The journey to shooting a P&Y bear here in Canada requires a lot of research and trust in your outfitter. The claims made by the industry all across this country sometimes differ from reality. Dreams of every hunt being successful with bears as big as Volkswagens are offered coast to coast and the wild eyed hunter’s stories of 20 sighting in one night don’t fit the typical night on the stand.

Shooting a P&Y bear if you have done your home work will depend entirely on you, because you’re the one that will draw the bow and release an arrow. Some will achieve their goal on the first try and wonder (is that it?) other will fall short for more years than most would ever admit to. They will remember missed opportunities, shooting too soon, leaving early, being fooled by size, the list is endless.

I’m going to tell you two stories both with great endings and how the journey to their P&Y bears were completely different.

The second story starts in 2005 when Elio Spadafora from Pennsylvania and I shook hands along side my truck and started a conversation about bear hunting. As an outfitter you meet both hard core and novice hunters, hunters that understand what it’s all about and some just praying to get through the hunt. Elio started the conversation with an explanation of advice he received from one of my more successful clients and friend Rick Perron. Rick had suggested he give us a try and he should listen to what is being said and accept it. I laughed and thought, man would that be great if everybody thought that way. I have learned over the years each has their own personal goals or in some cases dreams. In this trade you have to make some sort of an evaluation of the client and start the hunt from there.  Elio projected himself as a shooter, he understood the technical end of the game but admitted as far as bears went he was a novice. A novice with bears yes, but far from that as a hunter, with a track record of taking good top end animals in his home and surrounding states.

Sunday is our setup day when all of the stands are placed to allow the hunters the opportunity to see and understand the bear movements in their area. The wind is explained along with trails, when and where you should be looking the amount of activity, anything we feel will turn the hunt successful. Elio was comfortable at any range which makes the job a little easier, but there is always that lingering question, can he really perform under pressure at the chosen distance. On the way out I was asked if I was trying to shoot a bear in the heart where would you hold. I’m asked a lot of questions by hunters and I sometimes wonder if they have a predetermined idea in their mind of the answer and melt my explanation together with theirs. To answer his question I explained where the heart was and that something going wrong with a heart shot was greater than taking the center of mass in the chest area. I then went on to explain my theory that the kill zone on any animal was not where the arrow enters the body but where it exits and what it goes through in its path.

As we made our way back picking up other hunters the conversation changed to the excitement of all the sign, hopes and wishes as our group started to mesh into the new friendship of bets and fears.

Monday is are start day, you can feel the tension build as the conversation in the truck grows quite and hunters turn inward checking their lists, the beginning of the pressure most put on ourselves to be successful.

Elio and I were at last on way to the stand which took us through a muddy hole that was plastered with bear tracks of all sizes, he was sure there had to be twenty bears at the bait. I explained any outfitter wanting to impress a client should place all their baits in a mud hole because two or three bears would make it look like twenty in a few days and the tracks stay forever. We both laughed a little for different reasons I’m sure and after climbing into our stands we settled in for the hunt. While filming I explain to hunters that I am there simply to film the hunt, we are not to interact. It has always been my belief interfering with a client decision to shoot or pass takes away part of the hunt. I have broken the rule on occasion but for the most part leave the decision on shooting up to them.

There is a part of hunting that I seldom talk about, sensing, I believe it is within us to feel the presence of an animal. I know when a bear is in the area of bait, I sense it and believe it, and because of this I quite often will signal a hunter to get ready. More often than not the bear is an adult. I do believe it’s the transfer of energy between the hunted and the hunter, the younger the bear the less likely this is to happen.

Elio’s hunt was short lived, one bear came in offering him several shots while I filmed. He watched the bear from the sitting position while it made two or three trips around us until it finally committed and put it self in position for a shot. Elio was standing by this time and smoothly came to full draw in one fluid motion. The noise an arrow makes sliding through the air came to a sudden stop as it buried deep in the ground. The bear in a reaction time only a wild animal can achieve was turned and moving out more than ten feet from his last position leaving only a blood soaked arrow as a sign he was ever there.

The painted blood trail ended inside of 50 yards with Elio’s first black bear, a young male, shot directly through the heart. With an early kill he became our chief trackers assistance and proved himself to be a valuable part of the new team. When he left for home he promised he would be back for a good one.

Good to his word Elio was back in the spring of 2006 with a week of experience under his belt. He saw first hand what the results of waiting could bring as he helped with the recovery of bear plus his own in 2005.

