Black Bear Meat – Dog Food Recipe

Black Bear Meat- A Healthy, Natural Dog Food.

Black Bears are abundant in the province of BC, but for most hunters the meat isn’t something they are interested in eating, and quite frankly I don’t really have a taste for bear meat either. Having been in on a recent black bear hunt my friend was not interested in processing the meat, so he gave it to me under the premise I would use it to make a natural and healthy food for my dog.
Bear Meat is safe for humans when cooked to specific temperatures, so I really couldn’t see any reason that it wouldn’t be fit for my dog, when cooked properly. Read More

Vancouver Island Spring Black Bear Hunt 2010

Vancouver Island Spring Black Bear Hunt 2010

Black Bear hunting the month of May on Vancouver Island is something every hunter should experience just once. The Islands Black Bear population (estimated at 12,000+) is extremely healthy and it’s not uncommon to have days where you’ll see 20 or more bears in a single day. Active logging on the island has created an immense network of accessible forestry roads that are right in the middle of prime bear country making it an easy hunt for access as well.

We set off on Friday morning, May 14th in the direction of Bamfield to a little area that has produced several bears for us and friends over the past few years. It’s a long winding drive, with many miles of pot-hole laden logging roads. The heat had dried out the gravel roads to the point where visibility was about zero if you had a vehicle 1/4 mile ahead of you. Read More

Stone’s Sheep Information & Website Links

Stone's Sheep are one of the most prized Big Game animals in North America, yet most hunters going after them know very little about them, their habitat, and/or their management as a species.  Critical information anybody should know!

 Below are a few website links that offer up information and documented studies on Stone's Sheep that you may educational.

Sulphur Creek 8 Mile Sheep Project - This is a Stone's Sheep study currently taking place in the Sulphur Creek/8 Mile region close to Muncho Lake, BC.  Lots of great information on this website, and if you pay attention some good sheep spots too!

Foraging Ecology & Nutrition Of Stone's Sheep – This study was completed in the early/mid 80's and the report itself is 127 pages long.  Great Reading if you want to learn about their food sources, travel routes, winter ranges, and just good information on Stone's Sheep in general.  Being raised in a family that actually outfitted and hunted sheep for over 30 years I even learned a few things.

Sheep Of Stone – A Filmmakers Short Story – If you've ever seen the documentary "Sheep Of Stone" which aired on the Discovery Channel then you may find this interesting.  It's the written account from one of the filmmakers on this trip who'd gotten his first taste of Sheep country… It wasn't the cake walk he expected

Muskwa-Ketchika Stone's Sheep Management Projects – A current list of some of the projects directed at better Sheep Management in this region.

Spring & Winter Habitat Study – Stone's Sheep - A Comparison of winter and spring habitat selection and rates of movement between two populations of Stone's sheep.

There is lots of reading in the links above and the information contained will surely help any Stone's Sheep hunter better understand these magnificent animals. 

Good Luck!

2008 Backpack Stone’s Sheep Hunt

Well… Yet another year in my quest for a Big Stone's Ram has come to an end…  Ramless!  And that's okay, The trip was awesome, the country was beautiful we saw legal sheep and a ton of other game.

We left the Island via the 5:15am Nanaimo ferry to Vancouver and drove to Grande Prairie AB, where we met up with my Dad (32 years guiding sheep) and went over all our last minute details, where we were hiking in, what areas to concentrate on etc… All really good and appreciated advice.

The following day we once again rose early and began the 2nd leg of our journey…  From Grande Prairie we drove all the way to Muncho lake lodge where we spent the night… Really Nice Place but it's expensive!  This was our last resort as both the other lodges further south were already full… We wanted one more night in a warm bed with a warm shower before starting our hike in.

Anyways… We were on the trail by 7:15am the next morning beginning our long ascent up the mountain.  We followed a game trail for a little while and broke out of the timberline rather quickly.  The first 3/4's of this mountain was a relatively easy climb, It was when we reached that last 1/4 when the going got tough.  We were into the steep shale cliffs and with our 60 pound packs it was an exhilarating climb thats for sure… We had to carefully choose our routes or risk being turned into hamburger at the bottom.

It took us about 5 hours to make the lower top of this mountain where were both out of water…  Never being into this country before we were a little worried about where we might find it…  But as we crested the top we found a snowpack that was draining into a little tiny pond… Just as we got there to fill up our bottles a Duck gracefully flew in and landed on the lack… Trivializing our 5 hour journey to the top.

Coming down the backside of the mountain and dropping into a high saddle in sheep country took us another 3 hours and we had our base camp setup.  We were using my Integral Designs MKIII for this trip and it's a fabulous tent… 

That first late afternoon I was glassing the mountains with my Zeiss 85mm Diascope when I heard a rockslide on the opposing side of the valley…  I quickly spun my scope around and was onto a band of 9+ rams running across the shale about 1000' feet or so above us.  I quickly shouted to my partner (who was napping) I've got RAMS! and he was out of bed faster then if we'd had a Grizzly in camp.

