that? Well, if everyone is using a rabbit distress call, the local bruiser bear may have been educated on that sound and might not care to check it out. But, if there is a sad, lonely, easy meal of a calf (despite the bear not knowing it’s an elk), that might just be the sound it needs to come in and offer a shot for you. Do not be afraid to try new, strange sounds for bears. You could find a real gem for your area and have that money of a call sound all to yourself.

Some say that it’s not calf season yet, so the fawns haven’t dropped. My response to this is that bears do not have calendars as to when fawns drop. They might have a general idea, but a sound is a sound no matter what, and I have called in plenty of predators outside the normal time frame of neonate ungulate birth times. Ever watch your outside cat when it is hunting? It sees the movement of a bird or mouse and is keyed in. It doesn’t stop to think if that animal should be there—its predator response is to hunt it. Same thing with bears. If you offer the opportunity of a meal for a bear, it is likely to check it out. Now, whether you are offered a shot is another story altogether.

The closest I have been to bears while they are alive and I am on the ground hunting them is three steps and the closest to cougars is 13 steps (which is close enough for me). This is without dogs, just a natural spot and stalk hunt or calling. You need to be prepared for this as soon as you start to call. Take the time prior to beginning your set to memorize what is around you. How do things look? Where might the bear come from? Are you able to make a shot from where and how you are positioned? I predator call with one in the chamber and the safety on. If I am bow hunting, I have an arrow knocked as I call. I am not walking around with an arrow knocked; I am in a stationary, ground-level position.

There really are so many amazing things that occur when calling. From birds of prey dive bombing your head, to bears that hang up just inside the brush and pop their jaws at you, from cougars peeking over a fell log trying to decide if you’re a meal or a threat, and a million situations in between. Predator calling is a favorite method of hunting for me. I hope that during this winter season, you can get out and call in some coyotes, bobcats, or cougars while you patiently await bear season. Our ungulate population could use some extra predator management, and now you know just how to do it. Happy hunting, my friends.

Bear Hunting

49

Black Bear Biology

Age is Just a Number

with Dr. Jenn Ballard @arwildlifevet

The Science of Aging Bears Any bear harvested is an achievement. Every hunt is a story, but two questions seem to invariably frame the telling of such stories: how old was it and how much did it weigh?

There’s just something about harvesting a big, mature bear that seems to turn these achievements into triumphs and stories into legends. As a result, it’s tempting to speculate about a bear’s age based on its body size, weight, or visible tooth wear, and if you’ve hunted the same area for many years, your guess might come close. Still, nothing beats knowing for sure. Likewise, conservation agencies are eager for reliable bear age data.

Understanding survival rates and age composition is necessary to model bear populations and inform sustainable management practices, but gathering age data for bears is a labor-intensive process.

If you’ve had much success as a bear hunter, there’s a good chance you’ve been asked to provide a premolar from your harvested bear to a state or provincial conservation agency. Videos and instructions on how to remove the tooth are easily found online and many agencies will follow up with an estimated age for your bear, though it can take a year or more to receive results. What happens to the tooth in the interim and how the age is determined is a process known as cementum annuli aging.

At its most basic, cementum annuli aging consists of examining thin cross-sections of tooth root and counting layers (annuli) reminiscent of the rings in a tree. But trees grow continuously, and a bear’s teeth do not. So how do the rings form? When we think about teeth, we typically picture the hard, 50

Bear Hunting

light-colored enamel on the outer surface of our pearly whites.

Under that layer is a softer, darker material known as dentin, which is visible in some species, such as deer, and may become more obvious with wear. Just like the toothpaste commercials have warned us, these two layers are not replenished or replaced. Below the gum line, however, there is a third layer we don’t typically see, known as cementum. While it’s plenty tough, cementum is not truly bone. It is produced throughout a bear’s life, coating the tooth root, becoming thicker with age and quite literally “cementing” teeth into their sockets.

Perhaps its most important feature, cementum is not produced at the same rate throughout the year. During periods of stress or limited resources, cementum is laid down in thinner, denser bands. For bears in temperate climates, these periods of stress are believed to correspond with winter and hibernation.

