Fish-Hawk.Net

qcconnection wrote:I spent the better part of the day off and on going over 69 pages of pure awesomeness.

Please, keep doing what you`re doing.

The internet needs more blogs like this.

Oh, I take it you visited Hell Bear camp. I did that years ago, and like you it was a great read over a few hours.

Markus, big kudos to you daughter. That's a fine looking bear and a great pic too. You must be one proud papa.

Cheers

BEAUTIFUL bear!

But "snare"???

Doug

Doug wrote:BEAUTIFUL bear!

But "snare"???

Doug

Doug, we're a trapping family. It's a big part of our fall/winter. I'm allowed to shoot 1 bear and as a trapper, i have 2 more tags for snaring. Spencer has her trapping license and is permitted 2 bear snares as well. But we dont use her's. She just traps under mine as an apprentice and uses one of my 2. The delicious meat aside, bear are a big part of our trapping season. We sell the hide, the paws, the gallbladder and sometimes a bit of meat if we can bring ourselves to part with it. My youngest daughter runs her own small trap line, and getting a bear is part of her agenda. My oldest daughter doesnt trap, she prefers to hunt bear and deer. With the licenses in our home, we're actually allowed 9 bears...but only take 2 a year, maybe 3 if it comes together for my other daughter, but they've never both got a bear the same year.

Thanks for that, Markus. I knew about the trapping but did not know you could (legally) snare bears. And of course, here in Ontario they would string you up by your parts if they caught you selling the gall bladder out of your (legally shot) bear. By law, you have to leave it with the gut pile.

And yes I am with you about bear meat, it is delicious!!!!!

Doug

I think there's only 2 provinces in Canada that permit the selling of galls. After we dry it, we take it to the dnr to get a seal on it and then it's legal for sale. We can sell them to people for personal use, but cant export them out of the province without more permits. We've never had to do that though, we have a korean family in Halifax that buys ours.

We finished up her skull today and we'll add it the bear skull shelf at the camp tomorrow.

Pretty cool way of preserving and displaying the harvest history for the camp. Minimal footprint, but I hope you have lots of shelf space available as the camp gets older cause I just have this feeling that you're going to need it.

Skull looks right fine to me. Looks like you have it down pretty good. Got any recent pics from the Hell Bear?

Cheers

Smitty, we've run out of shelf space at the camp. i took her skull in today and added it to the group. There's 2 additional ones up to the right.....so we need to remodel our skull display area. We've come up with a plan that should look pretty neat and we're looking to work on that next week. These bears all came from the camp property.

Markus wrote:Smitty, we've run out of shelf space at the camp. i took her skull in today and added it to the group. There's 2 additional ones up to the right.....so we need to remodel our skull display area. We've come up with a plan that should look pretty neat and we're looking to work on that next week. These bears all came from the camp property.

VERY, VERY cool!!!!

WOW!
That's a lot of bears, of course over time.
Do you have any idea as to how many bears come and go on your property in a years time?

ShawnD wrote:WOW!
That's a lot of bears, of course over time.
Do you have any idea as to how many bears come and go on your property in a years time?

We can ID anywhere from 12-20 bears a season. The 1.5 year and 2.5 year olds are the toughest to ID...they dont have any unique markings yet and are all the same size.

We avg around 2.5 bears a year at the camp property. It only takes 1 or 2 sows to replenish those numbers in the spring. So if you have 10 breeding sows, the numbers sustain themselves.

We are very careful with our harvest numbers because you have to remember, the sows only have new cubs every second year. My uncles bear was taken at a remote site where we scouted out new/additional bear country. The 1.5 and 2.5 year old bears have the highest mortality rate too, so whether you take one or not, a lot of them wont be back next year. You really want to protect your mature sows if you can and it's easy to ID if they have cubs, if they dont it can be tough.

We sometimes think we're over thinking things, but we continue to have a great bear population.

Wise stewardship ALWAYS pays off in the long run. I try to do the same with my deer hunting property.

Doug