I got a pretty good look at what I thought was the lead ram (there could have been 1 or 2 ahead of him). He was a heavy old ram and a shooter for sure (I won't pull unless 10 years of age or 40" – whichever comes first), the ram behind him looked to easily make 3/4 curl but I didn't get a good enough look at him, as he went over the ridge he was definitely not as heavy as the first ram, the 3rd ram looked to be 3/4 curl and they started getting smaller from there as they were travelling in their peking order.  In short, This band of rams saw us waaay before we spotted them and that messed things up a little for us.  It's critical that you pick apart every part of new real estate in sheep country before you enter… We'd spent a few hours glassing on our descent into the saddle, and a few more from base camp but as we later found out (after hiking the ridge) they had numerous beds where they could see us and we had little to no chance of seeing them.  They definitely don't live long by being stupid.

We spent several more days in this patch of mountains, glassing for hours on end from various vantage points around the valley and surrounding mountains.  We watched Stone's sheep morning, noon and night every day but all were young rams, ewes and lambs with several dozen caribou mixed in for good measure.  Not for lack of trying, we never did find that band of rams again which is something that can happen, even to the most experienced of sheep hunters.

I'd also drawn a Grizzly bear tag for the liard and we went into this patch of mountains expecting to hunt bear afterwards so we'd only packed 6 days worth of food.  We pulled out on day 5 when the weather decided to take a turn for the worst.  Instead of coming in our original route we dropped right down off the saddle and into the creek below.  It was one of the toughest hikes out I've had yet with several impassable waterfalls and cliffs that needed to be carefully navigated.   Several times I slipped on wet rocks and took some good tumbles as did my partner.  We did make it out though…! 

My Dad drove up and met with us and we decided instead of going after Grizzly we'd just keep hunting sheep for a while… The weather was supposed to get better and we'd likely still have a chance at some other rams if we wanted.  We chose sheep!

Most of our hunting from this point on was glassing many of our known spots along the highway and some surrounding roads.  We went for a 54 mile quad ride up and down the Davis Keyes mine rd and saw some sheep up there as well as quite a few other hunters.  There is quite a bit of pressure up here so we opted to just enjoy the scenery and will likely not go back there to hunt again.  It was really pretty country though and the quad ride in was an absolute blast.

We spent another few days up in the area before deciding to head south.  We thought with our trip coming to an end we might as well pickup an Elk tag and see if we couldn't bag a bull off some private land we had permission on…  The rest of the story will follow.

Gear I have reviewed and used on this hunt:

Jetboil Stove Review
Integral Designs MKIII Tent Review
SPOT Satellite Messenger
Review
Hanwag Trapper Top Boot Review
My Backpack Sheep Hunting Gear List

Bella Coola Spring Grizzly Hunt

Well this year three of us from our hunting group put in for Spring Bella Coola Grizzly Bear for 2007 and 2 of us were drawn in two different areas.  5-09C and 5-08B.  My Dad & I's area was in 5-09C and was sort of North – North West of Bella Coola.

We had a few local connections, that provided us a pile of great information and we decided to head up to Bella Coola on the 8th of May.  The highway from Vancouver up to Williams Lake and then into Anahim lake was great,  It's just a short ways passed Anahim lake you'll run into the legendary "Hill" that the residents simply refer to as "The Hill" and nasty, twisty, steep hill it is too with a near 19% grade and absolutely no guard rails.  It would be fun to a tow boat down, make sure you have good brakes, and enough power and efficient cooling to make it back up. 

My dad has a friend that lives in Bella Coola and was kind enough to loan us his boat which was an 18 foot aluminum.  It handled the local waters great.  We weren't too worried about having a boat to sleep in as we had arranged accommodations at a local resort that is current under construction at the Nascall Bay Hotsprings.

The ride from Bella Coola to Nascall Bay was about 1.5 hours in our boat, and the roughest part was coming around the mesachie nose and into Laboucher Channel.  Once inside Laboucher it was near dead calm, and calm as well through dean channel and right into Nascall Bay where we were Greeted by Frank (lodge owner) and his crew of happy helpers.

The lodge is outfitted with a complete dock and gas facilities, restaurant, cozy cabins, hotsprings, and even wireless satellite Internet.  The Tap Water comes straight out of the mountain springs, and is gravity fed down to the lodge and I must say it's some of the best tasting water I've ever had. 

After we arrived and got settled into our room we decided to head out in the boat and do some fishing so we could catch some bait for our crab traps.  After a few minutes we had a couple of cod that we wired into our traps and dropped them in a little spot called Eucott Bay, just a little ways southwest of the lodge.  This was recommended to us by several different locals and proved to be productive.  We each took home our limit of 12 crabs over the few days our traps were down and these crabs were big, we caught so many that I only selected the finest crabs, with all 8 legs and 2 pinchers throwing everything else back.