This creates a pattern of alternating light and dark bands in the cementum layer, one for each year of the bear’s life. To facilitate cementum annuli aging, ultrathin sections of tooth root are cut, stained with dye, and examined under a microscope. While it sounds simple enough, there’s as much art as there is science to interpreting these minute, and sometimes inconsistent, structures.

To learn more about cementum annuli aging, I spoke with Arthur “A.J.” Stephens, Lab Manager for Matson’s Laboratory in Manhattan, Montana. Matson’s is the world’s largest wildlife aging laboratory. Since its founding in 1969, Stephens estimates that the lab has developed aging techniques for over 200 wildlife species. Annually, Matson’s receives more than 100,000 Mar/Apr 2024

Tooth section of 24-yr old brown bear sampled in Alaska.

itor trends and changes over time.

Since cementum is present on all teeth, I asked Stephens why it’s so important to use the first premolar for aging bears and other large carnivores. He acknowledged that any tooth can be used, but the first premolar offers several advantages. It’s a small tooth without an overly deep root. It can easily be identified and extracted, even from live bears. Its absence won’t negatively affect eating or self-defense and isn’t obvious on most taxidermy mounts either. Using the same tooth across the board also improves the overall consistency of the method for these species.

Probably the most fascinating thing Stephens shared about cementum annuli aging is that the layers can reveal more than just an animal’s age. For female black bears specifically, the technique can also show their reproductive patterns. Again, because stress and resource availability aid the formation of the visible annuli, researchers have noted that female black bears tend to form narrower bands during the years that they raise cubs compared the years before they start reproduction and when they have yearlings at heel. By looking at her teeth, managers and researchers can get an idea of when a female black bear produced her first litter and how frequently she reproduced throughout her life because, just like her age, her body is keeping score.

References: Schaffer VB. 1950. Growth Layers on the Teeth of Pinnipedia as an Indication of Age. Science 112(2907):309-311.

samples for aging, including teeth from 2,000-3,000 brown bears and 30,000-47,000 black bears. Less frequently, they are asked to age polar bears from subsistence harvests in Canada and to work with some of the more exotic bear species for research purposes.

Stephens is quick to point out that Gary Matson, founder of Matson’s Laboratory, did not invent the cementum annuli method. It was first published in an article by fur seal researchers in 1950, but Matson came on the scene soon thereafter and became a pioneer in standardizing the now widely used method.

“We’ve done our best to make a subjective process as objective as possible,” says Stephens, describing the way his team builds regional aging models and compares results. He notes that every species is different, but it gets even more complicated from there. Because the bands in the cementum come from seasonal stress, the method is notoriously less accurate for populations in warmer climates. As an example, cementum annuli aging for a northern population can be as accurate as 95% while the same species examined from Florida or South Texas may be closer to 60-70%. This doesn’t mean that the technique can’t be used in southerly populations. Stephens stresses that precision or repeatability of results can be just as important as accuracy in the long run. Instead of focusing on the exact age of each animal, being able to consistently group them into similar age classes still allows wildlife managers to monwww.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting

51

Western Bear Hunting with Jana Waller

Why Our “Why” is Important Photos By: Heath Helgert | @h2o_films

@skullboundtv

The author alonside then 10-yr old Taylor Wohlers with her first black bear in alaska.

A nice Idaho bear with the desert eagle .429.

52

Bear Hunting

There’s a question I see quite often on social media when either myself or others post a photo from a bear hunt. The question is often a simple, yet screaming statement more than a question, “Why?” And I should point out more often than not, there are other expletives alongside this question. It’s no surprise that anti-hunters come out of the woodwork on predator hunting posts, but I think it’s important to recognize that there is also a large number of hunters that don’t support or understand predator hunting. I personally have received comments like, “I’m a hunter, but I would never kill a bear!”, which has led me to write this article discussing our “why”. It doesn’t go unnoticed that I’m probably preaching to the choir since you are reading Bear Hunting Magazine, but it’s my intent to create some awareness and help other bear hunting enthusiasts arm themselves with discussion points and facts when it comes to defending our passion for and the necessity of bear hunting.

