day 141 9-6-09 Sun

9-6-09 Sun
Day 141-224 to go
8:30AM - 5:00 PM

Weather: Calm, 76°, Sunny,

Bagged: Adult sow black bear 161.5 lbs

Partners: Tom Weber, Jeremy Pank

Location: Northeast Minnesota: State line Stand.

Comments: We started back on the track about eight-thirty this morning. Fritz was not the machine he was just a few hours earlier. He had a very hard time picking up the track from where we left off the night before. We split up and began our search looking for the whereabouts of my bear. Tom gave us our first break with the finding of a series of beds that had blood in them. Jeremy then got us going in the right direction with his great tracking skills. He was able to spot a little blood and some wet spots on saplings that the bear had rubbed up against during its escape. I did not take long and the clues again vanished. I decided to let Fritz loose and see what he could come up with. I was not long and he had disappeared and would not respond to my commands. Figuring something was up I remotely beeped him and headed his direction.
When I did find him he was acting hesitant and looking towards a thick clump of brush. Looking in the direction he was looking I saw my bear, elation took over. But, it soon disappeared for as I scrutinized the situation I noticed something was amiss. The bear was still alive and a mere ten feet from where I stood and staring back at me. I immediately called to Tom and told him to get over here with the only gun we had brought along. Too late, the bear again crashed off through the underbrush. We were dealing with one tough bruin; fifteen hours after being arrowed it was still alive! We decided to leave the area and give it some more time to expire...
We came back four hours later, and this time we were all armed. Disappointment overwhelmed me, we were unable to pick up any new blood and Fritzy was just too exhausted to be effective at tracking. In the next hour I had searched and given up several times, but each time I would give up I decided to look just a little more. As a last ditch effort I told Jeremy that we should go back to where we had last seen the bear and see if we could determine the direction it had fled. Doing so enabled us to follow the trail for approximately fifty yards and get a general sense of the direction the bear had taken.
With no more blood being found and Fritz not able to scent the track I was ready to admit defeat. As a last ditch effort I decided to circle a small swamp and Jeremy would walk through the center. Fritz and I got about half way around the swamp when his actions indicated he had some time of scent. Looking in the general direction he was sniffing I spotted my bear. Seeing the swarms of flies around the black animal I knew the chase had finally ended.
I called to Jeremy that I had the bear. His response was "you’re kidding". Tom had a similar response of "I cannot believe it".
So approximately twenty hours after I had made my poor hit, we had recovered the bruin. It took us approximately another four hours to get it out of the woods. All told it took twenty four hours from the time I arrowed the animal to the time I got it in a cooler.