2018/2019

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gas56
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by gas56 »

InstinctiveArcher wrote:
gas56 wrote: Sounds like taking pictures was the last thing on Trenton's mind when the Wolves found his scent trail where he walked across............. :lol:
The Wolves were probably trying to get his direction smelling his tracks so they could avoid him.
Having a sidearm along would probably make him feel safer but I don't know if Michigan allows a sidearm to be carried also with your hunting weapon.
I guess Trenton can tell us if it is.......
Yes, sidearms are legal here. You need to be 21 to have a concealed carry permit though. To be honest I never liked the idea of carrying a sidearm when bowhunting. Maybe it's the smart thing to do, but just isn't for me. I'm a better shot with a bow then a pistol anyways :lol:
Aren't Wolves still legal game there now also this year?
I know it was a big controversy there a couple of years ago about hunting Wolves.
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InstinctiveArcher
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by InstinctiveArcher »

gas56 wrote:
InstinctiveArcher wrote:
gas56 wrote: Sounds like taking pictures was the last thing on Trenton's mind when the Wolves found his scent trail where he walked across............. :lol:
The Wolves were probably trying to get his direction smelling his tracks so they could avoid him.
Having a sidearm along would probably make him feel safer but I don't know if Michigan allows a sidearm to be carried also with your hunting weapon.
I guess Trenton can tell us if it is.......
Yes, sidearms are legal here. You need to be 21 to have a concealed carry permit though. To be honest I never liked the idea of carrying a sidearm when bowhunting. Maybe it's the smart thing to do, but just isn't for me. I'm a better shot with a bow then a pistol anyways :lol:
Aren't Wolves still legal game there now also?
I know it was a big controversy there a couple of years ago.
Nope, that got shut down real quick.
They put it up to public vote so all these people down state who have never seen a wolf in their life go to make those decisions. I heard they are trying to get it going again so hopefully it works out. I know where I'll be going if I get a tag. :P
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xOEDragonx
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by xOEDragonx »

I had the pleasure of partaking in my first ever black bear hunt this week and after almost 50 hours in a tree stand, I finally connected with a nice boar. He's currently a main attraction of the "Dead Weight" community competition in the competition forum so I can't share his weight or any other size information yet aside from the pictures. I can share the story of my week though!

Just for context, in my home state of Maryland, bear permits are obtained by a lottery only. It only took me three years of putting into the lottery to draw a tag (many wait an average of 6-7 years, but it helps I live in a bear county though since they promise 25% of tags to residents of bear counties). Permittees are allowed to have two other people hunt under their tag so I got my boyfriend and father signed up to hunt along with me. My father is retired so he would have plenty of time to hunt the whole 5-day bear season with me, but unfortunately my boyfriend would only be able to join us for the first two days before having to go back to work. The property we were hunting is a large farm owned by my boyfriend's family only a short drive from where I live. The terrain is mountainous and a lot of the woods there are very rocky and brushy with briars so thick you can't see more than a few meters. The forested parts are mostly mature oak and hickory stands, there are several big agricultural fields and a solid quarter of the property is almost completely inaccessible (even on foot!) thanks to a jungle of invasive autumn olive bushes. That said, this inaccessible portion of the farm is an absolute haven for wildlife, including big whitetail deer and of course... black bear. The 5-day bear season is a Monday-Friday and the weather looked like it would cold and clear most days, so my father showed up to stay with us the Sunday before and bear camp was on!