Every bear hunter’s personal “why” may be a little different from one person to the next, but there are some important, concrete facts to understand when explaining to others the crucial necessity of bear hunting. Anti-hunters will spew comments like, “Nature balances itself out.” Science and history both contradict this theory and it’s because of regulated and controlled hunting that populations of elk, deer, antelope, bears, and birds have become restored and sustainable. I recently read an article by the renowned author and hunter Ron Spooner where he describes being a member of the food chain beautifully, “We also are the only species that intentionally modifies habitats to benefit wildlife, transplants and restores species to former ranges, rescues threatened populations, provides disease control and abatement, and willingly taxes itself in order to pay for helping wildlife (game wardens, biologists).”

Mar/Apr 2024

It is truly because of hunters that we have healthy populations of ungulates and other popular species to hunt, and taking a regulated number of bears out of the mix is an important piece of the management puzzle. There have been numerous collared studies over the years in an attempt to better understand deer fawn mortality. One study was done in my home state of Wisconsin in the Chequamegon National Forest. During that study, 45 fawns were fitted with transmitters in the same area where 52 bears were wearing radio collars. Bears were responsible for 58% of the fawn deaths. It’s important to recognize that those studies only document a fraction of the amount of fawns killed by bears and other predators. Another collared study was done in 2014 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where bears were responsible for at least 57% of the fawn mortality documented during the first months of the collared fawns’ lives.

According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, “Bears are thought to have the best sense of smell of any animal on earth. For example, the average dog's sense of smell is 100 times better than a human's sense. A bloodhound’s sense is 300 times better. A bear's sense of smell is seven times better than a bloodhound's sense, or 2,100 times better than a human’s sense.” In other words, small and helpless deer fawns, elk calves, and moose calves are easy pickins for black bears, and managing their numbers helps increase the survival rates of other species.

Black bears are now by far the most common, wild, and large carnivore in this country. A consequence of the successful recovery is increasing the number of unwanted human conflicts. Bears not only destroy agricultural fields and sometimes kill livestock, but they are also attracted to people’s garbage bins, bird feeders, pet food, and campground smells. Bears typically don’t gingerly sneak around politely asking for handouts, but rather damage property, on occasion kill pets, and in rare situations injure or kill human beings.

They often provoke fear, especially with those who have had little direct experience with them. Conflicts are driven by many factors, such as the availability of their natural food sources and humans encroaching on their habitats while we expand our concrete jungles.

It only makes sense that if we install regulated methods of population reduction and control through hunting, conflicts can become more manageable. A prime example today is the state of Florida where the population of black bears is growing rapidly due to a lack of hunting, and conflicts surged to where they are now among the highest in the species’ range, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. On average bear populations grow 10% per year, which wouldn’t be a problem if their habitat could sustain that growth. But in the modern world of urbanization and mass agriculture gobbling up that bear habitat, it’s important to keep their numbers in check.

Maybe explaining our personal reason for why we bear hunt is even more important than scientific data or justification when we’re having social media conversations or even chats with our nonbear hunting friends. When you explain the passion behind the hunt, it can be more relatable to others. For me, bear hunting has become an absolute passion. Every year I run my own baits in Idaho with my good friend and business partner, Heath. I also plan at least 1-2 other bear hunts throughout the Spring. I’ve hunted bears with a bow, rifle, and pistol, and love every aspect of these diverse styles. I crave the sheer adventure of climbing the mountains on a spot-and-stalk hunt and watching other wildlife in the process. I love sitting on the ground or in the trees experiencing bears walking close enough to hear them breathe and smell their distinct aroma. I enjoy eating them just as much if not more than deer, elk, antelope, and other species. Their rendered fat can be used for cooking, making bird feed, and skin and hair care products. Their hides can be turned into incredible collectibles like pillows, purses, and vests, and their skulls and claws adorn many rooms in my house. They are challenging to hunt, but the reward is incomparable.

