Let me start by saying that I’ve been trying to figure out spring bear hunting for a few years now without much success. A few months ago, I started a thread asking for help whit my quest for spring bear. My plan was to travel a bit further than I would usually do, spend mor time [up to a week), and go to an area that is known to have lots of bears. Steven offered to help me out and point me in the right direction. I took up on his generous offer. We had a nice chat over the phone and my plan to success was set in motion.
Steven is a very generous and knowledgeable person, we are very lucky to have him on this forum. He suggested an area I should focus on, and it did not disappoint.
Thank you Steven.
This is the story of my 2021 Spring bear hunt.
Six weeks before our trip I bought an old beater truck to fix it up as my “bush/hunting” truck (this will come int play later). I’ve spent most of my free time Fixing the important stuff to make it reliable for the trip. Fortunately, it only needed one major item replaced the rest were just small things that that had to be fixed, parts swapped, etc... Everything came nicely together, I felt confident that I won’t have any major issues whit the car during this trip.
Saturday;
My hunting buddy, lets call him Mr. Hawkeye and I left town Saturday morning not really rushing just taking it easy, as we could be gone up to a week. We arrived at our destination early afternoon and the search for bear signs and exploring the new to me area began. I found promising signs on the end of a logging road that ended at a small lake. We kept exploring other roads and just trying to get the general lay of the land.
There wasn’t much of any other fresh sign of any bears so I decided that I will hike into that promising spot in the evening hoping to connect whit that bear. I misjudged the distance and parked the car much further than I intended. It ended up being a long hike. The wind was in my face during my hike in. Perfect! I approached the area very slowly, scanning the area, taking few steps, etc. I got very close to where I believed the bear would be. That is when I saw him. A large boar feeding perhaps 100-150 meters at the bottom of this small valley. My mind started to race… I can’t believe I just stalked a bear on my first day! I ducked down, wind still in my face, took my backpack off and got my rifle ready. At this point I still had some shrubs and vegetation in my line of sight so I had to close in about 25 meters to be able to get a clean line for a shot. As I start my final stalk, I feel the wind sifting. In a matter of a few seconds the wind changed directions and it was blowing towards the bear. I look up and see the bear having his nose up in the air and sniffing and turning slowly towards the trees and slowly disappearing in the timber. I tried to make it to the spot where I could have a clear shot, but I didn’t make it on time. Despite not getting the bear it was a very exhilarating experience as I have never stalked a bear before.
I hiked back to the car, we continued exploring the area further in. As it started to get dark, we decided to head back to a spot that we picked earlier to spend the night at. It was almost at the end of the legal hunting time, I was driving around 50kmh when we heard and felt something weird. I stopped, got out of the car just to discover that my right rear tire is shredded. This discovery was followed by a copious amount of swearing before I proceeded to change the tire. I had a weird feeling and checked the tire pressure on the other tires. It turns out that two other tires were grossly overinflated to 50psi!
I had the car in the tire shop the week before the trip to balance the tires. The only logical explanation is that someone didn’t pay attention when inflating the tires. Usually, I check these kinds of things after the shop but this time I just didn’t. The other unexpected discovery was that the rims of the car were 20” and the spare is a tiny 16”.
Nothing else we could’ve done at this point so we drove slowly back to the camping spot and enjoyed the evening as much as possible.
Sunday;
In the morning we limped into the closest town hoping to get cell reception or find a Wi-Fi hotspot. Once in town, calls were made, internet searched trying to find tires for the truck. Well, as it turns out pretty much every tire shop is closed on Sundays. We were able to contact Mr. Hawkeyes son and ask him to check local tire shops on Monday morning to see if we can find new rubber for the car. Whit not much else left to do we drove back into the bush slowly whit a mismatch of wheel sizes. The closest spot we saw signs was where I hiked in on Saturday. Drove back there and decided to make the best out of a crappy situation by hiking in and trying to find the bear from yesterday. It was hot and dusty, the mosquitos and the bugs were merciless. The bear didn’t seem to get the notice and was a no show. Although I didn’t see a bear, I found a nice moose shed.
Thirsty, dusty, and bug bitten I get back in the car and turn the blower up to maximum to cool me down a bit. That is when a big cloud of smoke and an unsettling sound emerged from the blower motor. I would have been not too much upset about this hadn’t I bought and installed a brand-new blower motor before my trip! As you can imagine, this did not make me very happy. We spent the rest of the trip without A/C, not even able to turn on the blower for some air movement, windows rolled down eating dust in 25-30c weather, fun times.
We did not see any bears that day and camped at the same lake as the day before.
Monday;
We limped back to the town Monday morning to see if Mr. Hawkeyes son was able to find something for us. The only place that had tires that fit was CT but they didn’t had any appointment to install them until Friday. However, he was able to find some good used tires on rims that was cheaper than just new tires and would fit our car. The only problem is that it was almost 100km away.
Decisions were made, and we made our way slowly to get those wheels, I was concerned about my differential as driving that far whit that much difference in wheel size cannot be good for it for a limited slip differential.
Luckily, we made it without any problems, put the new wheels on and we were back in business by the afternoon. There was only one problem. What the heck am I going to do whit 4 extra set of wheels??? Luckily, we were able to find on our way back a small shop that was willing to take the tires of the rims and dispose of them. I was just going to keep the rims, sell them when back home to recoup some of the cost. I had a hitch cargo carrier on and we were able to tie them down there without too much trouble.
In the evening we were back at the hunting grounds and kept exploring the area. I’m sure some locals and campers were scratching their heads when they saw my setup. Who drives around in the bush whit an extra set of rims tied to the back of a car!?!? LOL.
We saw a sow whit two cubs that day and lots of promising signs, but no other bears.
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