While the seafood was great it wasn't the only purpose we were there… Our real goal was to fill a Grizzly bear tag.  And the fishing and crabbing was mainly just a filler during the middle of the day, when the bears are all snoozing like most every other critter.  Once 2 O'clock hit we were at the flats and just still hunted until dark.  2 nights went by without seeing a thing aside from some seals and the odd porpoise or two… 

On the third evening we were sitting in the bay, watching the flats and I decided to crack the new Zeiss Diascope 85m Spotting Scope out and see if I couldn't find some goats… Several hours had gone by without any action so I wanted to pass the time… I started glassing the mountainside across from us in Dean Channel and quickly spotted 3 goats feeding on the edge of a small waterfall… It would have made a nice picture if I weren't close to 2 miles away.  I continued watching the goats until I heard my partner mumble… "I am not sure if this is a black or a grizz…" I quickly turned around and saw a big dark colored mass coming out of the heavy rainforest and onto a small section of tidal flat…  My partner didn't have his binos handy right away so I threw mine up and knew instantly it was a Grizz…

It turned out the bear was about a 7 – 7 1/2 foot boar and he did have a really nice coat on him,  His back was a lighter blond color while his arms, and legs were a very dark brown.  The bear had been in a few tussles as he had a big scar across his forhead.  We hummed and hawwed at the bear for close to 1/2 an hour and then decided we'd hold out for a bigger bear…  You know how it goes sometimes, and we never did see another bear the whole trip!

Click Here To See The Grizzly On Video

2006 BC Whitetail & Mule Deer Hunt

This year in November I hunted for 10 days in the cold of region 7. Unlike the last few years there was actually snow this year during deer season. There was at least a foot of snow when I got there and it kept pouring down pretty much daily while I hunted. This was good in a way because it really concentrated the deer into specific areas for feeding and thus they were much easier to pattern and setup for an ambush.

After a few hours of hiking around and checking out some trails and rubs etc.. I went and hopped back into the truck to get ready to still hunt for a whitey. I think trucks and farm equipment make about the best ground blinds you can use when your hunting deer in this type of country. They are used to vehicles driving around.

The whitetail were primarily hanging around the bails of alfalfa on one of the upper fields. This would be the spot for my ambush. I wasn’t there 5 minutes the
1st night and this guy showed up.  He had one really nice eye guard going for him but that was about it.  The opposite eye guard looked like it never actually grew rather then being broke off.  I watched this buck on several occasions and you’ll see him on the video.

The second night was when things heated up a little.  I had arrived in my spot at about 12:30pm and was going to sit there until it was absolutely dark.  There were a few smaller bucks and several more does on and off the bails through out the day.  At around 5:20 pm I happened to look in my rear view and see a big bodied deer coming right up the road behind me.  I turn
around and throw the glasses up and see that he is a pretty good whitetail buck!

He was warry of my truck and was approaching fairly slowly.  I had the video camera on him and could see he was a heavy 5×6 but he didn’t have very
much height to his rack.  His back right G2 was as thick as a banana which I thought was neat.  The buck was probably 400 yards away and still approaching slowly so I decided to help him out a little and sprayed a bunch of doe estrus out the window.  Watching him through binoculars he would curl his lips and then start coming at a quicker pace.  It was snowing heavily and the wind wasn’t in my favor.

You’ll see him in the video as he goes past me and comes out in front… The video cuts off as I was actually getting ready to take this buck.  I got out of the truck and crawled behind a haybail.  I threw a shell in the chamber put the gun up and locked onto the bucks chest as he was facing me… I held there until he quartered and then decided I wasn’t going to shoot.  It was only the 2nd day into my hunt I and knew there were bigger bucks.  He was a nice buck though…

You can find the video of him in my Gallery. 

Big Whitetail Buck Video (For some users the video shows up really dark, others light enough to see fine.  No idea!)

While I was up there I met up with another hunter in the area someone whom I met through HBC when we got to talking we found out we actually had permission on one of the same areas so we went out and checked it out for a day.  Saw a few deer including a smaller 4×4 muley.  He ended up taking a 5×4 whitetail off the property.  A great buck considering the pressure the area seemed to be under this year.  I’ve never seen so much deer sign in one field in my life.  They had actually eaten up entire windrows for the full length of the field…  You could see where the deer had pawed it all up.  Tracks, Trails and Beds everywhere!

Another highlight of the trip was seeing my first Cougar.  We were pulling into the property and about to reach the gate when my partner spotted a buck run across the road 400 yards ahead of us.  It looked like a legal buck but we never did get a closer look.  We stopped and waited a few seconds and another head slowly emerged from the where the buck had came.  I quickly threw my binoculars up and realized right away it wasn’t another deer but the big hairy face of a cougar!  I was surprised to say the least.  There are cougars in this region but they are few and far between.  I tried to get my Camera turned on and ready to get some film but the Cougar had turned tail and run the opposite way before I even had a chance.  We went and checked out his tracks and the snow was so deep  you couldn’t see the paw prints.  Just the marks from it’s belly dragging in the snow.  If we hadn’t of interrupted I
think the cat was probably stalking the buck for dinner.  That would have been awesome to catch on film.