I was recently talking with my friend Renee Thorton, who is www.bear-hunting.com

an adult onset hunter.

The very first big game animal she hunted was a bear and her experience ignited her passion for hunting. She says, “I was thrilled, but also nervous and scared to pursue an apex predator species as my first big game hunt. I wasn’t sure how I would respond to being so close to black bears. I was preoccupied with making sure that I would harvest the animal with one shot and I was faced with the question every new hunter faces: how would I react to taking the life of an animal? I learned so much in those six days of hunting, skills I would carry into every future hunt, but most importantly I learned that I was mentally strong enough to overcome my fears. And my confidence levels soared, setting the tone for my journey into hunting and wildlife conservation.”

While many hunters and even non-hunters across the country embrace the importance of deer, turkey, and waterfowl hunting, it’s critical that we convey the passion and necessity of bear hunting. It only takes a little bit of perusing social media accounts, like The Sportsman Alliance, Blood Origins, or Howl.org to see the massive attempts of the anti-hunters to stop all forms of predator hunting. We all must get involved with our local conservation groups and state agencies and express our opinions on matters important to us. We cannot sit on the bleachers while the anti-hunters, anti-trappers, and anti-gunners try to take away our hunting heritage. And at the bare minimum, we have to have open dialogue with people so they can better understand bear hunting and its crucial role in wildlife management. This will help protect it for future generations.

Using OnX maps to explore more bear spots.

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ry

Great Hunts

Bruin

Destinations

Ontario Spring Bruins

by Al Raychard

I’’ve hunted Ontario a few times over the years and have fond memories of exciting bear hunting there. The last time I was there, I was invited by Horton Crossbow to join a spring hunt and review some of their new crossbows. It had been a while since I hunted in Ontario and I had the time, so I drove from my home in southern Maine, beating the traffic and congestion through Montreal and Ottawa the best I could, and on to North Bay where I headed north. Once I passed Ottawa, I recall miles of lonely but scenic highway I thought would never end, and north of North Bay even more desolate highway that became denser forest land the farther I drove. It was the longest drive I have ever undertaken for a bear hunt, but it was worth it. Of course, Horton Crossbow is long gone now but Ontario and its spring bear opportunities are still there, although not without controversy.

Ontario has a long history of bear hunting, allowing both resident and non-resident participation dating back to at least 1937, but separate spring and fall hunting seasons were not established until 1972. In 1980, bear-specific hunting licenses for residents and non-residents were put in place. In the early and mid-1990s when Ontario was enjoying its heyday as a top bear hunting destination—especially during the spring—20,000 to 26,000 bear hunting licenses were being sold annually, well over half to non-resident hunters.

Then in 1999 everything fell apart when the spring bear season was canceled, vigorously supported by anti-hunting and animal rights’ organizations, supposedly to protect cubs from becoming orphaned. Hunting organizations including the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH), other organizations in the tourist trade, and individual hunting outfitters saw it strictly as a politically motivated anti-hunting move and threat to a long-held hunting tradition and a way of life. Due to pressure in the right places, a spring hunt pilot season that was only open to residents was put in place in 2014 in eight northern Ontario wildlife management units (WMUs). In 2016, the pilot program was extended and expanded to 88 of 95 wildlife units and allowed non-resident participation. Then in January of 2020, the decision was made to permanently reestablish the spring

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bear hunt with minor changes pertaining to baiting and a shorter spring season in some WMUs. With the uncertainty of the spring bear hunt pretty much history, Ontario has once again become a popular destination for a number of solid reasons. If anything good came from the spring closure, it is that the bear population continued to grow. Prior to the closure, province-wide estimates typically put the bear population between 85,000100,000. By some estimates it is now upwards of 100,000 and as high as 115,000 and growing. Whatever the actual number, Ontario’s black bear population is now the second highest in Canada behind British Columbia and third highest in North America. The prospects of shot opportunity rates throughout the vast forested regions is extremely high and most outfitters catering to non-resident hunters routinely report equally high success rates. Although the odds are far less than in the western provinces, there is also the chance for a color-phase bear, normally brown, particularly in the west and northwest units close to the Manitoba border. One common, perhaps unique feature is a white chest blaze on a high percentage of Ontario bears, either in the form of a small, roundish tuff or a noticeable blaze stretching from shoulder to shoulder.

