West of Spiers’ pond is a ridge of beech trees. They are on the east side of the pond and they are right in the middle of one of our deer runs. The plan was for me to walk with ‘Bella’ (ye old trusty hound) north around the pond and along the ridge. The goal was to push deer off the ridge and along the pond to strategic points on the north and west sections of the pond.

After a half hour wait in solitude (except for an anxious hunting dog), I started the trek north. Bella, ranged on all sides of me as I walked. Things were looking good.

That was until I reached a stand of Beech trees. Then, things got interesting.

As I pushed through some evergreens and walked into an opening of beech trees I got that ’someone’s watching me feeling’. The dog felt it too because she stopped suddenly and began growling. I pulled my gun up a little closer to my shoulder (though not in a firing position) and waited. That’s when I heard some ‘crashing’ through some evergreens ahead of us. The dog stopped growling and began sniffing the ground again. I eased up on my gun and began to look curiously at the beech trees in front of me.

It was obvious that a bear had just been up it as there were fresh claw marks going up to the top of the tree. I had seen those before in other trees in our hunting area. What I had not seen before were all the leaves around the base of the trees had been pushed away into a ring that surrounded it. Picture a large donut on the ground with this beech tree coming out of the hole in the center. There were other beech trees in the area with the same pile of leaves. Bear tracks were clearly visible in the leaf-free dirt.

Nervously, I began to walk again as I did not want to let the guys down who were waiting across the pond. About 25 yards later, I came across another grouping of beech trees with the same leafy formations. A splash of black grabbed my attention, to my right, as I snapped my gun up to my shoulder. My heartbeat gave away my position.

It was nothing. Just bear shadows.

I didn’t have a tag for those.

This time the dog walked over tight behind me and stood there panting. It was like she had enough of this.

So, I pulled my hunter’s prerogative card and cut west and low to the pond. I got no arguments from Bella. She was already ranging between the swamp grass and the pond’s evergreens.

Over dinner, I explained to the guys what I had seen – leaving out the part about my slight course change. After supper, I stepped outside to visit the outhouse and Bella followed. She had to do her thing. Upon returning to the cabin deck, I reached down to scratch an itch on my ankle and I pulled off a beech nut from my sock.

I threw it out into the darkness. Seconds later, I heard some branches breaking. Bella and I looked at each other and walked back into the light and warmth waiting just behind the cabin door.

The glow of the woodstove kept the bear shadows outside.

*If you have read this before that’s because I have been occasionally reposting some of my favorite posts from when my blog was just starting out. This way, some of my, ‘buried’, posts may get read by my newer visitors.

This could be one more reason not to smoke or, at least, consider bringing back a spring bear hunt. The Globe and Mail reports that it took 72 staples to repair the damage to a Northern Ontario resident’s leg on Wednesday night. The article states that,

Ms. Harvey’s Rottweiler woke her up at about 1:45 a.m. wanting to go outside. She took him out to the driveway of her family’s Sudbury area home and decided to have a cigarette.

“Ranger took off to the other side of the truck,” she said. “I walked over to the back of the truck. That’s when [the bear] got me.” Entire Article Here

I predict there will be more and more of these incidences in the days and months to come as an exploding bear population in northern towns and villages causes the bears to become more bolder and brazen in their quest for food.

These aren’t the kind of bears found in kids cartoons and PETA newsletters. They are the real deal and it is those of us in rural settings that have to deal with reality of living with the black beasts.

What can you do if you run into a bear in Muskoka? Go ahead an call the Ontario MNR’s Automated phone line: 1-866-514-BEAR (2327)

I am not sure how the automated line would have helped Ms. Harvey – yet there it is. You could read through Ontario’s Bearwise Website for other lifesaving tips like:

• clean your BBQ grill after every use (because this is SO easy to do)
• put meat scraps in your freezer until garbage day (because filling your freezer with garbage is a good health standard)
• buy an expensive bear proof bin (true they seem to be effective – but a slight chunk of change more than a shotgun slug)
• keep your yard free of things that attract bears (what do we do about infants, poodles and midnight smokers?)

I hope you can sense my sarcasm. I just think that increased opportunities to hunt bears in Northern Ontario will be more effective and cost effective than the measures I listed above.

Yet, it is just my opinion and you are also entitled to yours.