The next few days brought much of the same deer into the area with at least one new buck coming out to feed every day.  By the tracks and trails left by the bucks it was obvious the big guys were coming out later in the evening into dark.  I was hunting the tail end of the season and there was one whitetail taken of this property that I knew of earlier on.

This buck on the left was probably the second biggest whitetail buck that I came across this year.  He
was a good 4×4 but lacked a bit of height and mass.  He is going to be an impressive buck in a few years though.  I’ll be watching for him.

There is some good video footage of this buck play fighting with some of the smaller bucks that were out this particular day.

Most of my time was spent still hunting whitetails.  Although I did go hiking a few days through some of the blocks of timber between fields looking for a muley which turned up nothing but a pile of sign.  I did see plenty of legal bucks while using the truck as a ground blind though   I have held out on mule deer for the last 3 seasons now.  Maybe next year will be the year I run into my buck…

I hunted long hours everyday and never did come across any bucks that I wanted so I’ll be eating tag soup this year.

Here is some of the video footage that I took on this trip. 

The video is almost 5 minutes long and has a few different whitetail and mule deer bucks that I encountered along the way.  I hope you enjoy.  It’s time to get busy planning my LEH Mountain Goat hunt in region 6. 

Happy Hunting!

Carl

PS… I forgot to post this first time around. I purchased a buffalo from a rancher in the FSJ area and went out to the ranch the morning of the day I was leaving. I took a hefty 2 year old bull and ended up with close to 400 pounds of some the finest meat available. No growth hormones.
Click Here For The Buffalo Shooting Video

2005 BC Whitetail Deer Hunt

My 2005 BC Whitetail Buck

Every year during November I head back to my home town of Fort St. John for a little deer hunting. This is where I took my first big game animal. It was a dinky little 4 point muley buck that I took 10 or 11 years ago.

On the 2nd day of hunting we were doing our usual rounds of the deer patch. We were looking for fresh sign and noticed some rubs that were hit during the night as well as tracks going every which way. We were glassing the rolling hills of the lightly snow covered alfalfa and spotted several does and a few small bucks. We watched them for a bit watched what they did and then started to move on.

We started up a long steep hill that is just like a corridor leading from one alfalfa field into another. There were rubs running up both sides every 20 feet or so. It was obvious the bucks work this track pretty heavy in the rut. As we started to near the crest of the hill it quickly opens back up into rolling fields on the right hand side and in one the dips only 30 yards away we noticed horns… 2 Sets… It’s two Muley bucks and they are fighting.

These deer were in a fierce battle totally oblivious to our presence less then 40 yards away. They were both decent 150-160 class mule deer but neither buck was really what I was holding out for so I elected to pass the opportunity at one of these bucks onto our hunting partner. He happily agreed and we watched them for a minute to decide on which was the bigger buck.

By this time they were 100 or so yards away and still fighting broadside to us. It was the perfect shot opportunity. We told our partner to setup and nail the buck on the right we no sooner said that and *BOOM* the 30-06 dropped the buck in his tracks you can see him going down in this picture.

Even though the mule deer buck was down and obviously not fighting anymore the other buck was still hanging around within 20 yards of us walking around in circles. It was crazy. I had a tag and he was legal but we already had one deer to get gutted and hung before lunch and he just wasn’t big enough. We hung the muley up in some trees and then headed off for lunch.

Now that we had a muley down I joked that now it was time to hunt for my big whitetail. We left our deer patch and had one field left to check. We almost never even looked into it until my dad said you wouldn’t be much of a hunter if you didn’t…

I laughed and we checked the field… Sure as shit if there isn’t 4 or 5 whitetail does out in the field and standing around with them in the middle of the afternoon is an amazing 5×5 typical whitetail buck! This was exactly what I was after so much the dismay of my hunting partner I didn’t pass this one up!

The deer were about 400 yards or so away but they were in the middle of the alfalfa field and starting to move away. I didn’t have time to make to hit the bush and flank the deer out of sight so I had to make the stalk in the
open. This field had some very slight rolls to it so the decision was made for me to go straight at the buck in one of the these little dips.

I got my rifle ready and started off on my stalk… I was crouched down, as low as I could go taking quick little steps… I made it 50 yards into the field and the buck looked right up at me. I froze… Shit… I am busted I thought to myself…

I remained calm and still frozen solid. It felt like 5 minutes but the buck eventually put his head down and I went back to my quick little steps trying to get to a good shooting position. This cycle repeated a few times with the buck looking up at me, me freezing and then he’d get back to eating again.

As I came into the last dip I was now within 200 yards of the buck and couldn’t advance anymore. As I crawled to the shallow little crest of this dip I removed my Ronyn Fleece Camo jacket and rolled it up into a rest… Slowly laid down and put a shell in the chamber… I immediately found the buck in my scope.

