My eyes were growing heavy in the early afternoon heat.  After the fisher left, the area around the bait site had gone quiet.  Try as I might I could not keep my eyes open.  I had waited 5 years to be here and now I’m falling asleep what is wrong with me?  In a last ditch effort I put one ear bud in my ear and played Bear Horizon video’s on my phone.  I didn’t watch them and I covered the screen, but I hoped it would help keep me alert.  It did not. 

As I opened my eyes, I was staring directly into the eyes of a black bear at 16 yards.  This is it, this is what I am here for, I thought.  I went through all the steps I had rehearsed earlier that day.  I was hunting out of a ground blind and was glad I had practiced this shot at home repeatedly.  As the bear turned broad side he laid down.  I waited for him to stand and as he did I drew back.  He looked right at me again and laid back down.  I held at full draw while he repeatedly moved between a crouched position and laying down 3 or 4 more times.  Finally he looked at me stood completely broadside and turned his head back to the bait.  As I went through my routine and picked my spot the previous 5 years of bear hunts played through my mind like a montage.  As I settled the pin I was fully focused on the moment and the task at hand, the rest of the world dropped away.  I released the arrow and watched as the knock passed through the bear right where I was aiming.  WHACK! The sights and sounds began coming back.  The Bear tore off back down the trail.  I listened as the crashing stopped, no groan.  The woods were silent.  As I replayed the incident in my mind my heart was racing.  Doubts began to creep in.  What was that noise? Did I hit the blind? Was the shot low? I can’t see my arrow. 

My first text was to my wife, then my brother and third to Dave the outfitter.  I told him I thought maybe I was low on the shot.  Not hearing a death groan or significant crash combined with not seeing the arrow was causing me to doubt what I saw at the time of the shot.  Dave said he would be 40 minutes getting there and we would go take a look.  Over the next 40 minutes my focus was split between the journey getting here and looking and listening for signs about what happened to the bear. 

This journey began Five years earlier while looking for more big game hunting opportunities in Ontario.  I had decided a bear hunt was the way to go and my intention was to make it a solo hunt.  I love hunting, especially alone, that way any mistakes and any successes are mine and mine alone, or so I thought. 

Like most people nowadays wanting to learn something new, I turned to technology for assistance.  I don’t like commercial radio but listen to podcasts constantly.  I found very few podcasts related specifically to bear hunting but did find the original Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I worked through all of them over time.  It educated me on places too look for bear, where to shoot bear bear and bear biology.  More importantly it inspired me and helped settle the baiting debate in my mind.  This was something I had been wrestling with for a while.  The next piece of technology I turned to was the iHunter app.  It provided the layers of private and crown land and even shows some off-road trails.   It is very detailed and allows many different basemaps to be used. I set to work finding crown land in bear country. 

It didn’t take long for me to find crown land near a cottage the family and I rented every summer.  The owners of the cottage had become family. So, when I asked if I could buy some blue barrels off them, they gave them to me.  They also allowed me to stay at the cottage on the weekends I planned to hunt, rent free.  I used the iHunter app to mark my routes to the baits.  From the time I first scouted out these sites, to the time I first hunted them I had only seen a few people on the roadway and the area was very quiet.  When I first checked my trail cameras I had lots of images.  I enlisted help in determining size and sex of the bears from a popular hunting forum.  I found the members there to be quite helpful.  It was hard to contain my excitement when I set up for my first hunt.  My schedule allowed me to travel to the bait sites three times.  The first trip back was for baiting.  I used some of the techniques forum users had suggested.  The second hunt was amazing despite not seeing a bear.  The cameras showed a definite improvement to the number of bears hitting my baits.  As I set up on the most active bait for the last weekend however, this once quite piece of forest was loud, very loud.  It was the labour day long weekend, and every hidden hunt camp and cottage was packed with people.  I never did see a bear, lots of coyotes, racoons, and squirrels, but no bears. 

