Some of you know I write for a Wisconsin Outdoor Paper and some of you don't, don't know if I can post the name of the paper on here (conflict of Interest issue) but I wanted to share this Months issue story with all you crazy bear hunters on here. Hope you like the read.
Mike Foss
A Bear Guide’s Roadblock
Late snow, hard start for baiting
With the opening of the 2014 bear baiting
season here, I look out my window in Washburn,
Wisconsin, over more than 30 inches
of snow. April in southern Wisconsin may mean open
water and walleye runs. For this bear guide in Bayfield
County, spring is still an idea and winter the reality
keeping me from work that must be done before the
hunters arrive to fill their September tag.
Preparation for the 2014 season to ensure that bears
habitually come to bait stations set over 30 square miles
prepared for 15 hunters, and the actual hunt, will be especially
hectic in Zone D. The DNR recognized a growing
bear population and allotted 1000 additional tags to keep
numbers in check. Our camp is already booked with hunters
waiting an average of nine years to earn the kill tag.
With much remorse, I’ve had to turn away many other
hunters without the experience, land or knowledge to bait
their own bear. All I can do is refer them to other experienced
and reputable professional bear guides in Zone D.
Procrastination is the enemy of the inexperienced bear
hunt. A hunt should be planned one or even two years
ahead of drawing an expected tag.
Despite the snow, the fever to venture into the big
woods and scout bear is strong. Unlike last year, I can’t …
I won’t … wait an extra month to select station, start bait,
and place a trail camera. Anyway, one of my trail cameras
remains stranded from last year’s muzzle loader deer season.
I lift the snowshoes from the wall, dress for a spring
journey, and head to the truck.
Soon I find that the county road to access the long last
camera is not plowed. But it’s warm and the sky is blue
and the sun shining. I find the snowshoeing surprisingly
easy going, and the first day out on a new season is rejuvenating.
The snowshoes carry me, but I carry the familiar
“what’s over the next ridge” attitude of the northern Wisconsin
hunter.
My thoughts are my own and that means bears, bear
hunting, and the task at hand. Bears have always intrigued
me and they still do. I wonder, as the long line of screened
prints mark my path, can bear suffocate from all this
snow? Can the extreme cold of 2013 and 2014 harm or
even kill bears? When they emerge from the den, what do
they first eat?
With the recovered camera again mine and the first bait
stations of the year scouted, the 2014 hunt is officially in
motion. A guide finds comfort in that. I head home under
a dropping sun and once there, but still hunting for the
facts, connect with a true bear expert, Dr. Danny Riley. He
is Professor of Cell Biology, Neurobiology & Anatomy and
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the Medical College
of Wisconsin, directing a black bear research project in
Wisconsin for many years.
If a bear went into hibernation with an insufficient fat
supply, Riley said, its muscles would begin to break down.
This would lead to urination and generation of ammonia
odor, which enables wolves to locate and kill bears in a
den. Even if vacating the den with a sufficient fat system
and depending on fat reserves, a bear will need weeks to
restore a normally functioning digestive, urination and
defection system.
Eating new grasses, leftover acorns and other vegetation,
the bear will not gain weight the first month out of
the den because the intake of calories is inadequate. If no
food is found, they are likely to retreat back into the den
to a lethargic, lowest energy-consuming state to survive.
By the second month out, they should find enough food to
gain weight.
“The big males patrol the edges of highways as the snow
melts looking for road kill meats,” Dr. Riley said. “This is
why I advise hunters to drag carcasses off the side of the
road into the woods. The bear alongside the road often get
hit and killed. Some of the biggest males that we took in
for dissection and research came from road-killed spring
bears.
The more you know about bears, the more you want to
know. I spent two full days on snowshoes scouting new areas
for bear. I am tired, sore, lost a few pounds and will do
it all over again until the snow melts.
Maybe we have more in common with the Wisconsin
black bear than we know. Good hunting.
Mike Foss was born and raised in Washburn, Wisconsin. Is a
guide and owner of Northern Wisconsin Outfitters,
Bear Story
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- Dewey
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Re: Bear Story
Good read and very interesting. Always wondered how the process goes to feed again after a long hibernation. I always found that fascinating how they survive a long winter like we just had. Hope the suffocation thing or wolves do not kill too many hibernating bear.
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- Schultzy
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Re: Bear Story
Long winters from what loggers have told me will kill bears. They die in their dens of starvation because their in there too long. This years winter has me worried. Specially the sows who had cubs this winter. Good read Mike. You live far from where you guide?
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Re: Bear Story
Well I'll debunk that. I'm a logger and we've had two early long cold and snow hard winters. And we are seeing more bears every year. Sows with 3 cubs are the norm I had one with 4 last year.
I'm a logger and I've never heard that theory. Not a pt logger either. Full time year round. I've seen where wolves will kill them in dens. We've had 1 mild winter the last 5.
If that theory was true there'd be hardly any bears in Canada or Alaska's interior.
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I'm a logger and I've never heard that theory. Not a pt logger either. Full time year round. I've seen where wolves will kill them in dens. We've had 1 mild winter the last 5.
If that theory was true there'd be hardly any bears in Canada or Alaska's interior.
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- Schultzy
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Re: Bear Story
I also read it somewhere too but I have no idea where I read it. It was 19 years ago. Where I hunt sows with 3 cubs are not the norm. 90% of the time it's usually 2. Maybe the dead bears they found in the dens were from what Mike said. It was the talk of the town where I bear hunted the year the loggers seen all these dead bear in their dens.Jim Wallner wrote:Well I'll debunk that. I'm a logger and we've had two early long cold and snow hard winters. And we are seeing more bears every year. Sows with 3 cubs are the norm I had one with 4 last year.
I'm a logger and I've never heard that theory. Not a pt logger either. Full time year round. I've seen where wolves will kill them in dens. We've had 1 mild winter the last 5.
If that theory was true there'd be hardly any bears in Canada or Alaska's interior.
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The year they found them dead in their dens was the spring of 1996. The harvest in 1996 was one of the worst on record. No doubt something happened.
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Re: Bear Story
That's a very strange story. We've had almost 15 feet of snow here on The Shore this winter. I do know like the story stated about peeing in the den will bring wolves in, the same will happen when moose holed up in deep snow and it gets like a barn yard with the pee and poop and wolves will smell that a long ways away.
We've also had almost 100 days below zero up here this winter. It will sure be interesting to see what happens this August. They should be ok with the massive berry crop we had. Biggest in half a century they say.
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We've also had almost 100 days below zero up here this winter. It will sure be interesting to see what happens this August. They should be ok with the massive berry crop we had. Biggest in half a century they say.
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Re: Bear Story
Hearing lots of reports on nuisance bears. Next door neighbor left her garage open, bear got into her garage freezer and had a smorgasbord of goodies
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Re: Bear Story
Lol! Oh my!Mike Foss wrote:Hearing lots of reports on nuisance bears. Next door neighbor left her garage open, bear got into her garage freezer and had a smorgasbord of goodies
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