He was facing left and broadside about 200 yards away with his head down eating
alfalfa he had a doe right behind him so I had to wait a minute or two until she cleared out the way. I held just behind his shoulder and let one fly out the barrel of my 7MM. The buck was hit incredibly hard and must have
jumped 8 feet in the air as he sped off like a rocket. He made it about 150 yards to the edge of the field and collapsed.

Not too bad for the second day and the conclusion of my 2005 whitetail hunt.

Hope you enjoyed!

Happy Hunting!

Carl

Stone Sheep Hunt 2006

2006 Stone Sheep Hunt

Although this year wasn’t the year I would take my Trophy Stone Ram it was still full of memories and an awesome hunt to reflect on.  We left Sidney BC on a ferry bound for Vancouver on July 25th. The plan was to arrive ultra early so we could get some scouting in on the area we were going to be hunting. The drive up north went fairly uneventful aside from a 1/2 curl bighorn ram we spotted in a farmers field along the highway. We watched him for a few minutes and I took a short video clip of him.

Click
To Watch Some Alaska Highway Wildlife

We arrived in Fort St. John on the 26th of July and after getting all of our gear together and packing up the quad & trailer we spent the night trying to shave a few measly ounces off each of our packs. We were on the road by 7:30 the next morning. We saw plenty of wildlife on the drive up and arrived at the location where our hunt would begin early that evening. We spent an hour getting our camp setup and then headed off to start glassing for sheep.

It wasn’t even 6pm the first night and we were already looking at a small group of rams 4 or 5 in total we were quite a ways away and we could tell there wasn’t a shooter in the bunch. None the less we were seeing sheep and the season wasn’t even open for a few more days.  After a nice comfortable nights sleep in the toasty warm “Eena” tent we were out of bed around 5am had an early breakfast and scurried off to start glassing again.

My dad is an old sheep guide with a set of unbelievable eyes, if sheep are on the mountain he’s going to find them and it wasn’t long until we started seeing sheep again. This time we were looking across a thick timbered valley at a small group of 4 rams that quickly turned into 5 rams, then 6 rams, no 7 rams, before we knew it 18 rams had come together in this group and were feeding somewhat scattered across a high grassy hillside. We watched these sheep carefully through the spotting scopes for over an hour and determined that 2 or 3 of the sheep were definitely legal full curl rams but not big enough to make anyone drool yet. Besides we still had yet 3 more days until opening day.

The plan to hike into our spot on the 29th went perfectly to plan and the weather cooperated with an extremely nice and sunny day for the hike in. It’s no easy hike with multiple washes to traverse, willows 15 feet high and some really steep country where you have multiple sections of lengthy side hilling to work through. I’ll admit it’s a tough hike with a fully loaded pack on!

The days before the opener we would spend picking apart the surrounding mountains with our optics. The mountains in this area are comprised of high grassy ledges, with big sweeping bowls and alpine meadows set amongst the rough black shale cliffs. There was plenty of timber and buck brush down lower to make some really wicked ram country. This particular spot we were hunting at my family has hunted for decades and there have been some real dandy rams fall in this small patch of hunting ground.  We spotted 6 ewes and lambs that night and also observed plenty of locations on the mountains where there was sheep activity but the rams had so far managed to elude us in here.

The day before opening it started raining at about 11am and wouldn’t let up for the entire day… After chasing a porcupine out of camp when we returned from glassing in the partially fogged in valleys we proceeded to cook our Mountain House freeze dried meals for dinner. I ate Pasta Primavera on this particular night and it went down really well compared to the meal I had the night before. The pasta actually tasted great and set me up for a good nights sleep. We went to bed that night in our little two man tent
with high hopes for the next day. The weather so far was no longer cooperating and we were hoping for a break.

As many of you know weather in the mountains can change rapidly and I awoke several times during the night to the pounding of the rain on the sil-tarp covering our tent (another great gear investment Sil-Tarp II). The weather had no intentions of going along with our plan. I awoke in the morning and it was still raining and so cold I figured there would be snow on the ground. I wasn’t too far off. The mountains were almost completely fogged in aside from the snowy peaks we could see through the clouds… Not even 1000 feet above us and there was probably 6 inches to a foot of fresh snow.

Glassing was impossible as the fog was rolling down really low and we couldn’t see anything. This lasted nearly the whole day with some brief patches to get glassing in. We waited out the rain for another day and when it had not let up in nearly 3 days we decided it was time for us to head out and try our luck in another area we had planned to hunt.

The hike out took most of the day and was raining the entire time. Good rain gear is a must when hunting for sheep in August!

We arrived back at our base camp in the evening and had a great steak dinner before retiring to bed. I awoke at 5am the next morning to my dad firing up the wood stove and heating up the tent… That makes it a whole lot easier getting out of bed to start looking for sheep again. While my hunting partner and I were in the mountains my dad was able to get some more scouting in and found several more small bunches of rams. He had spotted a few legal ones in the bands he had found but we would need a closer look to know what they were for sure. Upon returning to these locations the rams were nowhere to be seen.  In fact sheep were nowhere to be seen. It was now into the season and it was obvious there was a lot of hunting pressure in the area. The sheep had started to really move around.