The next year my brother had met with a relative in Northern Ontario.  We came to an agreement where we would help cut a trail through their property for them, in exchange for hunting access.  We camped at nearby campground on a lake and set to work.  We had two sites that quickly started getting hit.  Despite doing this with my brothers help, it was still my intent to hunt alone.  It was about a 6-hour drive, one way, to this spot.  Making it suboptimal to continually attend and maintain the bait sites.    We had bought a lot of bait and stored it with the relative who agreed to keep the baits active.  However, they run their own business, and it just wasn’t possible.  In the end our baits had started drying up while others in the area were not.  Another lesson learned. 

The following spring, I planned on a completely different approach.  I scoured the app for crown land and found some great places through central and northern Ontario where I could camp.  In May I loaded up my truck and headed north.  My plan was to camp on crown land and walk the extensive logging roads and new growth areas with the hope of finding a bear eating the new grass.  I had great trip and found lots of sign.  I was probably a week or two too late.  Everything was green, there was no need for a bear to expose themselves to get the first green chutes of grass.  I made the best of it and marked some spots for future use.  I left on a Saturday morning and noticed that the area got very busy on the weekend, not again. 

The following year family friends in Alberta invited me to hunt with them.  At the time there were steep discounts on the airlines and the costs of a DIY trip out to Alberta was less than a guided hunt in Ontario.  A second family friend had even offered the use of their SUV for the duration of my stay.  With the tickets booked I was excited to head out west on this little adventure.  A rather sizeable truck repair however took all of that off the table.  I hated to do it but the prudent decision was to fix the truck and forego the hunt, so I did. 

I reflected back on the failures and grew frustrated that the DIY hunt was not working out.  I began looking at outfitters in Ontario with good reputations.  I would get hung up on the costs every time.  Until I broke down the cost of my DIY hunts.  By the time I added up the costs of fuel, camping, food and bait etc… I had already spent a great deal more that what it would have cost if I had gone straight to an outfitter.  To be clear I am glad I had the learning experiences I did, but I had to be honest with myself, DIY did not mean cheap.   I could not square in my mind the thought of giving up on doing it myself.  As I ruminated on this however, I began to realize that right from day one I had not.  Each of my previous hunts relied on help from others.  I realized I owed a thank you to a lot of people who, expecting nothing in return, offered to help me achieve my goal.  Now here I am waiting on an outfitter to determine whether or not I finally did it. 

As Dave, and his guide Ken arrived I was anxious to go looking for this bear.  Quickly we found the arrow, sure enough complete pass through and some bubbly blood.  We followed the trail and found some good blood on a birch tree.  I noticed Dave get in front of me as we kept looking almost shielding my view.  “Whats that?” I asked as I pointed down the hill at a dark spot obscured by trees.  “Ah nothing.” Dave said straight faced.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but marked that spot in my mind as we continued down the trail.  Ken, however, could not keep a straight face.  So when saw a grin on his face I looked again.  There he was, my bear, our bear, laying on a log 80 yards from where I shot him.  I relished in the first run of my hand through his fur, a moment I had visualized for 5 years. That moment in time was perfect. 

As most of us tend to, we took some pictures right there at the recovery site. I have this thing where I think I am smiling in photos but never am.  In the pictures taken with that bear there was no question.  I grinned ear to ear for the rest of my week.  Once we dragged the bear up hill I remembered I was wearing a watch that tracked my heart rate.  In the seconds between barely conscious and first seeing the bear, my heart rate jumped from about 64bpm to over 140bpm.  I took a screen shot of my heart rate.  It serves as a simple representation of the roller coaster this hunt was when I share this story.  I remember the excitement every time I look at it. 

As I look back at this hunt I am reminded of the seven “P’s” of success: “Proper planning and preparation prevent piss poor performance.”  I had practiced a lot, I shot from different positions, different elevations, different winds, different angles and lighting conditions.  I shot at black balloons to get used to a dark monotone sight picture.  I read and studied bear biology.  All as a way to ensure success.  While that preparation counted at the moment of the truth, I never would have been there if it had not been for the help of others, family and strangers alike.