Ever left your game cam wondering if you left it in the right spot? The people that set-up these camera shots should be teaching courses on game cam set-ups. These photos are submissions from OFAH’s Game Cam Photo Contest. If you have not already submitted photos for this cool contest, follow this link to do so.

Now to the Top 3 Photo Reasons Your Trail Cam Is In The Right Spot:

#3 (Below)

#2 (Below)

#1 Reason (Below)

You can vote for for these photos (and my submission) by following this link. For a good article on setting up your game cam, follow this link.

There is a particular edition of Ontario Out of Doors Magazine publishes that I anticipate the most each year. It is usually the September edition because they publish the Annual Ontario Hunting Forecast for the current and upcoming hunting year. It is very in-depth and generally covers all Ontario WMU’s.

To read the 2008 Ontario Hunting Forecast from Ontario Out of Doors -CLICK HERE-

To summarize their ‘intel’ on the hunting WMU 49 (the wildlife management Unit where huntsville is), this is what they are saying (click on the photo for a large view):

If you are looking for an excellent hunting and fishing magazine that covers topics and issues that relate to hunting and fishing in Ontario, consider this publication.

Here is an interesting story about some bear poachers who were caught by the Ontario MNR in an unusual way. The Chronicle Journal reports that,

Two Northwestern Ontario men have been fined a total of $2,300 for killing a black bear during the closed season and leaving it to rot after investigators found pictures of people posing with the spoils on the Internet. Entire Chronicle Journal Article Here

It’s nice to see poachers get caught. If you need to report possible poaching situations please call: 1-877-TIPS-MNR (847-7667).

*The TIPS-MNR reporting line is not an emergency response telephone number.   If you are calling to report public safety matters please call 911 or the police.

I don’t know when it happened. I wish I was blogging when it did. Perhaps, it is because it seems easier to discuss with children when we use terms like mommy deer and baby bear to discuss wildlife interactions. We put animals and people in the same category and teach our children that animals should behave like humans.

I have been going through some bear curriculum that the Ontario MNR have published for our school children. I have only just read the material for grade 2 children. I will reserve my detailed comments for another post, but I feel the material demonstrates what I talked about in my opening paragraph.

Comments like,

The family group breaks up the following May or June when the cubs (now yearlings) are 17 to 18 months old.” (pg.41)

There is an activity where the students are asked to compare human mothers and babies to mommy bears and cubs. See photo to the right. Harmless enough I suppose, but I feel it moves children to associate animals with human families. A relationship that ant-hunting groups like PETA capitalize to spread their message. This makes it difficult to discuss important wildlife management tools, like hunting, with children. Instead, of killing just animals, the indirect message children are getting is that dad (or mom) is killing a mommy bear or a daddy deer. This is something that repulses children even more. If we want to change perspectives on hunting, we need to start teaching our children the facts of wildlife management and the harsh realities of the wild. This bear curriculum does not even mention hunting as a tool to prevent nuisance bears. My hunting money probably went into its creation!

In reality, wildlife ‘family units’ are nothing like your everyday human family. Yesterday, I watched with curiosity as a friend put out some corn to winter feed some deer. Within seconds, deer emerged from the surrounding forest and walked towards the corn piles.

It did not take long to shatter the motherly love myth.

I saw does (female deer) with fawns (yearling deer) approach the feed. One would expect (like all good family units) that ‘mommy’ deer would let baby deer eat first. I mean, all good moms would do that right?

Nope!

As soon as the fawns reached out for the corn, the does would ‘hoof’ them out of the way while mommy feasted on the corn. I, then, expected the bucks (male deer) or ‘daddy’ deer to stick up for their kids and tell mom to let the little ones get some food. After all, they are a family unit.

Nope.

The young deer met the same hostile reaction from their ‘dads’. The kids got what was left over from mom and dad’s greed.

It is survival of the fittest out there. The comfort, love, and concern for children found in most human families is not seen in wildlife ‘family’ units. Let’s not teach children that wildlife live in family units.

If humans and animals were on the same ‘level’ there would be no need for statements in the bear curriculum like this,

People can change. Bears cannot. Therefore, it is people who must take responsible action to make sure that unnatural food sources are not accessible to bears.” (page 5)

Surely, after my mom talks to mommy bear they could find a way through the nuisance bear problem. I mean, they both understand motherly love don’t they?