I went spring bear hunting the week of May 11th in Alberta. I met two young guy's (mid 20's)at the airport in Minnesota. It turns out they we were on the same plane into Edmonton and we were hunting with the same outfitter.
The week started like most do. Some seeing and shooting bears and other hunters not seeing any at all. Matt (waving in the next pic) came on this trip with his childhood buddy Todd. They grew up next to each other.
We get to the third day and Matt has not seen a bear during shooting light(both of these guy's shoot compounds) while his buddy had wounded a nice bear the night before and they could not recover that bear. Needless to say this kid was upset and almost quit hunting. On the way out to our stands we were all in the same truck when the guide told Matt that he had to run off a nice bear early that morning while setting a stand and that he thought Matt would be able to get that bear killed that night. Without missing a beat Matt told his buddy to hunt his stand and he would go sit another. Matt's buddy killed a beautiful bear that night out of Matt's stand, then another the next day from the same stand.
The two bears Matt "gave" to his friend Todd.
I was lucky enough to kill a beautiful bear the third day with my longbow, POC and Zwickey.
Perfect placement double lung pass through and my bear still ran 60 yards then 30' up a poplar tree, getting caught by it's hind foot falling out dead. Big time fun getting it down!!!
I thought about what Matt had done for his buddy. Really an easy decision for me because I had two bear tags and already had one killed. I watched a nice bear for over an hour two days before and didn't shoot this bear.I asked the outfitter to put Matt in my "hot" stand and told him I would hunt any other stand he wanted to put me in. Matt's jaw dropped open when the guide told him that he was hunting out of my stand the next afternoon. I asked the guide to come get me early so I could go in with them to pick up Matt at dark. We were waiting for dark when Matt came on the radio out of breath and hard to understand. I helped on the recovery of his first bear. Killed out of my bait site. What a great day in Alberta! I do have the pics but cannot post due to the compound bow in the pics.
Good "buddies" are hard to find...
John III
Topic: Bear Buddies in Alberta (Read 2184 times)
