WA Spring Season Update

I check in a few times every day. I'm not going spring hunting because we only get one tag here in Ontario. At least in my zone. I'm still working on my auto-feeder doing something daily. The better half is not impressed BUT I'm over it! HAH! I've got motor covers and battery cases being powder coated and will be ready on Tuesday. Yahoo! I'm close to finishing off 8 units. There is a plan to go toour to our bear area on May 8th for 3 or 4 days. Bringing the gals along. They will shop etc etc and Mark and I going to prep our 4 bait locations and also to move our 5th spot. Last year our 5th spot was vandalized and we lost cameras and solar panels on the aug 1st long weekend. The barrel was beat with an axe. This is an established spot for over 10 years and we always have a big bear there. Looked like a crime of passion by someone harboring anti-hunting sentiment. So we're moving about a mile away. I'm sure we'll be alright over at the new location. I'd love to stake out the spot and catch them and set their car on fire or something. I know that is wrong but it is how I feel. Better off to move before it escalates and I'm the first person charged with using a live human for bait!

Another friend of mine owns about 400 acres about 30 miles from where I hunt. He wants to do a spring hunt sooo I might get involved and sit and film.
He tried my elevated set-up last year and he had a big bear in but couldn't close the deal.

Anyhow good luck and get a big one will ya!

Went to the range yesterday. Both rifles (45-70 & 450 Marlin) were right on. Started reloading 15 45-70 rounds too. This is Fri night...intend to enter the fray Mon. Called a new friend who offered to help me recover a bear. The bridge to my fav area was washed out 2 yrs ago. He told me a little-known trail that will get me. There.

Well, this is update #2. Both the operator & this puter are severely handicapped so I am typing in most of the contents of an email I just sent that serves as an update....message follows:

Remember I wrote you a couple of guys called or PMed to offer help if/when I get a bear down? Well, I had a txt waiting in the car when we got out of church. I had a postage sized pic of what looked like an old bear w/a large head. A back & forth txt conversation ensued. It was Jerome, who I have never met who had offered a wk or so ago to help me. He was assisting two tag holders last night (season had started Fri), one of which got what Jerome called an "old boar". Kinda encouraging eh? I had called him Fri nite to further cement our potential meeting.

I told him of my intent of going out Mon & Tues (retirement rocks fellas) & the area I had scored in 7 yrs ago. He said the bridge on the 110 road had been washed out 2 yrs ago & not too many people get back in there now. Told me of a gate that is known mostly by the locals (like Jerome). Found it on the map...don't think I'll get much sleep tonight this jacked up. Ever get that way?

SS

Hey Edge? how is your hunt going? Send us a "SITREP"...situation report!

Well forum podners, no earthshaking news yet re: my game of hide & seek w/Ursus. Let's not comment who is the smarter of the two eh? I spent Monday & Tuesday in the woods in search of emerging bears trying to fill their stomachs. It is definately early for Western WA bears although one was taken last Sat (an old boar) in the North Skagit special unit as I mentioned in the previous update. Also, tonight (Wed) in the news, a sow & a 2 cub team further south in our state made their presence known in a residential neighborhood by raiding garbage cans (take away baiting & hound hunt'in & that what you get folks...IMnotsoHO). The terrified suburban residents watched out the window as the cubs crawled thru the backyard fence & pushed the "bait" er garbage under the fence to mama & then followed it under the fence. Real woods teamwork...pretty good for "dumb animals".

No scat found in areas where there's plenty of succulent grass for them to feed on. There were several old-growth stumps w/suspect patches of bark removed, however in proximity to these stumps should have been the tell-tale rusty brown scat providing verification (maybe last yrs afterall). It is still a few short weeks before the sap really gets flowing & freshly peeled trees begin to show up. W/the 80 deg weather the last two days it won't be long methinks. When the new needles emerge on the fir trees (timber company's cash crop) watch out, bears are coming.

Don't claim to be an expert, but bears can disappear when they hear, smell, or see you coming (don't believe the "experts" in the hunt'in mags that say bears have poor eyesight).....however, when bears disappear their scat is left behind. In the early part of the Spring season, in my personal opinion, still or stand hunt'in is wishful thinking until you have found turds verifying that "Kilroy was here". I can't speak about bait attraction in early Spring as that endeavor was taken away from us by a majority of the non-hunt'in voters before I had a chance to try it. Calling is also most effective in an area after the bear has been spotted & the caller quickly sets up a strategy based upon the circumstances. This is my next part of the adventure that I want to participate in! In 2004 Hunter's Specialties put out a dvd called Call"in Bears...They Come To Eat! by Wayne Carlton. 2004...yeah me the newbie, that dvd made me cross over the line, still love to hunt & eat deer but bears & that dvd changed my hunt'in life permanently. I have graduated now to advanced novice but I'm not looking back! It is a beautiful/exciting thing to see a caller, watching a big, hungary bear react to the calls & "playing" him into bow or gun range. Newbie or Old Pro...gotta watch "They Come To Eat!".

So until then we (happily) roam the roads on a scat expedition. My sis calls me a scatologist. Hey Sayleen! Know you are limited on what you can say as your new bear hunt'in book is coming out...but as a fellow bear hunter, how do you see the Spring season shaking out w/you & your podners at Hunt Washington?

Sideswipe (my podners call me Bruce)

My previous post showed a dead fir tree that was peeled a few years ago. Today I went out w/Jerome an experienced bear hunter who knows the North Skagit unit like the back of his hand. Saw no bears but found several freshly peeled trees that weren't peeled a couple of days ago. Also met up w/a WDFW officer out there. He confirmed that to his knowledge the older boar taken the end of last wk is the only bear taken in the unit to date.  The young man in the pic of his 1st bear. Not bad! They were walking a road where there was fresh peeling. They could hear a bear busy peeling inside the plot of replanted firs that were about 8" diameter. It was too dense to try to penetrate w/o spooking the bear. By nightfall the bear wouldn't come out. They returned the next morning but nothing going on. Returned that evening & they heard a bear peeling again in the same spot. This time the shooter stationed himself on the skid road while his partner entered the far side of the trees. Shortly this bear emerged onto the road. The rest is pretty much history. It ran 30 yds & piled up. I was told today that he was estimated to be about 250 # & is at the taxidermist as ! Write this.

Went out today (Fri 6 May). Still no bear so this is getting to be a long thread! This did turn out to be the most promising & exciting day thus far however. Changed location within the Sierra Pacific timber company holdings. Went up the mainline to the northernmost border of our hunt boundry which coincided w/the Nooksac River (9 miles from mainline gate & guard shack). Headed northwest on the 300 road which leads to a network of 300-numbered roads branching off the 300. Almost immediately we began to find peeled trees. I will post a pic of a sample...freshest I have ever found, probably peeled within the last 12 hrs. The vertical, lower jaw, front teeth marks are apparent. Sometimes only the large canine tooth on one side shows as a single, larger groove. The inner side of the bark has not begun to turn brown although the water had dried.                               
I did still hunt the adjoining roads w/fresh peels in the hopes that the bear was still nearby. No such luck. I will return monday early!

An interesting sidelight to this trip was that I ran across remants of the logging done here during the steam era. It lasted until the late 1940s in some places. Steam donkey engines to pull cables for ground lead logging & narrow gauge railways. I found two different samples of the rails. One was from the PB Steel Company (date of manufacture 1882) & the other was from the Lakawana Steel Company, Buffalo, New York (date of manufacture August, 1906). Pretty cool eh?