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Buff's BlackWidow Bear By - Marty Thomas
When a close friend of mine in Oklahoma said that if he had someone to go with him he would make another trip to Ontario for bear, I jumped at the chance to push him off the fence. I worked my self into a lather the couple of months before we left, buying heavier limbs for my bow and loading up Carbonwood shafts with weed eater cord. That arrow, along with a 200 grain Snuffer created a bear arrow weighing in at 700 grains. The road trip to Canada flew by with the four of us taking turns telling our stories and babbling about the adventure ahead. Goose Bay Lodge turned out to be as promised with a cozy 2 bed room cottage on the banks of Lake Saul. The Hunt was to be a semi guided affair with the outfitter baiting several sites and then turning them over to us. We spent the next day traveling around our hunt area, marking bait sites with our GPS and hanging stands on our personal favorite baits.
The next afternoon after dropping off Mike Grace, one of the Oklahomans, I loaded the gear on my wampus cat with the hair standing up on the back of my neck and thinking of the adventure that waited ahead. The bait site was seven miles down an abandoned rail road bed and a million years back time. We had hung the stand in a Giant Spruce tree over looking a huge swamp. The second growth was so thick that from my stand twelve feet up the only place you could see the ground was in the small opening they had hacked to hang the bait. Everything was damp and dark under the solid cover with the ground being a combination of mud, boulders and dropped limbs, with the whole mess being covered in moss. It looked like a dinosaur could walk out at any time as I looked out over the foggy swamp. With my bow hung above me I settled down to wait, telling myself that no matter what I was not shooting the first bear I saw. I was rethinking what everyone had been telling me about hunters shooting 75 to 100 pound bears because no matter what size they are all you can think about when you see the first one is WOW it’s as big as a bear. The outfitter had been baiting with meat, hanging it in a toe sack out of reach of the smaller bears. I added a large pile of Texas Donuts on the ground under the bag just to add to the smell. A squirrel was having a feast of the donuts when he suddenly went screaming off across the ground, the woods turning so quiet you could hear a ringing in your ears from the silence. Looking down through the steel mesh of my stand I could see the head of a bear sticking out of the brush. I looked away not even picking up my bow. “I’m not shooting the first bear I see”. With out a sound on the moss covered ground the bear moved toward the bait. “Wow he is long but I’m not shooting the first bear I see”. With a soft grunt the bear leaped on the donut pile wrapping his front legs around them as if to keep them away from anybody else. They were his. With the entire bear stretched out in front of me I once again started talking to myself “He sure is long. Dang he is wide across his bottom. I don’t know anything about bears, but if that was a hog he would go 300 pounds easy”. Without thinking about it my bow was suddenly in my hand, fingers wrapped around the string and I was starting to get the hump in my back that makes my long arms work with a 28” draw. I was perfectly calm staring at the black giant trying to pick a spot to aim at. After a short inspection the shine of a large fly resting about even with the bear’s last rib caught my eye. As he was laying facing almost straight away from me, the over the hip shot I had read so much about looked perfect. I leaned out from the tree concentrating on the fly, feeling the muscles bunch in my back as the 66# Blackwidow came to full draw. An inch away from touching my anchor my string hit my hat. I had forgotten to turn it around. Leaning back into the cover of the Spruce limbs I turned it out of my way, noticing my heart had begun to race. I slowly leaned back out into the shooting lane, reaching full draw only to have my spot, the fly, decide to leave for where ever it is that flies go, leaving me at full draw and a frazzled brain. I now had no aiming spot. Gathering the last of my self control I slowly let down, leaning back in to gather my wits and locate an aiming point on the solid black target that had suddenly grown to a 1000 pound prehistoric beast. After a short study I noticed a little tuft of hair sticking up mid bear just to on side of the spine. Leaning back into the shooting lane I was a total mess with my heart thumping in my ears, eyes blurry and both legs in full Elvis mode. “Breathe, you gotta breathe.” In my building nervousness I had forgotten to breath. Closing my eyes and taking some deep breaths I thought about all of the afternoons shooting in my yard until I couldn’t draw my bow, then waiting an hour and doing it again. That combined with the 3-D shoots every weekend made this a slam dunk. Concentrating on the tuft of hair until the world blurred with only the spot in focus I began to draw my bow. With a soft thud the arrow suddenly was buried up to the feathers and the world stood still. I had told everyone that if a bear tried to get in a stand with me he would look like a porcupine before he ever reached me. I was wrong. At the impact of the 1-1/2” Snuffer the bear rose up on his back legs and stared up at me like I owed him money. I just stood there with my mouth open wondering, “What have I done now?”. After the longest 5 seconds of my life the bear dropped down on all fours and started walking away like nothing had happened. Apparently once he reached the brush the arrow snagged on something because then all hell broke loose. Letting out a bone chilling roar the bear began thrashing around in the second growth knocking down trees as big as my wrist before taking off in a semi circle of about 50 yards. Still holding my bow out with my left hand I followed his progress by watching the second growth flopping around as he crashed through it in a full out gallop. Suddenly it was quiet. Very quiet. Very, very quiet, and time for a decision. It was getting dark in a hurry. Do I wait an hour as I normally do when I shoot something and make the ½ mile walk out to my four wheeler in the black dark of the north country swamp, or do I go now and hope I don’t spook the bear I think is laying only fifty yards away? With all the valor of a 6 year old school girl I scooted down the tree and trotted out of the forest. Man my 4 wheeler felt good as I sped away down the abandoned track. Returning to my truck I headed back to Mike to find him setting on a nice 150 pound bear he had whacked with his muzzle loader. After loading his bear we headed for the lodge to gather some help. Returning to the bait sight I searched the place the bear had been laying for blood. That’s when the second best sound you can hear came to me from down by the swamp. It was the friend who had got all this started, Ralph Moses. “I got blood. I got lots of blood.” After a short and gruesome trail with blood everywhere where the bear crashed through the second growth Ralph froze in front of me, saying the best thing you can here after a shot. “There he is.” After the major ordeal of getting the ATV down to the swamp and the bear pulled across to it, it was official, I had my bear.
With the elimination of the popular spring season Ontario bears go mostly unhunted, as September is also Moose and deer season. Our group of four hunters were the only ones booked at Goose Bay and their 80 square mile hunting area. The area was not hurt even though all of us took a nice bear. My bear weighed in at 325 pounds dressed and made a beautiful rug and a memory that will last a life time. Ralph’s Bear ~Marty Thomas~ For more about Buff, please visit http://www.buffsblackwidow.com There's lots of good stuff there. About the author: Marty
(Buff) Thomas is one of those guys that everyone just naturally
likes. He's a man of good humor, honesty, integrity and devotion. ~Tracy Cannon~
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Disclaimer - We try to maintain a high level of accuracy of each article we publish, but the views expressed within are those of the author of each article. The Traditional Archer's Gazette, nor any of it's owners, or representatives necessarily reflect, or agree with those views. ©2009 The Traditional Archer |
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