I thought that countryside looked familiar! Looks like a good time over all, even if you didn't get a bear, trips like that are what makes a hunt worth it some times.
Cheers

I assume you were somewhere across the Athabasca River to the W-N-W of Whitecourt?

That is the area where I used to guide for moose. If you go on a few miles to the west, you eventually can turn north off the highway and go to Iosegun Lake. Right around the lake there are many, many, black bear. One weekend we had nine of them right in camp...including one in the morning when we got up, which was rummaging around in the canoe which we had left floating but tied up on the lakeshore the night before.

There are lots of Canadian Lynx as well as a smattering of cougar there too.

Between Whitecourt and Fox Creek (on the way to Iosegun Lake, a forestry road turns N-N-E and goes clear to Ft. Assiniboine and the Swan Hills. Some big grizzlies of the "Swan Hills Grizzly" subspecies in there.

When you get over to the end of that road, it "T"s into another forestry road. Turn right and you go to the Fort...turn left and you go through the really heavily wooded part of the Swan Hills and eventually can end up at Lesser Slave Lake. Lots of game in there, if the native bands up around to the east of Lesser Slave haven't ruined it.

I used to take a bottle of wine or two and wonder those barely passable truck trails until I met a few indians. Then we'd pass the bottle around and I'd get all the game movement news. Quit doing that though when I found out how heavily infected with tuberculosis their bands (tribes) were...

Anyway, great country, with lots of truly wild bush. I love every inch of it.

AC she's cut up a bit more than you likely remember, yeah I know all those trails you describe.

Yeah you could say we were NW across the Athabasca R.

There's still un-regulated slaughter by Indians. Sickening. Plus the wolf population is totally out of control. We need a serious intensive wolf control program.
The moose herd here has been decimated. If you travelled up through your old hunting areas today you'd be shocked at the low moose numbers.
Still lots of grizz' and some big bastards too.
Black bear numbers are crazy in some areas... and over-populated everywhere else!

Still beautiful country that you can get lost in if you wants to!


P.S. I've never wasted booze on Indians...

Well done sir!

Thank you for posting these wonderful reports, you have me truly salivating at the prospect of all of that big country.


Keep at 'em!

Best,

Amir

Those photos are just too cool! I, like many others I am sure, love to live through others adventures and hunts like this. Thank you for the pictures and the story behind them all.

Beautiful country.....and I like your choice of arms.......can't wait to hunt up there. Well done!

I spent a few months living and working alone in the bush in that country, lots of game and BUGS, worse than most parts of BC by far. The humidity really got to me and it is swampy with mud that would suck a D-8 into immobility!

I saw one Blackie one afternoon close to my tower that had a head the size of a bushell basket and the P-64 Mod. 70-.375 on my shoulder felt REAL damn fine about then!

You are righton about the drum pounders and their slaughter and waste, I have come to just loathe these people and what they do here on the Fraser with fish is the same thing. Talk about needing a "cull"...........

I was working up there this winter doing beetle kill fall and burn,in the Fox Creek area. It was brutal, but very nice country. Hope to be back in Whitecourt again this winter

Great hunt report - as a new BLR owner I'm glad to see them being put to good use!