An Ontario Bear Hunt - The Bear Hunt That Almost Didn't Happen - Personal - http://maxpages.com/kentuckyharrod/Ontario_Bear

The Bear Hunt That Almost Didn’t Happen
As Told by Clent McCorkle

My story starts May of 1999 when Ontario closed the Spring Bear season. I decided to go to Colorado Elk Hunting but that’s a different story. In September of 2000 three friends and myself went on the bear hunt that almost didn’t happen. We went to Terragomy Ontario, to a place named Heritage Lodge. We arrived late Saturday evening and registered, got our fishing and hunting license so the guide could show us our baits the next morning. He asked which of us are bow hunters and which of us are gun hunters. Out of the four only one of us was a gun hunter. He decided which bait we would get by numbers. Number one was Tim Trump, number two was bow hunter’s bait that was almost six miles away from number one and that was my bait. Number three was only a mile from number two and that was Bob Hensle. The next bait was number four, a tree stand, which was the farthest bait away from all of us, which is 16 miles in, this was my number one son, Kristopher McCorkle. Kris had to drive the four wheeler to his bait; this was all done on Sunday. After everything was said and done we went back and rested for a while before the afternoon hunt.

Bob said he would like to use my shotgun that night. My shotguns name is Baby. I told Bob to put the crosshairs on the shoulder when the bear came in and Baby would do the rest. That evening I dropped Tim off at his bait and proceeded to my bait. Kristopher and Bob went to their baits also. Kristopher stopped at Bob’s bait and unloaded the four wheeler and proceeded to his bait. We all settled in, each one of us making minor adjustments on our stands. Most of the baits were set-up for gun hunters; Tim and I had to make some adjustments for shooting lanes for our bows. So as we set in our stands it must have been around 7:45pm when I heard Baby, there was one shot and then a few seconds later a second shot. I was a little ancie, I couldn’t stand it, and I proceeded to pack up my bow and my back up.

It was atleast a hundred yards to the road; I reached the vehicle loading my equipment in and went to Bob’s bait, which was atleast a mile to two miles away. I got there, Bob was no where to be seen so I went down to the gravel pit and turned around. I came back up to the vehicle and Bob was standing there. The high fives were going and the congratulations because three years before Bob went on a hunt with me and he did not see any bear.

He began to tell me the story of how we kicked a red squirrel off his boot and he looked down at the bait. Bob said “You don’t realize how black the bear is until you turn around and you see one right there.” He said he raised Baby, he said “I did exactly what you told me to do, I put it on the shoulder and Baby did the work. The first shot dropped the bear in it’s spot. Then he rose up so I shot again, I didn’t know whether he was going to run, I wasn’t taking any chance so I shot again dropping him again three feet away from the bait. I waited a few minutes. I went to look, he looked small when I shot him.” So I said, “Let’s go look”. We arrived down at his stand we walked down towards the bait, I looked at the bears head, I said “Bob this is a good bear”, I really knew when I laid my four inch camera in it’s pad the bears pad was atleast five inches. The stories that I read say that if bears pad over five inches it’s a good bear. So I told Bob “You have a real good bear, it might make Boon and Crocket, from its scull size it looks to be a good one.”

After tagging the bear and taking pictures we went back to the road and waited for Kris to come out with the Quad, he was 5 to 6 miles away and had heard the shot. Kris came and we picked up Tim who had also heard the shots while he was 16 miles away. We went into camp and picked up the guides and went back to pick-up the bear with a stretcher. The whole time I was telling the guide it was a good bear, the guide said “sure” then I proceeded to tell him it had five-inch pads. When we got to the bear the guide said “It is a real good bear, this bait had produced one other big bear the year before,” Bob proceeded to gut the bear. Bob proceeded to attempt to cut up the bear, me being the impatient one said, “Move out of the way Bob, I’ll do it.” I put on my rubber gloves, taking the knife and using the gut hook to open the belly and going up from the private parts up to the chest cavity being careful to miss the stomach not to hit the intestines. Slowly cutting around the inside of the belly and chest cavity cutting all the loose material inside. I rolled the bear to one side and cut around the butt and pulling it through the pelvic area and pull the intestines, stomach and lungs and the windpipe all came out. We proceeded to load the bear on the stretcher. We strapped the bear on and started up the hill. It took six of us to get the bear up the hill. We took turns carrying the bear up the hill trying to keep from having a heart attack. The bear was rather heavy; you know how dead weight is. The trees were narrow and it was very dark, trying to carry a bear with a flashlight and walking through a narrow path to a breast. The usual things were in the way like sticks and stumps and fallen down trees. We finally reached the road and everyone was tuckered, we loaded the bear into the back of Mike’s truck and we went to camp. When we got to camp the three Amish fellows from Indiana came down to admire the bear. When the four guys from Wisconsin came in, they also came to admire the bear. We put the bear in the cooler and returned to the cabin for supper and began to celebrate.

