2006 YOUTH BEAR HUNT
By Dale Bruder, Lake Superior Chapter
President.
The Lake Superior Chapter was one of the sponsors for
the 2006 Youth Bear Hunt over the weekend of August 26 & 27. The DNR started a program this year, that
allowed 10 youth in the Northern Wisconsin counties of Washburn, Barron, and
Polk to receive a Class A harvest permit for a Wisconsin Black Bear. As most of you know, it can take from 5 to 8
years to receive one, if you diligently apply each year. The program is designed to get youth
involved in the great sport of hunting.
The process started out with youth that were
interested, writing an essay as to why they wanted to participate in this
hunt. One of the criteria was that the
youth probably wouldn’t get the opportunity to hunt for big game under normal
circumstances. (non-hunting parents – single parent family – economic
conditions – etc.) There were 50
applicants that submitted essays. A
screening committee of 6 people, myself included read and judged the
essays. We finally selected 10 youth
and 2 alternates. The original 10
selections were filled by 4 young ladies and 6 young men ranging in age from 12
to 16 years old. As it turned out, two
of the selected hunters dropped out for personal reasons and the alternates
were given the opportunity to participate.
Mark Jacobson of Superior, Wi., a Lake Superior Chapter board member volunteered
to be the photographer of our hunt. He
would take both still pictures and film a video of the weekend activities and
hunt, so the youth hunter would have an official recorded memory of this great
opportunity.
Our Lake Superior Chapter group was paired up with a
young man, 14 year old Dustin Behrens from Spooner, Wi. Dustin and I as his mentor, attended a
training day session on Friday, August 25th at Camp Phillips, the Boy Scout
camp located outside of Haugen, Wi. The
youths had the choice of hunting with the aid of dogs or sitting over a bait as
the two methods available. All 10
selected the hunting with dogs option. The DNR presented an interesting program
about the introduction and reasons for this youth hunt, history and management
of the Black Bear program in Wisconsin, and hunting ethics, rules, and regulations
as they pertained to Black Bear hunting.
Jason Schroeder, a volunteer, brought in some bear dogs and equipment
and showed a video, so the young hunters would know what to expect when hunting
with dogs.
Jack Link, a veteran bear hunter of Minong, Wi.
volunteered the use of his hunting camp for the participants of our hunt, to
stay overnight and headquarter the hunt from.
He also volunteered the use of his experienced pack of hunting dogs and
personal expertise. Steve Waggoner,
also a veteran hunter from the Minong area donated the use of his dogs and his 40
years of bear hunting experience.
Lonnie Butterfield and his wife Candy of Chittamo along with their dogs
completed the hunting party.
Saturday morning started out bright and sunny and we had
a 2 hour chase started from a “hit” bait, which finally produced a sow and
three cubs in a tree. The presence of
the cubs made the sow ineligible to be harvested, but it was a great hunt just
the same. Listening to the dogs as they
go from a “cold” trail to a “jump” and then to the beautiful sound of a “treed”
bear is always exciting. Shortly after
lunch, the dogs were again turned loose off another “hit” bait and a 4 hour
chase ended in another disappointment, when a 80 to 100 pound bear came out in
front of members of our hunting party.
Saturday night was spent telling past hunting stories in an attempt at
bolstering Dustin’s somewhat diminished spirit.
Sunday morning started with the dogs getting loaded
into the truck before dawn and checking baits, looking for a “hit” bait to hunt
from. After a dozen disappointing unhit
baits, we finally found one to try. The
sun was just coming up and the sky was blue and pink. There had been a heavy
overnight dew and everything was drenched with moisture. As we entered the 2 acre clearing, the fog
was starting to dissipate and the grey fingers of fog remaining hovered about 8
feet off the ground.. The field was
surrounded by lush, green foliage and tall pine trees. The knee high grass was drenched with thousands
of silver balls of dew. It was the kind
of morning that keeps sportsmen coming out, early each fall day to witness the beauty
of Mother Nature. We turned out 4 dogs to
sniff the “hit” bait and they took off to the East in a loud and noisy cluster.
We listened for a few minutes and then
the barking ceased. We stood around
trying to figure out what went wrong.
First one, then all of the dogs came back to the bait and sniffed the
ground trying to get the scent figured out.
One of the dogs let out a long, bellowing bark and took off to the
West. The other 3 dogs joined him and
again the sound of excited dogs filled the opening in the woods where we
stood. They had started down the back
trail to begin with, but now had straightened out the scent. In about 2-3 minutes they started making the
“bear jumped” baying noises we were all hoping to hear. We jumped into our vehicles, headed toward
the road in an attempt to get in front of the pursuit. Jack Link thought he saw a “flash of black”
in the brush as we rounded a corner. We
stopped to listen for the dogs and they were coming fast to that exact
spot. We again started down the road,
to get ahead of the action. As we
rounded a corner, we saw the dogs already crossing the road and entering the
woods. We stopped at that spot and got
out of the vehicle to listen for the tell tale sound, that the dogs had treed a
bear. In less than 2 minutes our hopes
were answered, as the dogs went into a frenzy.
They had forced the fleeing bear to climb a tree.
We notified the other hunters in the group by radio
and waited for their arrival. Everyone
grabbed a leash to retrieve the dogs from the base of the tree and Dustin
uncased his gun in anticipation, hoping that this might be the opportunity he
had been waiting for. The bear was in a
tall white pine tree about 10 feet in diameter. The chaos and noise from the baying dogs was unbelievable. We got the dogs leashed and pulled them back
away from the base of the tree. We
talked to Dustin for a several minutes, about where to shoot the bear, so it
would be killed immediately and
humanely with one shot. Once his
nerves were calmed down a little, we had Dustin load his gun and get positioned. His shot was exactly where we told him to
place it and the bear came to the ground immediately. The bear was a 225 pound dry, female with a beautiful pelt. There was a good deal of back slapping, hand
shaking, and congratulating Dustin on a good shot and the harvesting of his
first Black Bear. Pictures were taken
and the bear was dragged to the vehicle.
We called the DNR warden for our area, Dave Swanson, as he had to
register this special, early youth bear tag.
Everyone returned to Jack Link’s place and he treated
us to a homemade breakfast that he personally cooked. We related the experience over and over
during breakfast and finally Dustin was driven back home to Spooner with his
trophy.
This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the 10 youths involved and the DNR is to be congratulated on a great program. Any time, we as sportsmen, can introduce young people to the great outdoors and hunting, we have helped to assure the future of hunting in Wisconsin. The DNR has announced that all 10 youths were successful in bagging bears. The largest was 246 pounds and the 2 from Washburn county were both 225 pounds. The Lake Superior Chapter of SCI was proud to participate in this hunt and look forward to the continued challenge of turning our youth on, to the “Great Outdoors”.
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