Another thing that makes Ontario a top spring bear destination is its proximity to population centers in the northeast and upper midwest United States as well as its variety of hunting options. Good highways cross the border at numerous points, extending well into the province, and many camps offering a wide array of amenities can be reached by vehicle.

Hunters also have the option to get off the beaten track and enter bear territories via more rustic accommodations, such as by floatplane. There is something for every bear hunter. Add in friendly, accommodating, and knowledgeable guides and outfitters—some of the best I have hunted with—plus affordable and easily obtainable hunting licenses, and it is easy to understand why Ontario is once again the popular spring bear hunting destination it is.

Oh, and one other thing. Many hunting camps are located on or near water that offer various trout and other popular species to help occupy time during non-hunting hours or after a successful hunt. Therefore, fishing gear is well advised.

Mar/Apr 2024

Estimated Bear Population: 100,000-110,000 +/Areas Open to Spring Hunting - Currently open in most WMUs. Spring Season Dates May 1-June 15, 2024 in most WMUs. May 1-May 7 in WMUs 82A, 83 & 84 in certain geographic townships only.

Ontario Overview

Bag Limit: 1 annually. In some WMUs residents may purchase a second bear permit.

Baiting Allowed-Yes Legal Weapons: Centerfire rifles, muzzleloaders, shotguns, vertical bows with 48 pound minimum draw and crossbows with 119 pound minimum draw. Other specifics pertaining to arrow length and broadhead size also in force.

Non-resident License Requirements/Fees/Accessibility: Non-resident and resident hunters must be in possession of an Ontario Outdoor Card. The cost is $8.58 and must be carried while hunting. Non-resident black bear/ tag-$240.81 plus applicable taxes. Resident bear/2nd bear tags $43.86. Proof of firearm accreditation if hunting with a firearm are also required. A black bear hunting validation certificate is also required, available from outfitters. Non-resident bear license tag and fee-$255.17. Bear licenses and tags, Outdoor Cards and fishing licenses are available on line, at authorized vendors such as outfitters and Ontario Service Centers. Non-resident 8-day fishing license-$54.38 plus applicable taxes.

Contacts: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, www.mnr.gov.on.ca / 1-(800) 288-1155. *All non-resident bear hunters must book hunts through operators licensed to provide bear hunting services.

Bear Questions/Answers With Al Raychard

Q-I’ve successfully hunted bears in Maine, Idaho and Canada but would like to try my luck in the south. I’ve done some reach but was wondering which states you might recommend.

A-Several southern states now offer some excellent black bear hunting opportunities. Virginia’s coastal region is known for producing some reach monsters but I’d take a look at West Virginia. The bear population has increased to an estimated 13,000 and in 2023 hunters killed 2,830 bears, an increase of 64-percent over 2022. As they do everywhere success rates vary from year-to-year depending upon a number of factors and this years may not be as impressive but West Virginia has plenty of bears, plenty of public land and hunting license fees are reasonable. It is also a beautiful state. Good luck.

Q-I hunted last fall for the first with an outfitter and was somewhat surprised guides didn’t take hunters to their stands and baits until late afternoon. In your experience is this common?

A-It is not uncommon. Most outfitters and guides I have hunted with have no issue if hunters want to hunt in the morning or whenever they want. But late afternoon to dark www.bear-hunting.com

is typically considered “prime time.” Bears are opportunists and will feed any time of day but are primarily nocturnal feeding under the cover of darkness which makes late afternoon to dark the best times to hunt.

Another reason is most guides generally replenish bait stations at roughly the same time each day or two, usually in the late morning or when taking hunters to the stands and bears acclimate to this routine. On numerous occasions I’ve had guides bait while I got situated and a bear or bears would be on the bait within an hour.

Q-What is the best way to care for bear hides in the field if hunting with a guide or outfitter?

