Jim's Blog
Sick as a Dog, Then Loaded for Bear!
Sorry I haven't been blogging for the last few days. I was three days getting back from Russia and picked up some kind of a crazy Russian bug and then spent 36 hours on a couch at home just trying to survive. It passed, so I headed up to my camp a day late to guide and my two clients Ron Bartells, one of the top SCI head honchos, and his grandson, Nick, they hunted the first day with one of my other guides. They didn't get a bear, so I took over and, basically, the first day I sucked. We were three bears until late evening and then saw three more right before dark, so we got it up to six for the day which isn't very many. But we had a pretty good idea where to go the next day.
But then today still were hurting saw again only 3 bears right up until almost 7 in the evening then started seeing lots of bears. Finally found a good boar, sneaked up on it, and it actually went in the bushes right beside us. It was 20 feet, we couldn't see it, popping and snapping upset at us. Then another boar came down the trail right beside us, so Nick layed down right in the trail, great footage, the bear came right at us, not running, just walking toward us and got close enough and Nick made a perfect shot with his Thompson/Center .300 Win. Mag. So we are all excited.
Yesterday coming up here I stopped in at Dave Fife's camp. He's another outfitter. We used to guide together years ago. He has the territory south of me now on Vancouver Island. Great guy, great oufitter. He had a client there in camp who I got to meet, Troy Anderson. Troy is an excellent professional who works in the rodeo circuit ... a really cool guy, one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet; it was an honor to meet him.
Stay tuned, now that I'm feeling better, I'll be blogging more regularly from our Vancouver Island black bear camp!
5/24/2010