The real clincher happened when we had spotted 3 beauty rams in a very unlikely place. The lead ram was a really heavy, dark colored ram that my dad figured would go 40+” and the second ram was real light horned and light colored and figured it would go 38-39″. After looking at plenty of
rams through the spotting scopes these were definitely the most impressive we had seen so far. The decision was made to pack up our camp at it’s current location and make a move closer to where these rams had been spotted and then hike in and have a go at them. It was still going to be a 2 mile hike just
to get to the mountain they were on and then it would be a long haul to even get to the rams. They were in a really sketchy spot.

The camp was packed up and everything ready to move within an hour and we were on our way to the new spot. My dad had arrived there ahead of me and was watching through the scope when we got to him.  He wanted to get a bead on the rams before we finalized the plans. When I finally caught up to my dad he looked over at me and said… So, You want the good news or the bad news?”…. I knew what he meant right away but let him finish, “Gimme the good news” I said… “Well” my dad replied… “The good news is your ram is still there… The bad news is there are two hunters already skinning him!” That sucked!  But I have to tell you I was a little relieved of not having to make the trek to get to him anymore. All of the hiking was beginning to take a toll on my feet.

The last few days of the hunt were a little more relaxed and we spent a few days scouting and just enjoying the scenery. We met two great guys from the Kootenays that were up there hunting also and shared a couple of campfires with them and had an all around really great time. The quest for my ram will continue next year.

Nothing Beats Sheep Hunting – No, No… Wait… Nothing Beats You Up Like Sheep Hunting!

Happy Hunting!
Carl

My 2004 Non-Typical BC Whitetail Buck

My 2004 Non-Typical Whitetail Deer.

It was a drizzly Vancouver Island November morning when my dads buddy Bob showed up at my house at 6:30 in the morning to pick me up and take me with him up to Fort St. John for our annual Deer Hunt with my dad. We were in a hurry to get the 7am ferry so we could get that long drive out of the way so we could be hunting the next day.

The 13 hour drive to Fort St. John was pretty uneventful but we did spot a semi-decent 4 point mule deer outside of chetwynd in a farmers field. We stopped to have a look at the deer (it was the first of the trip) and then moved on to John. It didn’t really matter though as I was hunting whitetail because I had shot a muley buck the year prior and you are allowed only 1 mule deer every 2 years in region 7.

The year before this hunt I had worked a deal with a local landowner to hunt his private land in exchange for me building him a website and hosting it for his business. It was an offer I presented and this gentleman happily agreed. His house was the first stop I made as I pulled into John so I could say hello, let him know I had arrived and to pick up the key so I could unlock the gates to my whitetail hunting paradise.

After I had acquired the key it was off to my dads house where we quickly got settled in, and decided that we wouldn’t pressure our hunting patch just yet, instead we were going to head out to a different area that we had hunted several times before and had permission from the land owner(s).

The first night there we were seeing bucks mostly smaller whitetail bucks with a few mule deer scattered here and there. I wasn’t hunting for meat and planned on holding out for a really good whitetail buck since my first whitetail was already a great buck.

We hunted these areas for the first few days of our hunt eventually taking a very nice whitetail on
the 3rd day for our hunting partner Brad. He made a steller 150 yard shot on great 4 point (w/eyeguards) whitetail buck. Brad and I had been waiting in the field his buck came into for a bigger buck we knew was there as my dad had seen him on several occasions but when given the opportunity on this one Brad took it. This was his first whitetail.

Now that we had one whitetail down I was back onto the trail for my big buck and after hunting the same area for a total of 6 days we decided to head off and start exploring the private patch of land we had acquired to hunt. Really we just wanted to let things settle down in there because they were hauling hay and the trucks and tractors were going everywhere. The deer were a little skittish to say the least but not as skittish as you may be thinking…

The first day on the fresh hunting patch we drove around and checked the area out looking for buck sign which we found everywhere. And by the looks of it there was some really decent whiteys in the area. We did see some younger bucks that first day and passed on all. The truck and tractor were still going full bore but my dad assured me that we wouldn’t have to worry about them spooking the deer. It turns out he was right.

On our third day of hunting this area it was now the 19th of November and there was only 1 day of
deer season left. The crunch was on. We had checked our whitetail spots earlier in the morning and my dad and I were in one truck and Bob was in another. We discussed our plan of attack and my dad and I decided to work this small patch of afalfa where there was a lot of buck sign but it didn’t seem like the greatest of spots. The road they were hauling hay on ran right through the right hand side of this field and there was a truck going back and forth every 10 minutes.

Bob thought we were crazy and decided to go over the hill a little ways and hunt another field. Fine by us we thought. We found a nice little spot in the field to back the truck into, shut the engine off and just wait… Wait and see what comes out of the bush.