I hardly got any sleep Sunday night and the little bit of sleep I did get was just full of me shooting imaginary bears in my dreams. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed when the alarm when off at 4:00am. I got everybody up, put on about 5 layers of warm clothing and we were out the door within the hour. It was about 6:00am before everybody was in place and sitting quietly. I was in a hang-on stand that I'd put up a couple weeks before overlooking a thick bottom that I knew was a pinch point for wildlife (big meadow on one side, big hill with an active coal mine on top on the other.) It's a great spot for deer hunting and I've had plenty of bears come into my deer corn there (see pictures below) so I was hoping to catch one passing through the area. My boyfriend was in a wooden box style blind that his father built some 10 years ago about 60 meters from me but because of the thick brush in that bottom, he was covering a good bit of area that I couldn't see at all. My father stayed about 300 meters away close to the fields. He has killed a couple bears before and was dead set on seeing one of us get the bear so he was more tagging along for the fun of the hunt than actually hunting himself. He watched the fields for us just in case a bear decided to pass through one of the clearings.
This was back in September while I was still feeding my deer. This pinch point area is awesome for deer...
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...and bears.
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The morning started with a great horned owl hooting in the tree overhead and a screech owl interrupting him with a sharp trill now and then. As the sky started to show the first hints of light, a couple coyotes began barking and fussing nearby us. They triggered a farm-wide howl and we were surrounded by dog-song right at daybreak. About a half hour later, a bobcat came trotting by my stand and headed to a nearby stream I could see for a drink before padding off into the thickets. This was only the third bobcat I've ever seen in several years of living in a bobcat area so it was an awesome surprise. Things got still for a long while after that. Around 10:00am the sun finally started to hit me and I warmed up pretty quickly. The woods were alive with squirrels (funny how I never see them when I hunt them, but the moment I get in a stand for anything else I'm surrounded...), chipmunks and a couple cutesy little birds. Every once in a while a Cooper's hawk would make a pass through the trees and get all the little critters fussing. I chirped once at a fox squirrel that was having the hardest time trying to bury a nut directly beneath my stand and the little guy proceeded to sprint up the tree directly next to me and stare me down angrily. Even a nuthatch flew up and gave me the stink eye when I made some bird noises at him. It's hard not to chuckle at the antics of some of the local wildlife. The forest is never boring.
Part of my father's view. Sorry for the cell phone picture quality.
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The rest of the day passed by slowly as I didn't really have any other unusual sightings. The bobcat came back right at dusk and just about pounced on a fox squirrel before the little critter spotted him at the last second and set off the barking squirrel alarms again. The cat crept back into the shadowy brush and I never saw him again. Right at dark, a coon showed up and milled about but didn't hang around long. It was getting too dark to see, so I climbed out of the tree and met everyone back at the truck. Day one was a scratch.

Tuesday morning was greeted with just about the same enthusiasm from everybody as Monday was. The routine was the same, only I decided to take my climbing stand and get in a different tree about 20 meters from my hang-on stand. The hang-on unfortunately just wasn't going to be comfortable enough for the all day sits. The morning was a quiet one. No owls, no coyotes, and no bobcat. It was noticeably warmer than Monday but the wind picked up quickly once the sun broke over the mountain and had our scent just swirling around in circles down there in that bottom. I had a bad feeling about the area but I also knew there wasn't really a better alternative on the property that I could legally hunt (further down the pinch point might have been less windy, but a family friend who also hunts the farm had a corn pile down there and baiting is illegal for Maryland bears so I didn't want to risk it. As long as I stayed 150 yards from any known bait, I was legal.) A few deer passed through the pinch point early on and they made it pretty clear that they knew we were in the area. They couldn't pick out where we were because the wind kept changing directions and swirling but they knew the area just wasn't safe. They blew a few times and cleared out pretty quickly. The rest of the day was uneventful.

