When Monday arrived the guys were pumped for the bear hunt.  Nancy again wowed us with a great lunch.  Then we headed out to some new baits that I had great confidence in.  The first day passed very quietly with Steve sighting the only bears.  We returned back to camp empty handed, but hungry.  Nancy prepared some reat food for us and we retired to get ready for another day.

     The second day began with me running baits and getting back to camp in time for lunch.  We then headed out to hunt the afternoon.  Today Steve saw 4 bears, Glenn saw a sow with 2 cubs and Jim shot at a bear.  I went in to help Jim look for the bear and there was only a little blood.  I decided to go back in the morning and look again.  I also had a few hunters that wanted to hunt the morning, so we made plans for that.

     We headed out in the predawn to put Skip, Ron and Mike on stand.  I then met Jim at his bait site to look for the bear he had shot.  After about 20 minutes I found the bear and learned that there was a large boar on the bait as well, because a good portion of the hind quarter of this bear had been consumed during the night.   After tagging Jim's bear, we skun and quartered it.  I then went out to pick up the others to feed them lunch.  Here I learned that Skip had seen a bear, moose and deer on his stand.  We ate lunch and headed back out.  This afternoon I ran a few baits and then waited near Skip's stand to listen for a shot.  As the afternoon came to a close I heard Skip's .44 magnum ring out.  I headed into his stand where he told me he had shot a bear and heard it go down.  We decided to wait a bit before tracking it.  When we picked up the blood trail it was amazing.  It lead right to a large black bear with cinnamon colored feet.  A real neat looking bear.  If you know Skip or meet him, you'll have to ask him about shot placement.  Steve had seen two other bears on his bait this evening, and Glenn saw the sow with 2 cubs once again.

     Thursday found us with four hunters left to fill their tags.  I moved the guys to some different baits for this afternoons hunt.  Ron decided to switch from a bow to a rifle and that helped him take his first bear this day.  No one else saw any bears, except Skip who sat on a bait with a video camera.  he saw two bears, one of which was a monster.

     Friday arrived and now we were down to 3 hunters.  We hunted all day with a short break for lunch.  No one saw any game during the morning.  After lunch I put Mike and Glenn out then walked Steve back into his bait.  We could tell by the evidence on the ground, that the bears had been in to visit while Steve was eating lunch.  Steve saw 1 more bear this afternoon, Mike saw nothing and Glenn did just what I asked him to do and killed a nice boar right on the bait.  We went to the tagging station and headed back to camp to skin Glenn's bear.

     We had a great brunch prepared by Nancy before the guy's headed for home.  We had ended the week with 5 of the 6 guys seeing bears and 4 of the six killing a bear.  We had 21 total bear sightings for the week for 6 hunters.  

      After the guys were on the road, I headed out to place some bait out in the woods for the next week.  About 1 o'clock in the afternoon I arrived at the site hunted by Steve Willey for the past week.  I left my truck running in the road, grabbed a bucket of bait and headed into the woods.  I went about 40 yards when I looked ahead of me and spotted a large bear on the ground about 20 yards in front of me.  I stopped and watched the bear trying to determine what I should do.  By watching the bear I determined it had no idea I was there, so I lowered my bait bucket to the ground and slowly walked back to my truck.  I retrieved my snub nosed Taurus 41 magnum revolver and slowly walked back into the woods.  I carefully closed the distance to about 15-20 feet, raised my revolver and fired hitting the bear.  As the bear struggled to escape I fired twice more killing a beautiful bear that not only has been great eating, but will soon adorn the wall of the lodge to be admired for many years.