A-My best advice is talk to a local taxidermist that you know, trust or has a good reputation for quality work. Let him know where you’re hunting and explain what hide preparations and options are available in camp after talking to your guide or outfitter. If you don’t know a taxidermist there’s an excellent article by Jane Waller on choosing a taxidermist in the January/February 2024 of Bear Hunting Magazine. If you keep old issues of BHM like I do John Hayes had a good article on hide care in the March/April 2022 issue.

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Sacred Pursuit with TL Jones

Red Flags in Dog Jockeys @TLJonesHVP

Down south we have a term for men who peddle dogs—we call them “dog jockeys”. The word “jockey” means to deal shrewdly or fraudulently. Obviously, not everyone who has a dog for sale is a crook, but it’s common enough to deserve its open article. I literally despise seeing someone get cheated out of hard-earned money on a useless dog.

Anyone that’s been in the hound business long enough will be familiar with the things I’m about to share.

My aim is to familiarize newer houndsmen with some of the tricks of the trade that dog jockeys employ to deceive others. These are red flags that I’d be cautious about.

times, and that’s always a reason to be suspicious. #2 – Dogs Being Advertised at the End of Hunting Season This is an ongoing joke of mine. I laugh every year at the end of bear season when the great dog sale begins. When a genuine hunter has hunted a dog for an entire season and wants to get rid of it, that raises a red flag to me. He may have a legitimate reason for selling the dog, but I’d still want to know why.

#3 – Dogs Being Advertised with No References A top dog can’t be hidden. Word of great dogs spreads like wildfire. If the Dog Jockey can’t give you the names #1 – Dogs Being Advertised to the General Public Yes, you read that right. If a dog is being advertised of other houndsmen who can vouch for the dog’s ability, please beware. If the seller claims he only hunts by himself, do a doufor sale, that’s a red flag. Top dogs are seldom for sale in the big game world. If they do come up for sale, they usually ble take. Maybe he does hunt alone, but maybe he doesn’t. don’t have to be advertised. Really good bear dogs are nor#4 – Dogs Being Advertised Based Primarily on Registration mally well known and multiple people have already spoken Papers for them just in case they might ever be for sale. The best The first question you ask about a hound for sale houndsmen could probably sell 10 good dogs today if they had them for sale. Having said that, there will be good dogs that pop up from time to time and I don’t want to leave the Have a hound topic you want covered? impression that all dogs being advertised are no good. Just move with caution on any dog for sale to the general public.

Email requests to: Dog Jockeys will normally have a string of dogs for sale at all sacredpursuit@protonmail.com 56

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shouldn’t be about its ancestry or registration papers. The dog for sale should stand alone as a functional hunting dog if you’re going to buy it. Ask about the dog for sale and then ask about the ancestry. Dog Jockeys will roll out those multi-generation registration papers and hoodwink the unsuspecting quick as a wink. They sell the dog based on its relatives instead of its ability. If a Dog Jockey can’t tell what a dog is, that’s a red flag.

season to

#6 – Dogs Being Advertised as Pup Trainers This potentially means the dog is old and/or slow. In bear hunting, you’re generally hunting a pack of dogs. If an old dog can’t keep up, that’s not good for pup training. You don’t want pups' lollygagging around with an old dog that’s three miles behind the action all day. If someone is starting totally from scratch and needs to jump start some really young pups, then maybe an old slow pup trainer makes sense. Just think through what you're buying and how it’s practically going to work for you in the real world. There are legitimate older dogs that come up for sale, but watch for this particular angle being used by a Dog Jockey.

#9 – Dogs Being Advertised as Pack Dogs Unlike some houndsmen, I like a good pack dog.

I’ve seen some hounds over the years that were not stand alone hounds but they had an extra something special when blended in with a pack that could make a big difference. However, a Dog Jockey may be using the term pack dog as a cover for the fact that the dog is entirely worthless. Ask what the dog lacks. Ask what makes him worth keeping if he has limitations.

scramble for dogs. It makes no sense, but they do it. Men with tip #5 – Dogs Being Advertised Because the Owner Has Too Many dogs have waited months to get back in the woods with Dogs their dogs, and they’re not selling two weeks before the This is such a weak selling point that I’m not sure why season unless something bad happens. anyone uses it. Every time I see this sales pitch, I immediately balk.

