Talk about mosquitoes. Wow!!! Never in the 24 years that I've been going up north bear baiting/hunting have I saw them this bad. It sucks. We had multiple bears at just about every bait. Some baits had up to 4 different bear hitting them. A couple baits had just one. From what I could gather there are 14 different bear hitting 9 baits. I'm sure this will change as we will loose some of these bear as they will wander some and move on but I'm sure we might gain a bear or 2 as well. Happens every year. A great 1st check though none the less. Here are a few pics from the baits. The hunting season opens Sunday and my 6 year old daughter will be in tow in the bear stand with me for one evening sit for her 1st ever bear hunt. School starts Tuesday so she can only sit one hunt with me. A young boar. Probably a 2 year old. Big boar. Every year we get big bear hitting this bait but they either go night time come hunting season or they leave. This particular bait has been one of our best the last 22 years. This year there is a guy working for the government cutting down tamarack trees with in 100 yards of our bait. He's been there every day since we started baiting. He's a decent guy though as he said he doesn't want to screw us up. I told him its ok as you have to make a living too although it isn't doing us a bit of good. He's taking the seeds off of the trees and will then give to a helicopter pilot who will throw the seeds out from the helicopter through out Minnesota. Anyhow this bait finally got hit the day before we got there. Usually its hit with in 12 hours of baiting it but what do you expect I guess. Oh well. Better then dealing with bear guides trying to scab off of us like they do every year. This is a new bait we started last year. Its in an excellent area that we found scouting last year. Should be a good one every year.
Another one of our better baits for many years. A few on here may of heard me talk about a brown sow that's been hitting our bait the last 4 years. She's back again. She sure is a dandy sow. She'll be pushing 300 to 400lbs dressed from eating our bait by the time hunting is over if none of us or no one else shoots her. As usual she's without cubs. Every other year sows have cubs. She should be knocked up now. Here's a dandy from the same bait as above. He's old I think and he's also crippled up some. Got a bad right front wheel. I would love to hunt this guy and may try if he sticks around. This big guy here Is the same bear as above. He hit this bait the 1st day we baited it. He stayed here for 6 days and cleaned it up and headed west 2.5 miles and hit the above bait. He's got a chocolate tint to him. A few video's from my Bushnell Trophy cam. I hate the night video's, poor quality. The day video's are nice. This here little feller has a chocolate stripe on his back. Kinda neat. Here's the big guy that's got the bad front right wheel. Notice in the 2nd video how he can reach the sack of meat without hardly getting up off of his butt. The bottom of that sack is about 5.5 feet. I really want to hunt this guy!!
Couple of dandies there Steve! Looks promising, sure hope you can stick a good one while your daughter is on stand with you
Great group of bears you got coming in. Good luck and hopefully we see a hero shot in a couple weeks!
We've been bear hunting in this area for 25 years. Its public land. There used to be just one bear guide in the area but now there's right around 6 of them in a 20 mile stretch. Its insane with bear guides. Some of these guides have used our same bait trail and will throw a bait 100 yards off of ours trying to pull our bear away. Others will go a tenth or so away and try and do the same thing. In the end no one wins as there's to much human activity in the woods. All but one of these guides where I hunt are wannabees. It only cost's 82.00 dollars for a guide license. It should cost them 1000.00. It would then keep the idiots out of the woods. We are loaded with bear hunters and guides where I hunt. Hunting is tough. You have to try and out bait the next guy that's leeching off of your hard work. Some years it royally sucks but I love bear hunting way too much to quit and go to a different area and give up all the years of sweating our tails off and learning so much in trying new things.
