Machias' 2023 Spring Bear Season

[Ridgerunner]

Can't wait for the pics!!  Way to post them up so we can live through you.

Do you get alot of color phase bears in your area or are they mainly black?

[Machias]

Quite a few color phased bears in this area.

Nice big boy showed up.

[Machias]

Little red cinnamon also showed up.

[Machias]

Boy, what a beautiful sow that showed up tonight with a couple of cubs.

[Machias]

Young bear

[Machias]

Three little cubs!!

[Machias]

I have one bait getting hammered, empty every couple of days.  Having trail camera issues, so no good photos.  But tonight, he was so close I could smell him, it was overpowering!!  Pretty sure he was watching me.

[Rob]

Pretty cool feeling!

Bears have such a distinctively sour smell

[bearpaw]

I have one bait getting hammered, empty every couple of days.  Having trail camera issues, so no good photos.  But tonight, he was so close I could smell him, it was overpowering!!  Pretty sure he was watching me.

Good luck, hope you get him!

[JakeLand]

Getsum Fred !!

[Rob]

Hey Fred, how is the hunt going?  Finding any shooters on your baits?

[Machias]

So my season in Unit 5 is over.  Pretty dismal spring season, but still had some fun.  I never actually hunted a single day this spring for bear.  I had one bait in a brand new location on private property.  I have a couple of bears on camera last year.  I did not expect much activity, but did expect "some" activity.  The bait was never touched.  Second spot had all kinds of camera trouble, but what I was getting was no daytime activity at all expect one small rubbed bear.  One decent sized bear coming in at night.  This bait is a looong atv ride around to get to it, so I did not hunt it.  I was also saving it for when my daughter came to visit, but then she decided not to buy a tag with the slow activity this spring.  Last bait was fairly busy, with a total of 7 bears hitting it, that is counting 3 tiny cubs, so really 4 bears.  I was sharing this bait with a really nice guy and his son.  That turned out to be, not such a good idea for me.  I agreed to only hunt it after his son killed his bear and then he and I would coordinate who was hunting which nights.  He ended up only taking his son once and they ended up leaving at 7:30 because his son was bored.  They had a golden opportunity to kill a really beautiful blonde bear, but they let the bait barrel run empty and then nothing showed for a week.  In some ways it's probably good that I did not hunt this stand as I probably would have shot the blonde bear, even though it was not a really big bear.  Also I was a bit worried about them hunting the bait.  They both have never killed a bear and the big sow with the 3 cubs was occasionally hitting the bait right before dark.  However most of the time she would show up and the cubs would not show up for 45 minutes to an hour.  I was afraid they would take her.  She is a really big sow with a beautiful brown coat.  I would venture to say out of 45 days that bait was out this year, bears were on the bait in shooting light 6 times.  Had a huge black male in quite a bit, but never once during shooting light.  I'll be hunting moose a LOT this fall, so I figure I'll have a pretty good chance of seeing a few bears this fall while out looking for moose.  I'll pull my cameras tomorrow, so I should have a few more photos to share soon.

[Rob]

Well, no harvest but that's not why we do this.  Sounds like a prerty educational spring all in all!

[Machias]

 

[bearpaw]

Kind of a bummer the other guy didn't hardly hunt after you agreed not to hunt. Hope you had fun with it anyway and like Rob said, chalk it up as a learning experience to help in the future. On to the moose