Wednesday was the first day where I turned my alarm off and kept laying in the bed for a couple minutes. I sat from 6:00am-7:00pm without getting up once both Monday and Tuesday and this morning was the first moment where it hit me that I was kind of tired and really stiff. Plus, bear camp was now going to be down a member as my boyfriend had to return to work Wednesday morning. I was still pretty excited though so with only the tiniest shred of my previous enthusiasm missing, I woke my father up and we set out once again. I sat in my climber and he sat in the box blind where my boyfriend had been. It was much chillier that morning and the wind was still pretty brutal (blowing about 10-15 mph, gusting close to 30-40 mph), but at least it wasn't as erratic as it was the day before. We had deer in front of us most of the morning and despite still seeming nervous, they fed heavily on the brush and particularly on the invasive Japanese barberry bushes that were just covered in red berries. They bedded down around 10:00am at the edge of my view, about 80 meters away. I was stiff and cold at this point and needed a little change of pace. Around noon I climbed down out of the tree and met my father at the box blind. We decided to go for a little hike into the only part of the farm I've never seen before-- the heart of the autumn olive jungle. There's an old road that went through it but hasn't been maintained in years so we cut our way through just to see what we could find. As expected there was whole lotta deer sign and even the occasional bear sign. I learned a few new things about the farm from that hike that I hope to apply to my future hunts, although I still never plan to hunt that particular area. I like to think of it as a safe haven for the wildlife... but maybe that's just because if was to encounter a bear up there, we'd already be practically on top of each other. You genuinely can't see farther then about 5 meters up there, and that's on the road. By 2:00pm we were back in our stands, warmed up and ready for the bear's evening appearance. An appearance he never made.
The only small clearing we ever found in the autumn olive jungle.
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Not gonna lie, it was pretty hard to wake up Thursday morning. I was stiff from all the sitting and just mentally exhausted from the 10,000 different bear scenarios I had played out in my head since Monday morning. I knew Thursday was going to be our last day of nice weather though as they were calling for cold temperatures and nasty wet weather for most of the day Friday so I mustered up what enthusiasm I could and crawled outta bed. My father and I have this ongoing joke about how it seemed like every time he left me alone in a stand while we were hunting together when I was young, I would shoot a deer. It's true, I killed more animals as a kid when he got up and left me for a short walk/lunch break/bathroom break/etc then I ever did when he was nearby. So we decided to put the old joke to the test. This time I sat in the box blind and he sat up in the fields again 300 meters away. I had a pretty good feeling from the moment I sat down. It was another cool day and the air was very still. A few does passed through the area in the morning and a little six point buck came in and started chasing them all around. He left them be after a short while and they all eventually wandered off. Again, a mostly uneventful day.

Around 5:00pm I went on full guard as usual since I've always heard the evening is best for bear hunting. Two does poked around in front of the blind for a while and around 5:15pm, both of their heads went up at once. I believe my heart literally stopped in that moment. They stared hard in the direction that I expected the bear to come from for several minutes. They were hearing or seeing something that I certainly couldn't, so I just watched them like a hawk and waited for them to give me the news. Suddenly I could hear a heavy rustling, not like a group of deer moving through the woods at all. It sounded more akin to a human, big heavy feet with a slight shuffling. At this point the rifle was already in my shoulder hanging out the front window of the blind. The does' heads swiveled ever so slowly as they watched something circling around the area. I hadn't even seen the source of the sound yet and my heart was pounding in my chest. At 5:40, I saw what I'd been waiting for. I could just see the line of his black back moving ever so slowly through the thickets at about 120 meters straight ahead. He was already in my best shooting lane, but there wasn't a clean shot at that distance. It was about that same moment the deer finally decided they weren't going to stick around, and they bolted straight towards my blind. They passed me only a few meters away but I hardly took notice. I was watching that black shape in the thicket. It would come into sight and then disappear completely. I was trying to plan a shot through the thickets at him but there really was no safe shot. At one point I had a clear line of sight right to his vitals but without being able to see the rest of him clearly or what was behind him, I held myself back. Then suddenly he turned... and he was walking right down my shooting lane straight at me.