My dad had a feeling about this patch right from the get go. The sign was everywhere and you could see very distinct patterns they were working. The bucks were here we just needed one to make a mistake.

About a half an hour had gone by and the hay truck just went by again, I was getting frustrated as it’s 3pm and here we are sitting in a field that looks to disturbed from the hail hauling traffic I didn’t think we had any chance at a decent buck.

Boy was I wrong… The hay truck went by and not more then 1 minute later a Whitetail doe came swiftly trotting out into the field… Our first clue. “See that” my dad says… “Yeah” “That Doe came straight out into the field without even looking around first.. Whitetails don’t do that” my dad says… “There is a buck right on her ass… I guarantee it.”

I shut up and listened to the old man and we sat dead quiet as the doe started to eat. She would glance back towards the bush every few seconds and we knew that she knew there were more deer there. It was a just a matter of time.

After watching the doe for 2 or 3 minutes she seemed to relax and settle down when all of a sudden out of the bush bursts a little spike whitetail and he you can tell he’s running scared. He gets out into the field and then just stares back into the bush.

My dad is laughing at this point because you can tell by the body language of this little deer that he is in fear of his life right about now. None of the deer have even seen us and this is all unfolding 80 yards away and don’t forget the hay truck is due back in probably 3 or 4 minutes!!!

My dad “says, that little buck just had his ass kicked, your buck is right in there…” I believed him at this point and was poised for action at any time. After a minute or so that little buck slowly went to eating and would glance up every few seconds. I was looking at the Doe and little buck when my dad shouts out “There He Is, Dump’im”

I looked up to see this really dark & heavy old buck, head hung down low, trotting out of the bush, he was panting, and madder then hell that is doe had decided to run out of the bush and go eat leaving him behind. I barreled out of the truck as quietly as I could and threw a shell into my 7mm rem mag and set the scope up on the buck. He had made it about 30 yards into the field by now and as I looked at him through the scope I could see just how old and heavy he really was. I knew right away this was a good buck he was by far the heaviest deer I have shot yet. I set my sights just behind the front shoulder and and squeezed. The buck dropped in his tracks right there.

He was done so we immediately went over to him and had a look. He was a great buck! 6×4 and his horns were really, really heavy as you can see in the pictures. He didn’t score all that well but he is an awesome deer An “Old Campaigner” as my dad called him. He had obviously been fighting heavy, and his ears were torn and he even had puncture wounds on his body. I would have loved to have seen the deer fighting with him. He would have been a bruiser too.

It wasn’t 2 minutes after I shot my buck that the haytruck came back down the road, the old farmer totally amazed at what we had just done in the span of about 10 minutes. It all happened in the blink of an eye but it just goes to show that patience and experience always pays off.

I have to give credit to my guide (dad) for this one as I would have never chose this spot to hunt.

We called Bob on the radio and told him I had just a really good buck, so up the hill he came and congratulated me on my buck. We took some pictures then my dad and I loaded it into the truck to go and gut it and skin it out and Bob decided he would go over the hill again and wait for a deer on his little spot. Sure enough he got a little 3 point meat buck and another deer hunting season in region 7 had come to an end for us.

We spent the next day out at a Buffalo Ranch where bob got himself a nice yearling buffalo to bring back home for meat and then we were on our way home again.

It was an awesome trip, and my last trip with Bob as he passed away January of 2005.

Happy Hunting!
Carl

My First Vancouver Island Black Bear.

My Vancouver Island Black Bear hunt started with a trip to the taxidermist…

I was dropping off a nice whitetail that I harvest for a shoulder mount and happened to see a husky 3/4 mount black bear hanging out of the wall. The sheer size and shape of the bear was so impressive, I found myself forgetting all about the whitetail I had just dropped off and all I could think about was getting a nice big bear! Just like the one on the wall at my taxidermists. A trophy sized mature male black bear and I wouldn’t settle for anything less.

The problem… This was November and I wanted to take a spring bear. I was in for a bit of a wait. It wasn’t a bad thing though as I was missing one of the most important parts of getting a Black Bear on the Island. Wheels! I had no vehicle other then my 1975 Jeep CJ-5 and well let’s face it… It’s not something you want to be 250km back in the bush with . It would rattle itself to pieces on the gravel roads. So the first thing I had to do was get myself a truck. I didn’t want to depend on ANYBODY but myself for my outdoor pursuits.

So this year thanks to my online ventures I was finally able to purchase myself a truck. I bought a 2003 Ford F150 Lariat 4×4. The perfect truck for all my hunting exploits. And the perfect truck to get me out there in search of a big bruin. Opening day for spring bear was just around the corner after buying my truck and I had rounded up a good friend and his younger brother to go out and see if we could find an early rising bear.

