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Petersen's Hunting
August 1989
Maine Man Black Bear
I sensed that the bear I had just caught a glimpse of was not a big one. I didn't want to make the the same mistake I had made once before in Canada, when in waning light I had shot a yearling. Not that there was anything illegal about shooting a 1 1/2 -year-old bear; it's just that a 90-pound Ursus americanus is not my idea of a trophy.
Unfortunately, because it is so difficult to judge the size of a bear, yearlings are often shot unintentionally, as are cubs, which sometimes blunder out of the brush ahead of their mother into the sights of an excited hunter. Having learned my lesson, I now always place some object at the bait site to give me a size reference.
In this case, the bait had been placed beneath a pile of rocks beside a tree. I cut a small blaze in that tree three feet off the ground; that way I'd get some idea of the bear's height should it accept my dinner invitation. (The pile of rocks, by the way, is to keep the bear occupied for a few seconds; otherwise, it will just dart in, grab a piece of bait, and dash off into the brush without offering a good shot.)
As what looked like a black blob reappeared at the edge of the small clearing, I guessed it was a yearling. Still not completely visible to me, it paused for a few seconds to check out its surroundings one last time, then padded over to the meat scraps. The "bay-ah" (as it's pronounced in Maine) wasted no time as it wrestled with the rocks to uncover the bait, picked up a morsel, and retraced its steps back into the brush. It had paused long enough, however, for me to see that my blaze mark was about a foot higher than its back, indicating that it was indeed a yearling - very likely a young bear recently booted out by its mama to fend for itself. Then again, I thought, maybe it was still with the old girl. Mother bears, ready for their yearling to become independent, are not averse to letting the youngsters check things out before putting themselves in suspicious situations.
No such luck. Ten minutes later the yearling emerged again, this time picking up a chunk of bait the size of its head before waddling into the forest.
Nothing happened during the next 15 minutes, and at 7:26 p.m., the close of legal shooting time in Maine on September 12, I unloaded my rifle, climbed down from my tree stand, and walked over to the dead end of a logging road a hundred yards away to await the arrival of my ride back to camp.
I was hunting out of the Bradford Camps, located on the shores of Munsungan Lake in Maine's northern wilderness area. In continuous operation since 1890, the camp has been owned and operated by Dave and Nancy Youland for the past 17 years. Dave is a Bob Newhart type - at a relatively early age he decided that the hassles of the big city and corporate life were not for him, so he chucked his pinstripe suits for Levi's, bought the Bradford Camps, and has never looked back.
Like most camps in Maine and eastern Canada that offer bear hunting, it is primarily a fishing operation, and it was only four years ago that Dave was first able to offer bear hunting. "We've always had a lot of bears here," he told me, "but until the paper company started logging and building the necessary roads, I really didn't have access to the 70,000 acres of forest that comprise my lease. And I didn't want to do it until I could do it right."
Though Dave didn't elaborate, I knew he was alluding to the hundreds of fishing camps across the north country that advertise bear hunting but do it halfheartedly at best. I have seen a number of these operations firsthand - places where "bear baits" are just the camp garbage set out in a few locations along the main road. "I think it's purely a matter of economics," said Dave. "Generally speaking, you feed your fisherman breakfast, pack them a nice lunch, and then don't see them till they return for dinner at day's end. Bear hunting, on the other hand, means a lot more work for the operator, at least if he's going to do it right."
In Dave's case, bear hunting requires that slaughterhouse scraps be trucked in every week over many miles of logging roads. The baits (Dave had 35) must be set out, maintained, and checked on a daily basis starting at least three weeks prior to the hunting season. And for each bait site a blind must be build. In Maine, no nails can be used in the making of a tree stand, so Dave's consist of portable ladders with platforms on top. These ladders are in place weeks before the season so the bears get used to them.
"It takes two full-time people to take care of all those things," he continued, "plus driving the hunters to the stands, which in my case are spread out over 3o miles, and picking them up at the end of the day."
An additional incentive was provided for Dave when the state of Maine eliminated spring bear hunts five years ago because too many sows with cubs were being shot. Today, there are more bears than ever in the state. In 1987, 1525 bears were harvested during the three-month season that begins September 1. Dave, however, hunts only the first four weeks of the season.
During the four years that Dave has conducted autumn bear hunts, he has averaged a 55 percent success ratio. Last September, I was one of five hunters in camp for the third week. The previous two weeks Dave had had 17 hunters, 11 of whom had shot their bears and three of whom had missed shots. "So we're right on our normal average thus far," he told me. "That missed-shot factor has been fairly consistent, too," he added. "About one out of six guys misses his shot, so I could actually claim that around 70 percent of our hunters get to pull the trigger on a bear."
Dave also keeps records of sightings. Twenty-two bears had been seen by the 17 hunters in camp during the previous two weeks, but on eight occasions the hunters either chose not to shoot or didn't have the opportunity. I didn't doubt Dave for a second, for I've hunted enough bears across eastern Canada and Maine to know that baiting is far from a sure thing. In Quebec and Ontario, for example, the success ratio is around 30 percent for camp operators, counting both the spring and fall seasons. Obviously, bears don't always come to bait, and when they do it's not always during those last three hours of daylight that a hunter typically spends on stand. And not everyone hits, even at the relatively close distances that outfitters like to put between bait and hunter. To the nimrod who has never seen a bear in the wild before, the sudden materialization of ol' Ursus from the bush can be a highly unnerving experience. Invariably, the miss factor can be attributed to plain old "bear fever," and it's as common a malady to the shooter of a scoped rifle as to a handgunner or archer.
