Alberta Black Bear Hunt

06 June 2011, 20:51

May 27. Arrived at camp and found 2 big trees had fallen across the tent frame; they just missed the main ridge pole, but wiped out the poles that support our 'awning' tarp.

Replaced a couple of poles and went without any awning. I'll fix that another time.

May 28. Fresh bear & wolf tracks.

Boar marking tree; claw marks are quite evident in the bark.

Bear wallow.

Bear s**t...

Rando on the trail, May 28th.

May 29, down by the south river crossing.

Rando's bear. He shot this bear on the 29th, at 180 yds, with a .338WM. It ran about 40 yds and piled up at the bottom of a steep, thick draw. Couldn't recover it that day. This bear measured 6'5" nose to tail and we figured weighed something around the 325-340 lb range.

Tracks of a sow with 2 cubs crossing a sandbar on the north river crossing.

Another boar marking tree. I'm 6'3" and cannot reach anywhere near the claw marks that were on that tree (just below the break).

Cat track on a trail south of camp. May 31st.

A wolf track for comparison.

Whitetail buck skull I found at a kill site along the river; figure it was a cougar kill, as I saw one of the buggers about a mile from where I picked up the skull. Magnificent orangey-golden colour, it bounded across the trail right in front of me.

XXXL pile of bear s**t.

Sun setting May 31st.

A couple of lever actions; both Miroku production. Left is Rando's Browning BLR .30-06 and right is my M-1895 Winchester, in .405Win.

Skeleton of a large (whitetail?) buck, killed by wolves. June 1st.

Cow moose skeleton, also killed by wolves. June 1st. We didn't count them all, but we musta seen a dozen deer and moose kill sites.

Sow bear play fighting with one of her 3 cubs. June 2nd 2011. We saw a sow with 3 cubs, two different times, on this trip.

Breaking camp in the snow... again... June 3rd.

Bear camp 2011. Ready to hit the trail. We had a replay of last years goat-roping, 26 kms of clay, pit-run and creeks, with snow falling all the way.

Can't wait to go next year.

07 June 2011, 00:19

Turtlewolf

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

07 June 2011, 05:10

Alberta Canuck

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.

07 June 2011, 05:59

Demonical

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...

07 June 2011, 17:59

Ghubert

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

12 June 2011, 09:53

Scott Spencer

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.

14 June 2011, 00:40

Norton

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

14 June 2011, 01:06

Dewey

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"...........