The next day Bob was Maggie. Maggie happened to come up from 1997 when we were hunting in WaWa. When Don shot his bear we decided we needed a Maggie, to make a long story short, Maggie is the person who got the first bear and would run the baits, do the dishes and cook supper so the other guys could hunt and that’s were Maggie came from. Well that’s enough about Maggie.

Now on with our story. The next morning we got up at 6am so we could have breakfast at 7am, after breakfast we got our knives and took a few more pictures and began to cape the bear. We used a diagram showing how to cut the different angles so we could have a nice cape for the taxidermist. We proceeded to take the hide off, once we got the hide off we folded it with the fur out and the head up and placed it into plastic bags squeezing all the air out of the plastic bags and placed it in the freezer and we began to cut up the meat which we de-boned. We through the meat into an ice-chest. When we were all done cutting the meat we carried the ice chest over to the cabin so Bob could wrap the meat into individual packages and label them roast and tenderloins. Bob said, “are we going to have backstraps for dinner tonight”, and I said, “sure, I’ll cook them when I get back.” That night we had backstraps, fried potatoes and green beans for supper. There were no bears taken by our cabin that day.

That night we celebrated a little more and went to sleep about 10 or 11pm. We got up at 6am and had coffee and went to breakfast. We also fished this day until it was time to hunt again. We had lunch at 2pm and went out hunting at 3pm. Tim and I were the first ones to leave, I dropped him off at his bait and I went to mine. Bob dropped Kris and the Quad off and went into town to call his wife and do some grocery shopping. Before the night was over we had another bear to retrieve. It was towards the end of the week and Tim had decided to hunt with the shotgun and it paid off for him. It was 7:45pm when he shot his bear. I did not hear his shot like I had heard Bob’s two nights before. It was about a half-hour before we had to be out of the woods when I walked out towards the road, Tim yelled out to let me know he was there. I asked Tim “what are you doing here” and he says “I got one”. I congratulated him and the high fives went off and I said, “let’s go get it.” Tim said “fine, we will go and wait for the other guys at my bait so we can all go in and get it.” Kris was the furthest away so it was about a half hour after dark when they arrived and we grabbed our big spot light and walked in. We followed the trail which the bear went shinning the spotlight in front of us. I said “there it is, poke it with a stick”. It was done for. We walked over and admired the animal. They said, “how are we going to get it out?” “We can go back and get the stretcher” I said, “no let’s just cut a pole.” We proceeded to cut a two-inch pole and tied the animal up on the pole by its legs and ran the pole between its legs. We hadn’t gotten very far when the rope fell off the bears legs so we had to retie the bear’s legs. Finally we were on our way again. There was a very narrow trail so we had one guy on the front of the pole and one guy on the back of the pole, lead man said “be careful there is a deep hole on the left side” So we got through that section and into the road. We proceeded to take pictures once we got to the road. We took a few pictures of Tim’s bear with Tim holding its head. Tim had a great big smile on his face.

After the picture taking was all over with we loaded the bear into my truck and we took it into camp were Tim had to gut it. We used a 5-gallon bucket to put the intestines in and we took some more pictures, we took the bear to our cabin and laid it on the tailgate until morning. We were done for the night and we began the celebrations all over again.

