Reprinted from a May 13, 2007 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
Every May I trek somewhere in Canada to bowhunt for black bears. During the month of May, when you depart the Minneapolis airport for Winnipeg (Manitoba), Saskatoon (Saskatchewan) or Edmonton (Alberta), the plane will be three-quarters full of hunters. Yes, black bears are big business in Canada.
It’s easy to get burned when selecting a bear guide. I hear horror stories all the time, where hunters go to a camp, the food is bad, the accommodations poor, and bear sightings few. However, you can do a lot of different things to make sure you get a quality hunt. First, be very cautious when selecting a guide that you met at a sports show. Not that there aren’t good guides at such shows, because there are. But there are also quite a few guides who go to the show because they have no clients, and they have no clients for good reasons. So ferret out the details when selecting a guide.
First find out how many bear hunters they book each spring, and how big their area is. If they take more than 6-8 hunters a week for the full month, and even into June, then you need to ask a lot of questions. Let’s say they take eight hunters a week for 6 weeks. That’s 48 bear hunters year after year. If their area is small, and their baits are only 3-4 miles apart, then you have a problem. You will see bears, but most will be small. It’s easy to overshoot the bigger bears, so be careful if they take lots of hunters.
Second, find out how many baits they run. If they take eight hunters a week and only have 20 baits or so, then you will be disappointed. Eight hunters a week for four weeks is 32 hunters, and for that the guide should have at least 40 baits running. Even then, if you hunt the last two weeks (which is a great time to hunt bears), you could have problems because so many hunters sat there before you arrived.
One sure fire way to make sure you are going to a good camp is to go with someone who has been there before. That’s what I did this past week. I went to Saskatchewan with Keith Casteel from Brandonville and Dr. Dave McNeill from Authurdale. They’ve been to the camp we went to several times and had great success.
Every two years the Pope and Young Club publishes the statistics on all animals entered in the record book that were harvested with a bow. During the past two years 582 black bears were entered in the record book. The average age of the hunters was 43, and over 40% had over 25 years experience bowhunting. The average shot distance was less than 19 yards. Most were taken with compound bows that drew between 60-69 lbs. Carbon arrows were used 67 % of the time.
Where should you go to bowhunt for bears? I checked the record book, and looked where the top 75 bears were taken in the past two years. The top state or province was Saskatchewan with 14, followed by Manitoba (9), Wisconsin (8), New York (5), West Virginia (3), and Ontario (3). Surprisingly Alberta only had 2 of the top 75 bears. There were none from Quebec or Newfoundland.
Clearly Saskatchewan and Manitoba are good places to go and even though Alberta had only two bears in the top 75, I have had many good bear hunts there. Interestingly the eighth biggest bear taken in the past two years was harvested by Nick Loughry in Preston County and number 13 was taken by T. J. Teter of Morgantown. I wrote about that bear last year. It was harvested in Coopers Rock State Forest and was a great animal.
For years the bears in Alberta and other parts of Canada were treated as vermin. Shot on sight. Today, the bears of Canada are one of the major economic resources for rural Canadians. And it is a replaceable resource that keeps giving and giving. If you haven’t gone north to hunt black bears, consider it for next year. They are a treasure.