He cleared the thickets at roughly 90 meters and just kept closing the distance. I filled the scope with him and knew at this point, it was game over for him. All he would have to do was turn either direction and I'd have a perfect clean shot at him. He came straight to the barberry bushes that the deer had been feeding on in my shooting lane. At 60 yards (54 meters) he turned broadside and stopped. It was almost like it was meant to be. I squeezed the trigger and let the rifle do it's job. BAM. The bear spun a half circle and took off, but I could clearly see the bright red exit wound. Down two lungs, he only went about 25 yards. I couldn't see exactly where he went down in the thickets, but the noises he made let me know right where he was. In less then 30 seconds from the shot, he was done. With darkness rapidly approaching, my father jumped in the truck and met me at the blind. We were originally planning to let any bear I shot sit for a while before going in after it just in case the shot wasn't a solid one, but with the story I told my father of the moments prior, we were both very confident that he was safely down. We went to where I shot him and the blood trail told us all we needed to know. Bright pink, and a whole lot of it. We found him just moments later and approached very cautiously. A clean kill.
Bear down!
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We enlisted the help of my boyfriend's uncle and his four-wheeler with a sled to get him out of the woods and even then it was a challenge. Dragging a bear is nothing like dragging a deer. It's like trying to move floppy, hairy gelatin. Add in a bunch a large rocks, a rocky stream, a jungle of sticker bushes and the cover of darkness and it was a heck of an adventure getting him out. We needed a tractor just to get him in the back of the truck. My boyfriend met us after work and we got the bear to the check-in station around 10:00pm. After a quick celebratory dinner in a gas station Arby's, we got the beast home and spent the next while trying to figure out how to hang him in the garage. It was almost 4:00am by the time we finished skinning him out and trimming off all the fat. This guy is going to fill the hole in my freezer with ease. I can't wait to try bear steaks, bear stew, bear bologna, bear jerky, bear everything. And once he comes home from the taxidermist (trust me guys, 10 ems is a STEAL), this guy is going to look awesome in my living room.
Tied to a sled and hooked up to a four-wheeler. Now to drag him over rocks.
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We needed the tractor just to get him in the truck.
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Finally got him hung up...
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...and skinned out.
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Bear camp started out slow but turned out to be a great success. Of the 800 bear tags given out this year in Maryland, only 130 were filled by Friday evening (the end of the season). I feel beyond privileged to be holding a possession tag for one of them. There were a lot of great memories made this week. I'm particularly happy my father got to be a part of this hunt as he's getting up there in age and his body is definitely starting to act it. As it is, he's going in this coming Monday to have work done on his bad knees. Hopefully we have many more years to hunt together, but this is one memory I'm glad to have under the belt. We'll have to get him his Maryland bear next.
Bear camp turned out to be pretty awesome 8-)
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stancomputerhunter
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by stancomputerhunter »

Great story! What an accomplishment! Congratulations! There will hundreds of guys on here who will read this and be green with envy! WTG!


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DYEUZ
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by DYEUZ »

Thanks for sharing . How much did he weigh ? :lol:

BCKidd's 2019 COMMUNITY COMPS SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP
FIRST PLACE
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mapache01
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by mapache01 »

Wooow!!! Congrats on that Boar!! WTG on that clean shot! all ready envy you reading about the steaks!!
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InstinctiveArcher
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by InstinctiveArcher »

Congrats. Awesome story! I love when people can write up a good hunting story and don't just post a trophy pic!
You will be eating good!
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Jaegerschnitzel1990
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by Jaegerschnitzel1990 »

xOEDragonx wrote: There were a lot of great memories made this week. I'm particularly happy my father got to be a part of this hunt as he's getting up there in age and his body is definitely starting to act it. As it is, he's going in this coming Monday to have work done on his bad knees. Hopefully we have many more years to hunt together, but this is one memory I'm glad to have under the belt. We'll have to get him his Maryland bear next.

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Congrats on a nice bear and some great memories. Same as you I feel very blessed still being able to hunt with my dad. I can still feel my blood pumping when I think about how we killed our first buck. Time has passed, meanwhile I am married myself and we live a few hours apart. However we still hunt and fish together as often as we can and there are few things in this world that mean as much to us.
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XxStrong1xX
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by XxStrong1xX »

Fantastic story Ashley! Congrats again! Cherish those memories with your Dad! My dad just passed away a little over a month ago and I have so many fond memories of our time spent hunting and fishing when I was growing up. He had Alzheimer's the last 12 years of his life and I kind of got away from hunting after I got married; so it has been many years since we hunted together. But I will never forget those memories. :)

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J_Birdman
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Re: 2018/2019

Post by J_Birdman »

xOEDragonx wrote:I had the pleasure of partaking in my first ever black bear hunt this week and after almost 50 hours in a tree stand, I finally connected with a nice boar. He's currently a main attraction of the "Dead Weight" community competition in the competition forum so I can't share his weight or any other size information yet aside from the pictures. I can share the story of my week though!
What a great hunt and bear and story, Ashley. Thanks for sharing all of this, I really enjoyed reading about it and again, congratulations! :)
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