The next morning after breakfasts Tim and Kris went fishing, Bob and I began to cape out Tim’s bear. We began cutting and capping, we capped the bear and did the same with Tim’s bear rolling it up and putting it in plastic bags. We put all the meat in the ice chest so Tim could wrap his meat when he got in from fishing. Bob said, “I’m so tired of being Maggie, I’m glad someone else finally got a bear.” That night Tim put his bear in the freezer, also that night one of the Amish men said he had shot a bear that was as big as Bob’s. When the guides brought the bear in the guy said, “it looked big through the scope” It was a little smaller than Tim’s bear which was about 150-200 lbs. Then there were the guys from Wisconsin; there was one fellow that said he had shot another one also that night.

That night there was a little bit of celebration in the whole camp. After celebration everyone went to bed. The next morning after breakfast we all went fishing with cameras and took lots of pictures. Kris and Tim took off first and we finally caught up with them about 11:30am, Kris decided he wanted to take a picture on a rock. This rock was in 200 feet of water; Tim pulled up to the rock and let Kris off. I don’t know what Kris was thinking, after the pictures were taken he started walking towards the boat, when he slipped into the water. Once Kris got out of the water and back into the boat, Tim and Kris went straight back to camp and we followed soon after. It was about time for lunch.

It was a cold ride back to camp, his boot, wallet and everything was wet but we did get the picture of him standing on the rock.

We decided we would have fried fish for supper that night after coming in from the hunt. I fried the fish when I got home from the hunt that night, no bears were taken that night. I was a little discouraged about my bait so I talked to Mike and he says “I have a go to bait we can put you on” Kris and I both traded baits and we were both on the same road. Kris’ bait was about a quarter of a mile in and mine was two to three hundred yards back from the road. It was an eerie feeling walking through the overhang in the trees. It looked very promising but the first night I was there the wind picked up and almost blew me out of the tree. I hunted it two nights and I decided I wanted to trade again. Mike said “Clent you should stay there” but the next day at lunch we put our names in a hat and Kris and myself were in the hat and two of the guys from Wisconsin. One guy from Wisconsin drew the bait that I was on and Kris drew another bait that was down the road from the camp in the opposite direction. The other guy from Wisconsin drew bait on the same road that I was on; we were less than 5 miles from camp. His bait was less than a half-mile from were I was sitting. The guide dropped up off and walked me into my bait and took the fellow from Wisconsin to his bait. I set-up in the tree stand, I was there less than a half-hour when a Pine Martin came in to rob some meat. So I dug my digital camera out and took a few pictures of the Pine Martin.

Friday night, approx. 7:45pm a shot rang out to the left of me well it looked like I picked the wrong bait again. I sat there until dark, I left at dark and when I got to my truck the guy from Wisconsin was sitting on the tailgate. I said “I heard your shot” He said “Yeah it wasn’t’ very long when the bear came in and I shot it and I climbed down from the tree stand and walked back to my gun case and put my gun in the gun case and I walked to your truck and waited. I didn’t want to mess up your hunting so I just waited here until you got here” I loaded my stuff into the truck and we proceeded to camp. When we got to camp he went and got the guide and they went back and got the bear. Soon after they left the other guy from Wisconsin said “Yup, you should have stayed on that bait, I shot a big one, so where did the guides go?” I said “your other buddy got a bear down the road from where I was hunting and they are there retrieving it”. He said” well how do you get there” “It would be easier if I showed you” So I climbed in my truck and took them to were the other guys were. They were carrying his bear out when we got there. “Well guys we’ve got to go get another one and this one is big” We all went back to camp and dropped off the one bear. “Well fellows, let’s go get the last one”. So I gave them my spotlight and they left to go get the other bear. I said “You guys won’t be leaving tomorrow until late, you will have a lot of butchering to do tomorrow” They returned later that night about 11pm and they put the bears in the walk-in cooler so it would keep them cool overnight. The next morning we took pictures of the bear that should have been mine if I had stayed on the bait the guide had told me to but that’s why they call it hunting.

So we packed up as we were pulling out the cat said it’s last good-byes and we said goodbye to the guides and the cook and the guys from Wisconsin and Indiana. So in all we all had a good time and in total the group had six bear taken out of eleven hunters so the hunt that almost didn’t happen was a good hunt.

heatherofthehill@dcr.net

Visitors: 00826

Page Updated Fri Jan 5, 2001 7:09pm EST