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bear hunt

panhndlpoke

Heisman Candidate
Sep 6, 2006
6,688
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Who: Canoose Camps
Where: near St. Stephens, New Brunswick Canada.
When: September 24-28
Weapon: Archery
Kill: No
Trip rating: 7/10
Total Cost: about $3500

Flew from OKC to Chicago to Bangor, Maine. We left on Saturday September 22 which is a day early just in case something went wrong. We got to Bangor mid afternoon and went to a hotel before getting lots of seafood and drinks.

We could't show up until about 5 at the camp on Sunday so we went down to Bar Harbor which is a big tourist town on an island with the Acadia National Park. Simply put, this is beautiful country. My family is going to try to take a family vacation up here sometime.

The drive from Bangor to St. Stephens is around two hours but we went coastal and took all afternoon for fun. The border crossing was non evenful which is about all I can ask for. Also, was a really cute Canadian woman so bonus points.

The Camp is around 30 minutes from the border, but things get remote in a hurry across the border. I had no service at all with Verizon and my hunting partner had limited service with AT&T.

The camp is over 20 years old and showing some age. It's primitive with the cabins heated with wood burning stoves and no electricity besides some solar powered lights. Bring an external phone battery for charging your phone. We used the car a lot but that got really annoying. There are showers with hot water, but you need to bring some shower slippers. The concrete gets pretty damn cold with the water on the floor, no heat, and essentially open air. It was below freezing during parts of our trip which made for a cold shower even with hot water. Even though the camp was primitive, the cabins are snug if you get a nice fire going in your stove, which has a little learning curve to it.

3 meals are provided daily, and you won't go hungry. The food is pretty much comfort food and lots of it. Think turkey, mashed potatos, gravy, green beans, carrots, rolls and pie. Everything is homemade and well prepared. Breakfast and lunch are hot while supper is usually cold. No one gets to camp until after dark or later if they make a kill so usually we had sandwhiches, pie, and sides for supper. Lunch is definitely the big meal at Canoose Camp. Breakfast is eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, french toast, potatoes, etc.

Monday morning we ate, got all the financial stuff finalized, filled out licenses, etc. Went hunting around 4 or so.

Hunting is over bait in a tree stand, ladder stand, or ground blind. I was in a ground blind until Friday when I hunted in a ladder stand. My friend hunted in a portable tree stand on two locations the entire time. Hunting is evenings only. Dark hits about 7 so you go out between 3 and 4 and wait till dark. All hunt locations have cameras and decently marked trails in and out. They were maintaining about 8 baits with 3 hunters while we were there. My friend and I both shot bear and neither recovered our bear. My bear was sitting down on bait and I shot too high and got into his shoulder. My friend got a pass through but must not have hit anything vital. We tracked the bear quite a while, but never found him. The brush is very thick and finding blood was really just a matter of luck. To walk a mile in one direction would take at least 30 minutes and could take longer in some of the brush. Had we realized that hunting was evenings only, I might have made some attempts to go whale watching, deep sea fishing, shark fishing, etc. We didn't and sort of just sat around bored.

The reason I rated the trip 7/10 is that everything is adequate and the price is right. I think the price was about $1700 for the hunt. The rest was travel, rooms, car, etc.

I'll attempt to load some pictures in a bit

http://www.bearhuntng.com/
https://goo.gl/maps/HDaUc3hPQcS2
 
Ask questions if you have any. I'm hoping to go back in the spring to hunt again. I think I can cut $750 or $1000 from the trip if we ate more modestly and slept in cheaper hotels. Also, if we had more hunters, some of the expenses could be split more ways to keep things less expensive.

The guides didn't recommend keeping the meat but could get the bear butchered if you wanted it.

Also, sorry about the cell phone videos. Wasn't sure how they would work via Flickr.
 
That looks AWESOME! Maybe you mentioned it, but what gun were you using?
 
Gun would have been too easy haha. My wife is pissed I didn’t get her a bear rug.
 
Ahhhh...I see now. Damn. That definitely ups the difficulty. Did they let you carry a sidearm for those “close” encounters as a last resort? Bear in mind (pun), I’ve never hunted bear, don’t think I’ve ever been near one that I know of.
 
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