The Burn part II: One last shot

[45freezer]

For the folks with no time to read, scroll down for the video. For everyone else, get the bourbon out and enjoy...it's gonna be a long one.

Caddisguy guaranteed I would see a bear in this burn. At the time I remember wishing that was a real guarantee that I could hold him to and not just a phrase, little did I know how serious a Caddis guarantee is.


My girlfriend Kat had wanted to come hunting with my son and I for a while now, she's made overnight trips with me before but we've never gone out as a family so we had planned to do that on the weekend of the 21st...I would be tied up the following weekend so this was going to be our final chance at putting a bear in the freezer before the season closed. We both booked the Friday off work and I chose to take us to the region 3 burn my son and I had hunted 4 weeks prior. No bears were spotted that time around but we saw loads of sign and set up a trail cam while we were there. Figured this would be more of a family camping trip, a hike in to check the cam, and a stroll through the burn with my bow than anything else since I've been struggling all spring just to lay eyes on a bear in a legal hunting area...of course in the back of my mind I hoped this would be the time things finally came together.


We drove up Friday morning, parked my 2WD, 2 door Cavalier at the bottom of an old overgrown fire road and began hiking in. The road goes up about 2.5km, the burn begins at 1km and continues to the top. I looked back at historic satellite imagery on Google Earth to see if I could find out when the burn happened, it only goes back to 2004 though and it was already burned at that point. Any resources to help satisfy my curiosity would be much appreciated.


The trail cam is at the bottom of the burn on a game trail that had lots of sign last month, only one bear and two mule deer on the card though. Also not seeing many scat piles on the road anymore, not sure what happens to them over time but piles that were there a few weeks ago had disappeared, every pile of moose droppings was right where I had stepped over it before though. Getting a bit discouraged with the lack of sign we continued to slowly make our way up to the top as we planned to camp right near the end of the road. Berries are everywhere up there and should be ripe pretty soon, will be a great summer for the bears but with the lack of sign on the road I'm thinking they may be up higher now. Oh well, I know I'll still get to spend some quality time with the family and at the end of the day that's what really matters...or is that just what bad hunters say?