During the 20-minute ride to camp in a pontoon-equipped Cessna 185, Dave told me he attributed much of his bear-hunting success to a lure formulated by Glenn Grant, who heads up Maine Man Enterprises (49 W. Beach Ridge Road, Dept. HM, Scarborough, ME 04074). "In fact," he said, "Glenn is due in camp today. If you want, you can bunk with him. Or you can have your own cabin. It's up to you."
I told Dave there was no sense in two guys each having his own four-bed cabin and that I'd be happy to share one with Glenn. As it turned out, during my stay I learned a lot about scents - in fact, more than I had bargained for.
Upon meeting Glenn that afternoon, I learned he was in camp to test one of his formulas, which he calls Keep 'Em Comin'. This particular lure is an anise-based attractant for which Glenn was experimenting with new matrices - neutral liquids that hold the essences in suspension so that they retain their potent aroma over long periods of time. He was convinced he had found a more lasting scent, but said the formula itself - the "smell" - had not been changed.
"At each bait," Glenn told me, "Dave hangs a plastic 35mm film container with a small piece of cloth inside soaked with my scent."
"Why would your scent attract a bear?" I asked with all the seriousness I could muster.
No, no, not my scent...." He then noticed the grin I was trying to suppress and laughed. "No, you're right, Jon. My scent wouldn't attract anything, but my scents do!"
They sure did, as I found out the next day when I went with Dave, his assistant manager Peter Price, and Glenn to check baits. Since there were more active baits than hunters, we visited only those where the five of us in camp had been posted the previous night, plus three others. Besides the yearling that had come to my bait, a mother and two cubs had come to Glenn's stand (he was only observing and taking pictures), and a bear had come in to where one of the three bowhunters was posted. The archer admitted he had become a little excited and had drawn his bow before the bear was busied with the bait. He had spooked it. On visiting that particular stand the next day, however, we found that the bear had either returned or another one had come in after dark.
Of the three unwatched baits, two had been visited and both showed signs of the bears going to great lengths to get at the scent containers. We found the same thing at two of the other stands.
Upon returning to camp that second day and assembling for a late lunch in the lodge, I found Dave holding court, as it were, for the three young bowhunters.
"Now you two guys who smoke," he cautioned, pointing to one, then the other. "You're going to have a tough time of it unless you go without those things for while."
"What's 'a while'?" one of the smokers asked, a hint of real concern in his voice.
"At least five hours," Dave replied. "From the time you change into your hunting clothes 'til you get out of 'em."
"I can do that," said the one, crushing his butt out in the ashtray with a certain thespian flourish.
"That goes for you, too, Sundra," said Dave, eyeing me as I puffed contentedly on one of my Tuscano-style Italian cigars.
"No problem," I seconded.
It just so happened that the two cigarette smokers were the only ones who hadn't seen a bear the first night. "you guys aren't cheating, are you, and smoking after we drop you off?" Dave asked. He was kidding, but I could sense a note of seriousness in his voice, and so did the smokers.
"Honest, Dave," said the one. "I'm not smokin'. I want a bear."
The other said the same.
On the second night I spent at the same stand, the yearling again showed up, but this time much earlier. It stayed around the bait long enough to entertain me with its antics, especially its attempts to get at the film container of Glenn's scent that was suspended on a string about seven feet off the ground.
After the youngster departed, I settled into a pessimistic mind-set. After all, the chances weren't that good that another bear would come to the same bait. As the time passed ever so slowly, I began to get really ticked off at a piece of bark that had been jutting into my back for the past two evenings. No matter how I changed position it was still uncomfortable, and with about 20 minutes of daylight left, I couldn't stand it any longer. I slowly looked behind me on both sides to make sure all was clear, then eased my hand behind my back and tugged at the offending piece of bark. It broke away with a muffled snapping sound ... which was immediately answered by the sound of a bear high-tailing throughout the forest.
Judging from the sound, the bear must have been about 50 yards away, almost directly behind me. The underbrush was so thick that a grizzly could have been there and I couldn't have seen it.
It was another one of those lessons that we hunters are taught over and over again: Drop your guard for a second and that's when something happens!
That same night Glenn again saw the mama and cubs, plus two yearling that were wearing fluorescent ear tags courtesy of the state's tagging program.
Day three nobody saw a thing, though one of the bowmen went through the wuff-followed-by-the-dash-through-the-bush routine. As I said, bears aren't stupid, especially the big ones. They are extremely cautious, they rarely stay at the bait more than a couple of seconds, and they often come after dark.
For me, day four had to be my last at the Bradford Camps, since another hunt required me to be back home by Saturday. Normally, Dave's hunts run Sunday to Sunday with hunting Monday through Saturday. (There's no Sunday hunting in Maine).
I decided to try another stand on the last evening, one that showed evidence of a larger bear coming in. As it turned out, it was a larger bear...but not a lot larger. With some reluctance I shot what proved to be a 155-pound 2 1/2-year-old male.
The food and accommodations at the Bradford Camps are excellent, and at $895 the price isn't hard to take, either. In addition to an all-inclusive six-day bear hunt, that price includes unlimited use of a good boat and motor to fish the mornings away for landlocked salmon, brook trout, and lake trout. A nonresident bear license will set you back $79; a seven-day fishing license is $28. I plan to go back next year, and time I'll hold out for a 300-pounder!