This years Quest started like the past two Quests with guys flying or driving into Boston and meeting at my house. Molly & I had seven visitors for Friday night dinner. Paul (PV) picked up Randy & Thomas Reeves as they flew in from Texas, Uncle Barry came down from Maine, Rob (Blue Monday) drove up from Cape Cod, and Steve (Curveman) is local. Everyone arrived around 4 PM. After shooting both bows & the $!#* and a tour of my basement, we settled in for some burgers and fixings...we all sure enjoyed Paul's addition of Elk burgers. Nothing like wild game to make your mind wander about the up coming week.
At 9:30 PM we got the call from Tom that his group from western Mass was hitting the road. We let them get an hour head start cause our drive from eastern Mass would be that much shorter to the Canadian border where we met up at 1:30 AM. It is a long 10 hour drive through the night to get to La Tuque by morning, but everyone was pumped to get there.
In La Tuque we met up with the Langer Crew and Bill & Myron from IL. Now a 30 mile trip into the bush with camp at the end of the road...did I mention dust, bumps, and logging trucks to avoid on that dirt road :eek:
After getting set up in camp, it was off to refresh all the baits. I usually hunt the river so I took a crew in boats to 'em done. All 24 baits had been hit and cleaned out...that sure made spirits fly high.
Now to get bows ready & broadheads sharpened. This is the point where I try to focus on my goal for the hunt. Over the past three years I'd had a mission...first was the LDB bow hunt which was the seed that started an all traditional bear hunt called Quebec Bear Quest! That year I was lucky enough to get the largest bear in camp with the LDB. Plus Allen took a bear with it too and a good friend Brian gave up his compound to take a bear with my Griffin. The next year Bear Quest I, I was also lucky enough to harvest a very nice bear with my Osage selfbow and a stone point from Woody. Ray Hammond was in the tree above me catching some amazing video footage of how sharp a stone point can be with a complete pass thru shot ending in a death moan. Last year my mission was to use a tippit broadhead with Eric Ackerman's beautiful hickory selfbow also ending in success. Thus the start of Team Tippit
This year I was going to use Charlie Lamb's beautiful longbow that he made me after the TX Pig Gig...but I tweaked my shoulder and will have an MRI on it this coming Wednesday. I was comfortable dropping down to my 58" 53#@28 Griffin and using another tippit broadhead but there wasn't any driving force behind this years hunt. So I decided I'd try for a larger bear and maybe hunt the entire week not really caring if I got a bear or not. After all I still had four bear hides in the freezer, a nice shoulder mount of the LDB bear, and a 6 foot bear rug from my largest bear.
By shear fate this year's mission was about to change...Doc
Topic: Bear Quest III >>---> Start Your Engines (Read 22639 times)
