Hi All,
Sorry to take so long with the story. Had a computer meltdown this week and it took a few days to figure out.
So…here it is.
First, the outfit. The Oxbow Lodge has been around for about a century. They have a really nice website that’s easy to navigate. It has their philosophy, background, hunts, FAQs and photo gallery. Let me say this, after having been on quite a few guided hunts at various lodges in the US and Canada, this whole experience is at the top of my list. The lodge is beautiful, well maintained, freshly painted and clean. The sleeping and eating accommodations are more than adequate and there are plenty of bathrooms and showers (the whole thing feels like someone’s house). The owners, Tracy and Tom and all of the guides and other staff are friendly and accommodating and very professional. I NEVER felt that I was being taken for granted and that I was a client. Refreshing to say the least.
The food was good and there was plenty of it. It was a bit heavy for me in that both lunch and dinner were taters and gravies and dessert, etc. Breakfasts were the expected big country breakfasts, eggs etc and cereal if you’d rather it. Lots of blueberry desserts and pancakes and plenty of seconds if you wanted it. There was pig roast in Sunday evening (the evening of arrival) that I was told was great (I missed it due to a family wedding).
There were 12 hunters in camp for the last week. My brother-in-law and bear hunt’n buddy Mike Merta, a very delightful husband and wife team from TN, two brothers from Ohio, a few guys from NY/NJ and a father and son team with a family friend from San Antonio. A couple were bow hunters, one hunted with a handgun (SW460) and the rest rifle. Very nice guys all!!! I thoroughly enjoyed their company!
Tom hunts about 300,000 acres I’m told and has 150 registered bait sites. I believe it!! We used 12 sites there were not hunted previously. It took 45 minutes to an hour to get our 5 guys into their stands, so, I guess we were at least 4-6 miles from each other.
Each afternoon at about 2pm we suited up and went out to the baits. Each bait was destroyed every day by bears. The bait site was a hole, filled with bait covered with logs that were abiout 14” in diameter, cut in 4’ lengths. This was really helpful in determining the size of the bear that was coming in. If he was longer than the log, he was a shooter, is smaller, no go.
Each afternoon, we were driven to the path that led to the bait, the guide grabbed a 5 gallon bucket of bait and a bottle of apple spray. We hiked, usually about ¼ mile to the bait site, I climbed into a ladder stand and got settled. Sonny Pennison, my guide and hell of a great guy, had to rebait, roll the logs back, they were scattered like match sticks, and then hike out.
Hunting was slow. The moon was full (it looked like daylight for most of the night) and the beech nut and choke cherry mast was heavy and ripening. The bears came in long before we arrived and ate the bait material, so, we rebaited hoped we’d get lucky. I only had 4 days to hunt as I had to be back home to Boston by Friday. The first three days were uneventful, except for the fact that the baits were hit when we got there. I saw squirrels, chipmunks, gorbys, moose and raccoons….no yogis. It was very warm the first couple of days, just a shirt and (thankfully) a bug suit. On the last day that I could hunt (Thursday) it was much cooler and in the 40’s.
I left the lodge to go to my stand with great trepidation on that Thursday, my last day of hunting. Sonny and I hiked in and found the bait destroyed as it had been every other day. He rebaited, I climbed into my stand and got comfortable. It was 2:35pm At about 3:30 I sensed rather than saw the bear come in from the thick stuff. He just appeared. I readied my rifle and thought, “Maybe I should take some pictures?
BANG…..autopilot….bear down. What….3 seconds and its over?
I gathered my crap, climbed down from my stand, dropped my pack at its base. Loaded my SW29 Mountain Revolver (stored in my pack), rechambered my rifle and headed to the bait, about 50 yards. I lost sight of the bear from my stand and couldn’t see him from my stand. So..I prepared for what I hoped would be a short tracking job. Unnecessary…the bear lay 12’ from the bait in some brush.
I went back to my stand, collected by stuff and hiked out to the road and up about 80 or so yards to the pick-up spot. It was about 4pm. I tied a piece of orange trail tape to my barrel like a flag which I told Sonny I would do if I got a bear. At 6:15 I heard the truck coming (the guides drive the roads to check on everyone) and as soon as he saw me and the tape, he was crazy excited!!!! What the hell time did you shoot??? I told him and thought he would’ve heard the shot. We drove back to the trail and he took out a WWII litter or stretcher used to carry wounded soldiers from the field. He asked me how big the bear was and I told him, 150 or so. As we got closer to it he said, seems to be gaining weight, its 200 at least. We pulled him out, strapped him on the litter and humped him to the pick-up. By the time we arrived at the pick-up, he weighed 5 or 6 hundred pounds easy.
We hung around until dark, picked up the rest of the guys and headed back to the lodge. When we got there, we weighed him and he was just 200lbs and 5’ square. A nice bear all around.
Now…the Oxbow had 70 bear hunters in the 4 week season. As of Thursday evening when I shot my bear, 51 bears were killed. A smallish bear was killed earlier in the week and 49 in the previous three weeks. Also, another fellow wounded a bear on the same night I killed mine (this bear was not found). There were 6 un-recovered wounds and 8 clean misses at that point. I haven’t check with them to see if any other bears were taken though I suspect there were. That’s a 93% chance at taking a bear….not too bad!!!!
That’s the story.
