My trip began with my picking up Border Bob, JC, and Barry Wensel at Tippit’s house to load up the pickup and head out to meet the others. Barry of course, was witty right from the start and the fun began immediately with a lot of great storytelling-I don’t think it’s possible to hang out with these guys for any length of time and have it be otherwise! Anyway, after meeting up with some more new friends, we drove all night to Quebec and only Bowdoc, JC and Eric had any energy to hunt the first day. Bowdoc tagged one the first night and drug it out himself and proceeded to help with cooking. He was the cook the rest of the way and did a fantastic job for us though as Tippit had warned, it became a challenge to swallow due to so much of the laughter Bowdoc provided!
Of course I will let others tell you about their respective hunts so I’ll just share mine: I’d hunted bears a few times before including tagging a nice one last year on this trip so I was certainly used to seeing bears come in. All of the other bears I’d seen though had been rather timid; observing the terrain, circling, and certainly taking off whenever something alarmed them. Not this one. After hesitating only for a second near the top of a crest, my bear started to snort and pop and all that jazz while it followed part of my path right to my tree without any hesitation whatsoever! NO timidity at all! He owned the place! He put his foot up on this little mound below me and I confess that I was somewhat nervous at the boldness of this bear to put it mildly and thought of making a noise or throwing something at it before it actually touched my tree! (I should mention that my treestand platform is below my chin in height). However, when something did startle it- he took off like a bat out of hell! Needless to say I was relieved but only for a millisecond as this bear was NOT running away as I thought but only chasing something off! In fact, whenever he heard or smelled anything he only continued to charge it then huff and puff at it-including once in my general direction but fortunately pass me to the side of my stand! (I don’t care who you are-this is a sphincter tightening experience, let me tell you)! The area the bear was so fiercely guarding was between me and my truck and I did not so have the general encouragement from the bear that I was confident I would have free passage. So while it did not have the best coat I was looking for it was decent and of an acceptable size (4th of the 10 taken it turned out) and I decided the safest way out of the woods was to take it so I did! Heart shot! The bear dropped about 15 yards away! Wahoo! (with heavy doses of relief)!
Just to put a “little cherry of top” of an unbelievably great time, I managed to “Robin Hood” one of my arrows! Of course I had everyone sign it. Uncle Barry’s message: “Now you’re shooting like me!”
What a great group of guys to hunt with! I’ve made some great new friends and have already been invited to hunt all over the country! That’s the highlight for me! As Barry just said; it was absolutely perfect!
Topic: Quebec Bear Hunt--2 Bears Arrowed on Video--added pg 42!! (Read 44405 times)
