[This message has been edited by judgeg (edited 05-09-2001).]
I was up near Lynn Lake. I'll be coming through Winnipeg, driving that way on June 14th or 15th. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?
[This message has been edited by judgeg (edited 05-09-2001).]
Congrats,
Don
I was hunting with a group of friends with an outfitter called Lynn Lake Fly-In Outpost Camps. We pick a lake every year and fly a float plane in and fish and hunt bears. I've done it for 9 or the last 10 years. We had 14 foot Lunds with 8hp motors on the lake, were staying in tents and were about 50 miles from the roadhead at Lynn Lake. G. Fred Asbell (President of Pope & Young) was with us on this trip. On Saturday evening shortly after flying in, I portaged a canoe to a smaller lake and opened a bait with a bacon burn and left a bag of molasses and oats in a crib of stacked logs. When I came back on Sunday afternoon, all 50 pounds were gone and several trees were raked with claw marks. I put up a stand and tried to sleep that night. Sure enough, when I got in the stand on Monday, bears started coming from everywhere. A pretty good boar tried to get in the tree with me... I had stupidly put my stand right below the bacon burn site and the whole tree smelled like a Double Bacon Cheese Burger. The 300 pounder (who wanted to either mate me or eat me, I couldn't decide which) kept coming and going to the bait and my tree, very nervously. I figured a bigger, dominant bear was around. I wasn't wrong. The 300# bear just, all of a sudden, hauled butt. Then the big one came. I didn't want to shoot him. I didn't want to take his picture. I didn't even want to be in the same Province with him. I just wanted my mama. He looked like a Volkswagen. He came by the bait and didn't even look at it, except to wind a little, then he came to my tree, stood on his hind legs and sniffed my feet. He could reach that high without even stretching out much. I was trying to be anything but a sow in heat or a interloper boar. I asked Scotty to beam me up. He couldn't have cared less. He just pissed and started walking away. At 18 or so yards he turned to look at the bait and I shot him, thinking that I made the perfect shot. What I forgot was that he had climbed a little hill and was about level with me and the arrow had no downward angle. I guess it deflected some on the bottom of his spine and went down into his far shoulder/leg. I'm should have waited an hour or so to go find him, but I was sure I had seen him fall. As I said, even a blind hog finds an acorn, sometimes.
When we measured his hide, we didn't even pull it tight and it squared over 7'6". Fred said it was the biggest bear he had ever seen. I sure was the biggest I have ever seen or shot. That's it. It was a real thrill.
The picture really doesn't do the bear justice. I'm 6'2" and weigh 260. I had already gutted the bear when the picture was taken the next morning. You can get a pretty good idea how big he was by comparing his head size to the width of my shoulders, and remember, this ain't no Chuck Adams picture.. for those of us who know what that means.
[This message has been edited by judgeg (edited 05-09-2001).]
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Freedom wasn't free. Today they want our guns. What will they want tommorow?
I'd a been hollerin' for mama!
Great job,
Don