Went out for my first hunting season last fall and was instantly hooked. I'm generally a DIY kind of guy so no mentor, no partner, just picked a spot on Google maps, packed up the car and went out solo for 5 days in September. Didn't manage to bring anything home to fill the freezer for the winter but gained a ton of knowledge, managed to get some grouse with my bow for camp meat and set the goal of getting a black bear with it as well. Hunted weekends and day trips throughout the rest of the fall and found some good spots for the future, lots of sign but never connected with any bears. Spent the winter practicing archery as much as possible and increased my comfortable distance shooting with broadheads to 50 yards. Invested in a proper frame pack, boots and upgraded other gear that I had found to be a hindrance. Access had been an issue so I saved up and purchased a 4x4 with decent ground clearance to get me into the terrain my citymobile wouldn't take me the year prior. Experimented with different trail camera locations and found a fairly active predator travel corridor. Spent my evenings and weekends scouring bear threads, desk scouting via Google maps/earth and sending countless messages and texts back and forth with some of the generous members of this forum asking all the dumb questions I couldn't find the answers to on Google. South slopes, skunk cabbage, follow the green, play the wind, stalk in when they're preoccupied feeding, got it! My 8 year old son is excited to tag along and has his own goals, he's hopeful he'll get to see a cub this spring. April is quickly approaching but I feel ready and confident.
Fast forward a few months. I wake up to a beautiful morning and what do you know, finally enough daylight to go shoot some arrows before work! No better way to start the day. Leaving the range I felt confident, my truck would take me where I needed to be this time, my bow is shooting accurately, I can almost smell the cheese smokies...next thing I know all I can smell is smoke and pennies, some hoser had tried to blow a red light and totalled my truck. Wellllll shit, timing doesn't get much worse than this.
Time to call it quits? Give up until fall? Sit around watching the spring bear photos roll in from my couch while wishing I could enjoy the adventure and soak up the smell of the campfire myself? Or be thankful that I can still walk and post a thread in the off chance someone from the lower mainland had a partner cancel on them this season or has room in the truck to haul along a new hunter and his bow & possibly pass on some valuable knowledge...by no means looking for a guided hunt or anything, mostly just want to get away from the city and hit the reset button although I'll gladly try and punch my tag on any meat bear someone might decide to pass up. Certainly not looking for any sympathy or pity but thought some of you can probably relate and am interested to hear how many of you guys have stories of last minute wrenches thrown in your plans, hunts where nothing seemed to go right etc.
Good luck to everyone heading out over the next few weeks, hope to see some bruisers hitting the dirt soon!