It's September 16th, and since my last post, I have spent about 68 cumulative hours on stand waiting for my bear to come in!
The previous post left me very hopeful that I'd only have to wait a day or two for a good bear to come in, and there would maybe be some additional activity of small bears for me to watch. That hasn't been the case. It's a harder hunt than expected! The action is slow, and the bait is getting hit every two or three days - most often at night. It seems the big ones have become pretty nocturnal. One of the reasons for the change in behavior is likely due to the absolutely amazing crop of acorns falling from the oak trees. It's very plausible that the bears are gorging themselves on acorns all day and are no longer interested in the bait as a source for food but rather just a place to get a sweet bite before bedtime.
The excitement I do want to write about, however, came on Tuesday, 9/11. I had sat on stand from 8am to 7:30pm (yes, 11+ hours on stand as silent and motionless as possible) on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and had not seen a bear yet. That changed on Tuesday. At 1:45pm, I was looking another direction and when I scanned back to the bait, there was a bear approaching it! WOW! My heart rate jumped from a super-relaxed state to 150 beats per minute in a split second! What a rush!
I could immediately tell this bear was pretty small and young, however. There was not a lot of depth to the chest, no 'gut', and a scrawny butt and legs. It even acted young. From the stakes we had out, however, it was apparent that this bear would probably be a legal bear (42" from the tip of the nose to the tail). But, it was a small bear. I opted to not shoot and instead enjoyed watching it eat for about 10 minutes. Here are some photos of the bear I was watching from only 14 yards away!
What those photos don't show you is that this bear had a very neat white patch of hair on its chest. This is a genetic trait common in black bears, but it's not something we have seen on the couple of bears taken out of this area in years past. Pretty cool to see!
After watching this bear walk into the cedar swamp, I sat there reveling in what I had just experienced! And, at the same time, I was replaying the events and second-guessing whether I had made the right or wrong decision to not shoot. Sure, it was a small bear, but was it the only bear I would see all season? Had I just let my only chance slip away?
These thoughts made for a long five hours until 7pm. The sun had fallen beneath the trees and the ambient light was fading. From the swamp 40 yards from where I was sitting, a black object appeared out of thin air. It was another bear! When I first saw it, I was looking at a front-on view, and what I was seeing was a very broad, round, 'plump' bear. My heart raced faster than earlier in the day, as I thought this was a big bear and the bear I would shoot. It approached silently and cautiously - carefully calculating every step. As it approached the bait stump, I assumed a 'ready-position' for a shot. The instant it put its nose to the bait log, I caught myself second-guessing the bear's size. It didn't look that big afterall. It was another young, short bear - but definitely a different bear than the one I saw earlier in the day. This one lacked the white crest on the chest. Here's the one photo my trail camera snapped of this bear:
BUT - here's where it gets really exciting!
Thinking to myself that maybe I just wasn't looking at the bear right and it was maybe a good-sized bear, I wanted to give it a chance to spin around the bait a few times so I could size it up some more. I never got this opportunity because after 20 seconds at the bait, this bear stuck its nose in the air and in one visual and obvious breath, it took in a smell of its surroundings. As it was doing this, a twig snapped behind it - on the trail it had just come in on. Both the bear and I looked back on the trail to see what made the twig snap. Before I knew what was happening, the bear BOLTED from the bait and went tearing through the woods - crashing through whatever was in its way. When my eyes locked on what it had seen, it took me only a fraction of a second to realize I was looking at the black and gray face of a wolf. Yes, a wolf! In all of the time my family and friends have spent in these woods of Northern Wisconsin, no one has ever been able to say they definitively saw a wolf...until now. There was no question in my mind.
The following day, we pulled the card from my trail camera, and low and behold, the wolf appeared in over 100 photos! It is wearing a DNR-issued radio collar and seems to be comfortable hanging around the bait -using it as a food source and a possible stalking spot for late-night raccoons. I sent these photos to the Wisconsin DNR and they confirmed it was a wolf but couldn't tell me which wolf it is. They will be taking to the air in a plane this week to try and locate and ID this particular wolf.
Soooo...the bear hunt is maybe not going as well as I thought/hoped it would, but this day in the woods was certainly full of all the excitement I could ever wish to have!
I have until October 2nd to fill my bear tag. I'll be spending at least another weekend and a few vacation days in the woods before the season is over...hoping and praying for a good outcome!
I'll leave you with a picture of the absolute beast of a bear that only comes in during nighttime hours...and I hope he makes a daytime mistake when I'm sitting in my treestand.
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