Now look what you did!  You got red sticky stuff all over that nice arrow.  

Wow!  This is already great and the stories have barely started!  I'm expecting lots of pages out of this one!  Glad to hear it went so well.  

hey ya cant leave a kiwi hanging in the air no fear! LOL!!! cant wait to hear the rest.                          

Alright Doc!! Keep it coming, you guys can catch up on your sleep later  

Dang it all and then some!!!  The movers come tomorrow to pack us up -- no more computer.  Looks like I'll spend some time at the library's computer tomorrow night!  Maybe these reluctant story-tellers will do more than tease between now and then!        

Man this gonna be good! I can't wait to read the rest.

I can't wait to get home tonight!   To share a camp with "Uncle Barry"....WOW!!!

I was one of the chosen lucky ones...not because of getting a fine bear with my selfbow & Woody's stone point (we'll get to that later).  But rather my good friend Brian Vincent & I got to drive Barry up & back to the Quest.  It was story after story for 12 hours both ways        

Now I'm not a good story teller but as I recollect one of those don't tell anyone this stories started out...oops spilled my coffee be right back     Doc

Jeff. You are an evil, evil man  :D

GET ON WITH IT!!!

Before the stories start pouring in, I'd like to make a point and thank everyone who came this year.  The comradery and respect for one another in camp was what this traditional thing is all about.  Everyone pitched in.  When a bear was brought in there were 4 guys slicing and dicing.  In no time the job was taken care of.  If a bear was hit, guys would do whatever it took to track and try to recover it.

Tom, Allen, and Lloyd certainly did the the yeoman share of the work getting the baits set up for 12 hunters.  Just a note on that, there were 17 baits sites that had to be freshened every day so it took everyones help. Everyone had shots some multiple on bears.  Ten bears were tagged & brought to camp.  The area is so dense that a few bears without blood trails were not recovered.  Hopefully next year if my dog works well on some of the hides & bear blood that I brought home, we will have a little  extra help.  My hat is off to everyone who participated this year.  Thanks...Doc

Hey!! How can you guys do this to me?    Rest is highly over rated.

Congrats on a fine hunt... I'll be patient now, cause I know it will be worth the wait.  

Charlie complains about a story being dragged out?  Methinks he doth protest too loudly.            

Excellent comment, there, Woody. LOL.  There are a lot of things I've yet to hunt and finances might keep it that way...hogs, bears on the beach... at spring wake up...but these low stand excitement might be a juice burner too!

I think the camp stuff makes the actual hunting sound sorta pale though.  what a good crew of people to share wilderness with...      

I can't believe these guys are doing this to you guys. Right up front I'll say I've hunted bears a bunch and I've never seen as many aggressive bears as in this area. Not to scare anyone but the pucker factor was way more than average. I think I had a total of eighteen different bears under 15 yds. And a pile of them came in five and six times each. They'd come in, get run off, grab a bite and run off, circle, work their way in and run off again by a bigger one, etc. I tried to keep track and I think there was eighteen different ones. I also should mention I did not hunt two different evenings because of bad weather and a touch of flu or something. I'll give you a prime example by recapping my last days hunt. It gets light up there at 4:10 AM. although I didn't get on stand until 5:00. I sat until about 8 and frankly couldn't stay awake from only getting four hours of sleep the night before. So I drove back to camp, slept for a couple hours, grabbed a couple sandwiches and got back on stand again at 11 AM. I had two different probably two year olds (one sow and one young boar) jockeying for position in the pecking order off and on for hours. It was mostly sunny all day. Then in the afternoon the clouds rolled in and it started to rain. Four or five times a black cloud would go over and I'd have to take my camcorder down to keep it dry. Finally about 7 PM it literally poured and I was forced to run the camera back to the truck. What a stroke of bad luck this turned out to be. Back in stand without the camera now. What I figured was the sow came in and fed again when she suddenly scalded out of there. In from my left without hesitation came two big bears. The first I think was a big dry sow followed by "the man". Apparently he got upset that she got in front of him and a fight broke out right there under me. He took a chunk out of her butt and chased her straight away. Then when he turns to come back he looks up in the treestand, sees me and goes absolutely berserk that I was there and not running from him. At first he started a low moan that quickly turned into a bellow, then a growl, then a roar. He was popping his jaws, huffing and growling trying his best to intimidate me. Apparently it really bothered him that I was holding my position. So he'd facing me at about fourteen yards and first starts pawing the ground like a bull only throwing stuff behind him with each rake of his claws. Then he walks over to the crib and smashes it with a series of four left and right swings sending logs flying. Then he grabs a dead tree from the crib that is probably eight feet long and four or five inches in diameter in his mouth and with his teeth swings it like a baseball bat three or four times at me. I'm not sure if it just broke or he actually bit it in half. It really doesn't matter as I was pretty impressed... but apparently he didn't think so. He then side-steps, still facing me only giving me a frontal angle and grabs a live sapling by strattling it and wrapping his right front leg around the main trunk of the tree, then reached down with his teeth and snipped it right off, spit out the remains and threw the rest of the tree aside. He did this to two different trees. Now granted, these were only saplings maybe an inch or so in diameter but it was still pretty impressive seeing he was bellering and popping his jaws the whole time. Then, as luck would have it, a truck (a Canadian fisherman) drove down the road right behind me. He ran off fifty yards, stood his ground and started in again. Come to Poppa. Still eyeballing me, moaning with an occasional jaw popping he was still only giving me a frontal shot. Then the final straw, only a couple minutes after the truck passed here came either a four-wheeler or a dirtbike (I couldn't see it). Aparently the sum total of the truck, the four-wheeler and the fat guy in the tree was too much for him and he ran off. I honestly think he probably came right back in but I was almost out of shootng light and figured he was easier to deal with what light remained than in the dark, so I backed on out. We both lived happily ever after. Wish you all were there. BW

Man what a great story and an awesome experience.  That would have been something to see.

Awesome story Barry,thanks for sharing.I bet that walk out was a rush.  

Oh hell, This would have definitely been the hunt for me. I wouldn't have needed anything but a Bison gear pack full of toilet paper.      

Barry, how big was "the man"?  I'm surprised he didn't try to climb your tree or at least lean on it and shake it.  Doesn't sound like a place to be on the ground in a ghillie suit, unless your sphincter has an extra-tight setting.    

shhhh...Barry doesn't know we had a second trail camera on that blind and got the whole thing on film- it was a 74 lb two year old with one foot missing and all the body hair had been rubbed off except for paws and a strip along the spine so he looked like a punk rocker at a rave...and sounded like Snagglepuss in the cartoons...exthit, stage leftthhhht!

Just kidding!

Got back at 1039pm last night..let's see..thats 1pm leaving from camp Saturday...arrive at Lloyd's place at 345am..load up, head out, stop for two hour nap near Hudson River in NY, get up at 7am and start..so that's 15 hours on Saturday/Sun AM riding, then 15 hours on Sunday to get home...note to self- that's what they make airplanes for!!!!!!!!!!!