This may sound contradictory, but the best time The seller is admitting that he has an excessive amount of dogs, he’s to buy a hound is during the season—that way you can evaluated all of them, and this is the one out of them all he wants arrange to go see the dog in action. Dog Jockeys with rid of the most. I would ask, “if you have a lot of dogs, why is this one bad motives are going to find a reason not to let you see the one you like least?” the dog hunt.

#10 – Dogs Being Advertised as Started Dogs There are great buys in started dogs. It’s very #7 – Dogs Being Advertised Exceptionally Cheap possible to get a young hound showing promise from Yes, it’s possible to get a great dog for free if someone someone legitimate. And it’s also possible this is a trick wants to do you a favor. It’s possible to buy a great dog for peanuts used by a Dog Jockey for a dog that will never bark at a for various reasons. Cheap dogs that are also great are an excepbiscuit. Ask what they mean by this in great detail. A legit tion to the rule. Dog Jockeys have to move a lot of dogs to make houndsmen will tell you exactly what the pup has and money. They prey on people who hope to get a deal on a great dog. hasn’t done in concrete terms.

This is not an exhaustive list of tricks used by Dog #8 – Dogs Advertised Right Before Hunting Season Opens Jockeys; they are a slick and crafty bunch. I’m just hoping Dog food is too expensive for a genuine hunter to feed a that I’ve shined enough light on the subject so you can dog all Spring and Summer and then sell it just before the season see that the tree is slick and not talk yourself into seeing begins. For whatever reason, some men wait until right before the a coon in those leaves when nothing is there.

www.bear-hunting.com

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{Hounds and Bears} Column

IN Hot PUrsuit

By Barry ‘Bear’ Siragusa @thehuntinghound

The Benefits of C ross Training Good for the Body | Good for the Mind

The author suggests crosstraining different types of working dogs can make you a better houndsman.

You have probably watched ESPN or Monday Night leave me scratching my head, wondering how best to react to something. I once had a hound start to track a lynx, switch to a Football and listened to the commentators blather on about fox, and then switch again to deer. To add insult to injury, she what makes each individual athlete unique and how the athletes train. Athletes like Michael Jordan, Lebron James, and crossed the road with all three while I stood with a group of guys who had come to hunt with me, making it thereby impossible for Dion Sanders are still discussed at length, not only because they were/are the best of the best (arguably, I'm a Steph Curry me to lie about what actually went down. This all happened in the span of about 10 minutes. I was left picking my jaw up off fan myself) but also because they were high level performers the ground while my face turned red from embarrassment, which in multiple sports. Lebron was an extremely talented football was made worse by the not-entirely-good-natured ribbing I player before entering the GOAT discussion in the NBA. Dion Sanders was a outfielder for the Yankees at the same time he received as my friends found the entire episode to be hysterically was untouchable in the NFL. Jordan retired from basketball and funny. This was a young hound, and my embarrassment coupled with the fact that I thought she was old enough to know better, played baseball, albeit not very well, before un-retiring and made me very angry. This was early in my career with hounds returning to the NBA where he was king.

There are numerous other examples of athletes train- but—luckily for everyone involved—I had been training sled dogs for 20+ years at that point and knew to keep my temper in check ing and competing in multiple sports. There are just as many examples of brilliant minds applying themselves to something as I went to fetch the wretched animal and banish her to the box new and challenging to hone their mental edges. The flexing of for the rest of the day.