The opening weekend of April 1st found us barreling down the Island Highway on our way into the area south of Bamfield. Klanawa to be exact. I had been there on several fishing trips with my friends and had the opportunity to do a little scouting and had decided this would be the area we would pound hard. This would be the area that would produce my trophy Island Black Bear.

The first weekend it rained really hard, we did manage to see two bears though and we also got plenty of prelimary scouting in discovering where all the spur roads went and where we thought held the most potential based on the habitat and sign. We went home empty handed that weekend but still had a great time and learned plenty about the area we had just started to hunt.

Actually… I went home empty handed 4 weekends in a row. We saw nearly 30 bears over the course and I even had several very good opportunities to harvest some average Island Bears in the 5 ft class many of which I have on video. I was holding out for a 6 foot mature male and although we had seen a few, they were just glimpses and we didn’t have time to setup let alone shoot on any of them.

As a first time bear hunter I found it extremely difficult to judge the size of the black bears. I insisted on getting as close as possible to every bear we spotted so I could examine them and watch how they behaved and see their mass and everything about them. I wanted to know black bears inside and out so there would be no mistake when that I spotted the big bruin.

It was getting through mid-may and I had to go to a wedding in Creston. I came home on the Thursday and over a beer at a BBQ friday night I had recruited another friend to go out on the Sunday morning and come back monday of may long weekend. I was excited. It was getting late in the spring bear season and I really wanted that 6ft bear!

Sunday morning came and off we went again into the Klanawa river area. On the way through cowichan we saw 4 or 5 deer out on the road and it looked like the game was moving around. We hoped anyways. We spent most of the day glassing, and driving, and glassing, and driving… You know the drill. It seemed like we had been at it for hours without even the slightest look at a bear.

The sign was everywhere but no bears! that is until the clock stuck about 4pm and look out… The bears were coming out of the woodworks. It seemed like every corner we rounded there was another bear running off the road. We had spotted a potential shooter and were racing to get under the bear on a clearcut and as we’re going down the spur another bear runs right across the road in front of us and gone. It was crazy…

In the next 2 hours I would spot and stalk 3 different bears within shooting distance only to have the bears get into to deep of brush or get themselves into positions where I couldn’t make a good shot. I was starting to feel that the end of the day was coming near and I would again be going home without a bear.

As we were leaving the last clearcut we decided to make a left hand turn and check out some new area we had only glanced at before. It was only 2 minutes away and since it was about 7:45pm it was going to be our last play of the day. So what the hell… away we went.

We pulled into this massive clearcut with a few forked roads and clearcut brush patches in between the roads. We started and glassing and I hear my buddy Ben yell, “Holy Shit” there goes a big bear across the road headed left… Now my buddy Ben isn’t a hunter and I sort of doubted the fact he’d seen a “Big” bear so I laughed and said “sure Ben” “NO REALLY, He was BIG” and I could tell the way he said it he was serious. I noted where the bear went into the timber and it was only 400 or 500 yards through and he would be into a clearcut patch again right adjacent to the road, so I sped up and around to where we thought he might come out.

Low and behold there was a bear already there! And it’s eyes and ears were glued to the bushes where the big bruin was coming through. I said to Ben “This is it…!” “That bear is going to come out right here any minute, we need to get into position” The wind was in our favor and not even 10 yards away from us was a pile of logs, so I scrambled up the pile and used the top log for a rest and to cover us from the bears view. Ben got the camera setup and no sooner that bear came right out where I thought he would.

That bear came out and swaggered down a little and you could just see that he was packing some weight in the front shoulders, and his ears were small and he just looked like he was a bear who’d been around the block. In fact this was HIS block.

We stayed quite and watched the bear go about his business while I field judged him. It was when he stood up on his hind legs to scratch that I realized he was a really good sized bear and that I was going to take him. I loaded a shell in the chamber and he heard me! “Shit” I thought to myself, he’s going to bugger off on me, so I stayed absolutely still, just staring at his face through the scope… Waiting… Waiting for him to turn broadside so I could take the shot.

He turned, and started to head back to the tree, I thought he was going to scratch again but he didn’t he went right broadside and as he started to turn again towards me I touched off a Federal 175grn softpoint with my 7MM Rem Mag and it struck the bear right behind the front shoulder cleanly and quickly tipping that bear over and we got the whole thing on video… I had done it! I had my Island Bear. And a good one too!

We waited a few minutes and then went to go and recover the bruin. He was right there not 5ft from where I had hit him. We thought we could be heros and drag him out of there for pictures well it took more then 15 minutes just to position him for the pictures. He was HEAVY. Probably around the 400 pound mark. The bear measured out at 6′ 3″ from nose to tail.

It took us a while to skin him out and quarter him up being my first bear and I wanted to do an excellent job for my taxidermist. We didn’t make it back to camp until about 10:30pm and we ate a quick campfire dinner of lobster and corn and then hopped in the truck and went to sleep.

First thing in the morning we headed for home… And my bear hunting had come to an end just as fast as it all started.

An awesome experience! I’ll never forget my first bear!

Happy Hunting!
Carl