I had promised a picture of a big a bear and that bear was taken by George Haley. George is a friend of mine who owns and runs Moose Mountain Guide Service. He has taken his fair share of black bears and decided that he would like to trap a bear. Now before any naysayers start, let me put your minds at ease, bears are now trapped with a cable restraint on their paw that is very humane. Last year, George decided to try his hand at trapping a bear. He had game cam pictures of a large bear that he wanted to target, so he set the closure on his snare to a larger than required size in an attempt to catch only the larger bear. He had many bears come in, but none were large enough to hold in his oversized opening. The big bear also came on several occasions, but would not be fooled by the standard set and always maneuvered around the cable. Time constraints and prior commitments would not allow George the opportunity to snare a bear in 2011. The 2012 season started and George had a different strategy, to attempt a blind set to snare the bear. Again smaller bears were caught and quickly pulled out due to George's generous closure size. After seeing one of the bears that had pulled out, George was wondering if he had been too generous, as it was a very nice bear. Determined to get the " big one", he stuck to his guns and sure enough, he got the 522 lb. boar!
George's mother was also drawn for a moose permit this year, and the family got together to try their hand at tagging a bull. The first day of hunting was tough, and while many moose were spotted, their lack of head adornment in the form of antlers, took them off the playing field. The next morning, they arrived early to a likely field and saw the dark forms of moose in the field. As it brightened, they could see a bull in the back of the field headed into the woods. Knowing they would have little time, Milton (George's dad and subpermittee) pulled off a 275+ yard shot to down the "swamper". It was a nice bull weighing a little over 800 pounds field dressed and sported a 48" spread on it's antlers. I think the Haley's freezers will be full this year!
The last hunting story I have from this years big game season is a friend of mine Lance Cunningham. He was out deer hunting the week of Thanksgiving. His party had hunted hard, but no one had tagged a deer. Lance had found a pocket of deer on a ridge, with good buck sign in it. It was Thanksgiving day, and they were only hunting until noon to pack up and make it home for a Thanksgiving supper. Lance was still hunting his way back to pickup when he heard a noise. Freezing, he strained his ears and heard it again. It was the distinct sound of an animal walking through the leaves above him on the ridge. Having seen moose in the vicinity, he assumed it was probably just another swamp donkey. That was when the rest of the hunting party called him and told him to hurry back to the truck, because they were all waiting on him. Lance assured them he would hurry, but could not forget that sound and had to investigate. As he eased up the ridge on full alert, he saw a large ledge and decided that once he could see past that he would be able to tell what was making the noise. He slowly worked around the ledge, and as he did a buck materialized in the beech whips in front of him. Seeing it was a nice buck, Lance fought to put the crosshairs on the buck's shoulder without having beech whips in the scope. Finally, he thought he had a clear shot and fired. The buck bolted and Lance was unsure of his shot, so he worked the bolt again and let a shot go at the running deer. As soon as he fired, the buck piled up. As Lance got closer, he could see that one side of the rack was nontypical and that it was a very nice buck. It field dressed out at 190 pounds with 12 points. 4 points on the typical side and 8 on the nontypical side.
Stay tuned, because I have some trapline pictures and stories as well as shed hunting reports and hard water fishing is knocking on the door!
