Well-Traveled Bear Dogs

[bearcat_outfitters]

Rasmus Nyman and friend Benny Andersson flew from Sweden in early May to undertake a bear hunt with us. This in itself isn’t overly remarkable as Swedish hunters are definitely keen on hunting bears, but what was remarkable is that these guys flew their hunting dogs all the way over with them! They both own a breed called an Eastern Siberian laika. The guys wanted to get their dogs experience in hunting bears so they could hunt brown bears back home. They figured a BC hunt would provide an excellent training ground with lots of bear action. This definitely proved to be the case. Their dogs Tyson and Olga did an excellent job on our hunt and made them both (and the outfitter!) proud.
I picked Rasmus and Benny up at the Vancouver International Airport on May 5 and we made the drive up to our new base camp on the shores of Monte Lake. The first day of the hunt resulted in the sighting of a sow with 2 beautiful brown cubs, but no opportunity to release the dogs. On day 2 we kept scouting and about noon spotted a medium-size bear feeding on the edge of the road. The boys were keen to see how their dogs would do and quickly released them from the back of the truck. The dogs were a bit unsure at first how to adapt to this new situation, but didn’t take them long to figure out what the plan was and soon were ‘lined-out’ on the tail of this bear. The boys kept track of the progress of the race on their GPS trackers and could see the direction of travel in relation to our road system. After a short while we could see the dogs heading for a road and we raced in the pick-up to get ahead of them. We stopped where we thought the dogs and bear might cross the road and Rasmus and Benny bailed out and literally ran up the road to keep ahead of the action. Sure enough, the bear crossed the road just in front of Rasmus and he made a great shot to put the bear down. Even better, Benny got it all on video. The dogs were quickly on scene and they certainly now knew what bear hunting was all about!
Day 5 of the hunt brought the next opportunity to let the dogs go on a bear. We were scouting fairly early in the morning and just caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a good bear running off an old landing where he was feeding on dandelions. The dogs were released and we tracked their progress on the GPS receiver. We could see them heading north and I knew they were paralleling a road we could drive. We drove as fast as we could to get ahead of them and Benny jumped out and got his rifle ready. Sure enough we could hear the bear coming through the forest. The bear almost came out on the road but must of saw us at the last minute and swerved away from the road. Benny got off a quick shot at the running bear and made a great shot with his 9.3X55 Blaser. Bear #2 down and it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful, 6-foot boar.
The next day Benny got a shot at a nice blond/brown bear on the edge of a clearcut, but wasn’t able to connect. It wasn’t a great spot to pursue with dogs, so we let this bear go with no further effort to chase with the dogs.
Day 7 resulted in another sighting of what appeared to be a good bear feeding on dandelions as we came around the corner in our pick-up. Rasmus and Benny were quick to get the dogs out of their kennels and onto the bear’s track. The race proceeded quickly and we paralleled their progress as best we could in the truck. After about a half kilometer we all jumped out as it appeared the dogs were heading for the road. We could hear an animal running through the bush towards us and Rasmus got set for a possible shot and Benny had the video camera running. We caught movement of something black and I thought ‘This is going to be a close shot.’ We then saw it was a moose and it crossed the road only about 25 metres in front of us. We were disappointed, but could also see that the dogs were quickly moving not far uphill of us. We kept track of their progress and Rasmus and Benny kept running to stay abreast of the action. The bear hit the road about 100 metres ahead of Rasmus but was going too fast for a clean shot. The dogs were hot on his tail and followed him below the road into a patch of old-growth spruce and Douglas-fir. Not long later we could hear the dogs really barking in one spot and could see on the GPS receiver that they were not moving. We suspected they had the bear treed, and this quickly became evident as we moved into the bush and could see the boar up a huge Douglas-fir. We took lots of photos and then Rasmus dispatched the bear.
We kept hunting for a second bear for Benny, and had another good chance the day after Rasmus got his second bear. We glassed a good bear grazing in a beautiful green meadow along the Salmon River and hiked down with the dogs into the canyon to get them close to the bear before they were released. The dogs could scent the bear long before the bear knew we were anywhere near and once they were released they ran like two brown bullets straight at the unsuspecting bear. The dogs were quite close to the bear before it realized what was going on and it appeared it was so startled it only ran about 100 metres and climbed the first good-size tree it got to. We could watch the action from where we were and it was quite the sight! We got to where they had the bear treed and I looked it over very carefully with my binoculars. Even though it was mature and a good-size, it looked like a sow to me, so we elected to not shoot it and pulled the reluctant dogs back to the truck.
Over the remainder of the hunt we let the dogs go on a few more bears, but were not able to get any more shooting opportunities. We had a great trip and Rasmus and Benny got some great training for their dogs and were able to harvest 3 beautiful bears. I hope one day to go over to Sweden and hunt with these guys on their home turf and see how they do it over there. It appears that between them and their dogs, there would be lots of action!

[Humptulips]

Great story and nice pictures.

[gun-dog]

They came prepared with the dogs!  That is awesome.

[bearpaw]

sweet hunt, congrats, sounds like a great time... 

[CementFinisher]

awesome great story!

[carpsniperg2]

sweetness

[Rufous]

That was one of the more exciting bear hunt stories I have read in quite some time.
Very cool adventure.

[NW-GSP]

Looks like they had a good time. Glad to hear the dogs caught on really quick.