Ok boys and girls, where was I? Oh yes. I’ll finish her up on this post.
Ryan and I discussed possible locations. Finding a stand with bear activity was not a problem… they all had multiple bears hitting them and hitting them hard. Finding one with the right set up for an east wind, with cover for my fidgety body to hide behind and still be close enough for a confident shot led us back to “The Ladder”.
Ryan and I dropped Tim off at a stand we had set a trail camera on the first day. It showed good sign. Tim walked into the stand on the road and stopped in his tracks. A fresh bear print in the mud was large enough to raise his experienced eyebrow. He pointed to it and gave Ryan the “all is good” signal that he was happy with the stand choice. He went deeper into the woods to meet his quest head on. Ryan and I drove off to set up mine.
Once back at “the Ladder” we rechecked the wind. It was still coming from the east, opposite of it’s direction two nights previous. A blowdown laying 5 feet in the air west of the barrel would make a nice frame to hide behind and brush up a bit.
Ryan hung the stand, once more to my desired height . After I climbed up, we checked for and removed branches that could interfere with my bow limbs. Ryan knocked down a small tree that was potentially in the line of fire and added heaps of brush against the blowdown to create a wall of wood that hid the hunter inside.
Feeling confident I was ready, he coached me just enough to boost my confidence. He reminded me of my practice that day and how I was flinging arrows right on the SPOT I was picking. He told me once I picked a bear and determined I was going to arrow it to pick a spot, to focus on it with all of my energy, to get mad at that spot and only think of piercing that spot with my newly re-sharpened broadhead that wanted revenge for the previous night. He checked if I needed anything else. I wanted a practice shot. He grabbed a chuck of wood and set it out in the spot he figured was THE spot. My shot was good but missed by an inch to the left. “One more” I declared. He grabbed the arrow and handed her back. The second shot was closer still, almost knocking the wood chip over. He gave me the “thumbs-up”, returned my arrow to me and said “ok, you’re ready, this is the night Brian Lance will kill a bear”. I told him I was not going to wait around for another bruiser but going to take the first good target of opportunity that was not a cub. I knew Ryan’s camp and concession had huge bears. Great Bears! I did not want to kill anything so small that he would be embarrassed but he looked me square in the eye and said “this is your bear hunt, you kill the bear you want to kill and think only about that spot”. And he was off.
And there I sat, waiting for my destiny to play itself out one more time.
I focused on the killing zone. I focused on the chuck of wood Ryan left 3 feet away from the barrel. And I sat still. I sat without moving. I sat and watched and waited.
About 6:00pm a scent caught my nose. Not a pleasant scent. I thought it smelled like death. Working in a hospital I know what that smelled like, unfortunately. The wind swirled enough that I could tell the smell was behind me, from where my wind was supposed to be going, yet I was catching the back draft of a bear. My ThermaCell was confirming the wind shift. Ever so slowly I began to turn my head, one millimeter at a time, to my right. Before it moved even an inch, there was a huff behind me. It was indeed a bear.
I heard it moving now, not sure of it’s distance, or direction, I had to wait longer. It was moving from my right to my left, up the hill to the ridge top. Then I caught a glimpse of black out of my left eye and it rounded the top of the blowdown and headed back down hill toward the bait barrel. It was not a particularly spectacular bear. I knew that immediately. But is was close enough! It might be, could be, would be my confidence bear. It looked at my position as it walked with an even, slow gait toward the barrel. Toward the spot at which I had just shot practice arrows two hours earlier. It began it’s investigation of the barrel and the temptation it contained. Then it stopped and turn directly toward me. It figured something was over there and it wanted to know what it was. It bullied it’s way toward the blowdown without exercising any undue caution. It stuck its head into the brush pile to gain a sniff. It paused, its snout inches from my stand platform. Again, folding himself in half he did an about-face and trotted back to the barrel. I stood.
It grabbed a few morsels from the hole in the barrell without a care in the world. It decided to once again approach the blowdown and the scenario played itself out once more. This time as it returned to the barrel I raised up the bow and found THE SPOT. I saw nothing else. The PAX found anchor itself just like it has done thousands of times over the last few months in preparation for this moment. The spot was glowing. I saw neither my bow hand nor my arrow. I saw a patch of fur that needed to be opened for blood to rush through. The arrow was off. The blaze orange cresting, fletching, and fur tracer appeared in it’s right side then disappeared only to be replaced with a crimson rush that could only be one thing. Blood.
The bear leapt forward and dashed through the pines on his way to the creek bed below. As he passed the crest of the shelf, noticing only open area below, he turned hard left to follow the shelf line to the east. I saw a mass flash from his left side. I was sure this had to be my fletchings hanging out the passthrough side. Further east he dashed then hooked left once more up into much thicker cover. Then he was gone. The woods were silent. I waited for the calling a bear makes as he passes into the other world, but it did not come.
I grabbed my compass and took a bearing on the last spot I had seen him. 85 degrees. About 60-70 yards away. Up that rise. In those thick saplings. Remember. Got it. Still silence.
I had asked Ryan earlier in the week if I should track a bear if I hit it. We agreed that I would only do that if it was still light and I heard a death moan. Light it was, but it was silent too. I would leave the woods, leave my bear and blood trail, and go back to Ryan’s truck which was waiting a couple miles up the trail while he and his crew tried to recover a broken 4 wheeler from earlier in the week.
Before I left, I had to at least review the area of impact for any sign. A bloody arrow, bright with arterial blood remained stuck in the dirt where once a bear had stood. A patch of blood sprayed 5 inches wide decorating the ladder that the bear fled past. It was good sign to my eyes.
The walk helped my burn off the adrenaline that had me shaking.
I stuck my arrow into Ryan’s ATV trailer. There I sat. I paced. I waited for the sound of ATVs which came well before dark. As Ryan pulled up, a cry escaped him. “Brian Lance… did you kill a bear?” I simply looked back at the arrow stuck in his trailer and said “I think so”.
More adventures followed in the trailing and tracking, more bears had arrived on the scene, blood trails we figured we would walk next to forced us to crawl. The sign disappeared. We four, Ryan, David, Ron (Ryan’s father) and I moved further along the path of the fleeing bear spread wide to find even one more speck of blood but would never see another.
As we worked our way to the spot I had last seen my bear, Ryan hollered “BEAR”. I spun around asking “where, where?” David said “we found your bear”. Again I asked “where” and moved closer to the pair. “Turn around” they said. Well darn it, I had just come from there, but did as the commanded. Not five yards from where I was looking for blood lay my bear. Dead. Bled out. The VPA had struck high and left of my SPOT but still entered the boiler room, barely. The exit hole on the left side was plugged by a 4 inch chunk of fat protruding like a giant white tick on a black coat.
I touched him. My Bear. My first Bear! My confidence Bear!
Handshakes and pictures followed.
He measured 6 feet wide and 5-½ feet long. A 5-¾ bear. His face was scarred from scrapping with whatever got in his way and his coat was rubbed clean of it’s fur. Probably the smallest bear taken at Stickflingers this year, and certainly the ugliest. He was killed at 6:12pm on 6-08-11 in the Porcupine Mountains of Manitoba by Big Sexy aka Brian Lance (Bel007).
Ryan Derlago with Stickflingers, Manitoba Bowhunts delivered just what I had asked for. He catered to what I wanted out of a bow hunt. I will continue to be a client of his as long as he lets me come back. See you next year Ryan, and we’ll go chase that BIG son-o-gun together.
Topic: Stickflingers, last week...rookies, big bears, and bloody arras. (Read 5599 times)