Cory first saw signs of a monster bear early on in the baiting 2006 season. We had a client that said he could come at any time if we had a good bear show up early, one phone call and he was on his way. Actually there was two, Jay and Jerry Unkart, Jay was going to hunt the big sign but nature said no. We had to cross a small river to get to the bait but Mother Nature decided it would catch up our annual rain fall in 06 in a couple of weeks. Jay’s hunt turned into a skipping here and there hoping for bears on other baits. His brother Jerry, the subject of my next story had an opportunity to take a beautiful big black with the most distinct white Vee I have ever seen. Unfortunately or fortunately things didn’t work out and both left empty.

By the first full week of our season Jeff Budik had arrived after four days of hunting the river that had closed our chances of hunting the big bear sign with Jay had receded enough for us to give it a try. I went in to film Jeff and we were into bear almost immediately. I thought the window of opportunity may have passed but was ever hopeful. We had small bears entertaining us with an adult female staying out of bow range. As the evening started to range down I saw a large bear standing looking towards the bait when all of a sudden a monster stepped into the same opening and straddled the other bear. The bear was so big that it completely covered the other bear and then they were gone as quickly as the appeared. You could feel the tension in the air as branches broke then from the left a bear appeared moving across through openings. I had the bear in the camera at all times and was amazed when Jeff released. The shot was true, it happened so fast I thought he had shot the monster, it’s almost impossible to judge a bear through the lens of a video camera. The bear had rolled up thirty yards from the bait and the recovery showed us a beautiful bear but not the one I had seen moments before this one showed up, not trusting that the bear would be there in the morning we went out got the bike and brought every thing out.

We have a rule here that only one adult bear is taken from a stand each year, so with the image of that truly great bear in my mind I could only wish that Jeff had the opportunity to do the deed on the great bear.

Elio arrived three weeks later as a veteran bear hunter, looking for and willing to go home empty if he didn’t have an opportunity on a big bear. If every hunter could accept this frame of mind they would have far more sighting and I think a more enjoyable hunts. Up too this point in time our year had so many ups and downs we were just looking for the end.

Cory had Elio in his group and took me aside after the set up and explained that a new large bear had just taken over the bait. There are subtle signs that only a master of the woods can pick on, it’s that sense I touched on earlier. It’s one of those times when the hair on your arms reacts to the positive message being relayed, you known it and trust it.

Elio was on his own in the stand and had activity for most of the night, he now had the opportunity to look at bears of different sizes and began to feel comfortable on judging one of size. As darkness fell he was put to the test, in reality there was no test at all the bear making its way into the opening filled the woods with his presence. There was no judging required and his many years and thousand of arrows shot kicked him into auto pilot and the bow began to draw. The spot was picked and the arrow started its short flight deep into blackness of hide. The massive animal traveled mere feet before it rolled into the death moan we all hope happens.

There was a lot of action that evening with everybody a buzz at the ferry with stories of sighting, shots and sure kills, everyone that is except Elio, he was quite, Cory’s eyes were as big a saucers and told me Elio had no idea what he killed. When I asked Elio about the bear he said it’s big and it’s on the ground.

Elio’s bear was the first one to be picked up because it was a sure kill and Cory would have killed me if it wasn’t the first to be picked up. Normally a group of hunters would come in with us to recover any bear but this one was in an awkward place so I just loaded Elio on the back of my bike, Cory was on his and we got ready to go in. Well for the first time Elio looked puzzled and asked is this it, just the three of us going in? I told him not to worry that Cory and I had loaded a lot of bears and we would do just fine. He turned me round and said look I could not lift his head up never mind the rest of him, I think we need at least one more. One of the guys in the group had come all the way from New Zealand (Tom Dougherty) a wiry willing ball of energy, he hopped on the back of Cory’s bike and away we went.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to walk up on a truly great animal, there is a rush of adrenaline and sadness together. A feeling that only a hunter can understand, it takes a moment for reality to kick in, each looks at one another then back to the bear then back to the hunter’s eyes and you know that this is what it’s all about. At this time I thanked God for Cory and shared a moment.

We attempted to load this animal and after several half hearted attempts all got serious and approached the danger line of hernia ville and the bear was loaded.

After all the dust had settled Elio was rewarded with the following news.

His bear officially scored by a P&Y official in his home state at 21 4/16, placing it second for all time in the province of New Brunswick. It was the highest scoring bow killed bear in New Brunswick in 14 years.

At this date it is the third highest scoring Black Bear officially scored and entered in the P&Y book for the year 2006 for all of North America

Elio’s total time on the stand to achieve all this 8 hours or two evenings, to make it happen, good research, trusting a friend, trusting his outfitter and thousands of hours to reach that point in time where one has the ability “to shoot a perfect shot, under pressure, on demand”.

G