Through my podcast, I have had the pleasure of talking their literal and proverbial muscles is almost always positive for to many great houndsmen. Some are a wealth of information all aspects of their “main” area of expertise; be it basketball, because they have never done anything else; their level of expebaseball, or astrophysics (did you know Neil deGrasse Tyson rience is unparalleled. Some of the guests have, over the years, was the captain of his high school wrestling team?). If cross training in its various forms is so popular among the super elite trained multiple types of dogs for multiple tasks. Steffan Kichta had catch dogs for pigs, terriers for ground work, and beagles in multiple fields and sports, then what about us hound folk? before he got into the treeing hounds. Becky Dwire trained Would it benefit us, and what would it even look like? labradors and bird dogs before starting to run lions with hounds.

One of my favorite parts of training hounds is the frequency and regularity in which I find myself in situations that Ross Ellwanger and Jared Moss both train and breed bird dogs 58

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as well as extremely high performing packs of hounds. My mediocrity as a houndsmen would be even more critically bad if I hadn't trained sled dogs for years prior to beginning with hounds. I have found that every breed and type of working dog I have trained has given me new tools and techniques to use while training my hounds.

I once had a lead sled dog that came to me as an adult. He was experienced enough to know that some dog mushers are idiots and, as far as he was concerned, the jury was still out on me. Shortly after he arrived, we left for an early season run to break trail and open up a section that would connect us to a bigger trail system. I knew where we were; Blue, the lead dog, did not. When we had broken trail for a few hours, I could see the reflective stake that marked the groomed trail about 30 feet in front of us. Blue couldn't and decided that he had had enough. He suddenly hung a left turn and spun the entire team around to head back the way we had come. I went forward and got him and pulled him and the team around again towards the groomed trail. As soon as I let go, he turned again. This happened 13 times. He finally got so angry with me that he bit me. We exchanged ideas about acceptable behavior, and I told him to hold the team out in the direction I wanted to go. When I returned to the sled, he pulled the team the remaining 30 feet and we dumped down onto the groomed trail that allowed for easier pulling. From that moment, Blue decided that I was actually worth the powder to blow me up with, and it was the start of a long and beautiful relationship that lasted until he died of cancer at 13 years old.

That experience was applicable 15 years later when I was given an adult hound that had experienced so many strange things in her life that the road to a good working relationship between us was rife with potholes and emotional baggage that had fallen off the proverbial car roof.

Remembering Blue, and how a seemingly innocuous interaction paved the way for one of the greatest relationships I have ever had with a dog, held me in good stead with this hound. She never became the hound equivalent of Blue for me. However, we did work through a lot of her problems and she has enjoyed a long and still ongoing career as a brilliant hound with demons that still trip her up on a regular basis. She gave me the best bear race I have been a part of, running a bear alone for several hours.

She managed to stop it multiple times despite the bear venting its frustration about being jumped out of the blueberry patch we found it in.

Training another type of working dog compensated for my lack of experience with hounds, and it has made the transition from one type of working dog to another less daunting. Even as I train my hounds, I continue to train other breeds for other things. I currently have a border collie that I am training on sheep. I even see good trainers doing this as well. Becky Dwire is currently training an Alaskan husky for skijoring, and she says it has given her some insight into dog movement while in motion.

Hounds, unlike bird dogs or border collies or sled dogs, are pretty self-sufficient while out working. The connection between the hounds and the houndsman is long-distance and tentative at best. Still, Jared Moss has credited his experience with bird dogs for giving him the tools to put a handle on his hounds.

Anyone who has spent multiple days trying to catch a hound that doesn't want to be caught can attest to the practicality of having a handle on your hounds. Basic manners in the kennel was also something that I taught my sled dogs and have reflexively taught to my hounds. I had my nose broken five times by a husky jumping up when I bent down to feed—that is enough gushing blood and tears for one lifetime. Teaching my hounds to sit has kept it from happening again. The other three times my nose has broken was purely by my own stupidity (I could have sworn I mounted that rifle scope farther forward).

Doing the work to expand our dog/hound training toolbox is rarely a mistake. Unlike me, you may have this hound thing pretty well down, but there is always room for improvement. I believe that you and your hounds will appreciate that you did something to become a better version of yourself, even if that means needing to train a bird dog to make it happen. www.bear-hunting.com

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Jim Gritus Arizona - Fall 2023 Predator Called Into 60 Yards!

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