Hunting with Mike

I am happy to report that I “drew blood” on my bear hunt!  The only problem is  it was “MINE!”  While sighting my gun in I inadvertently (idiotically-stupidly) put my hand to close to the shell ejection bolt on my 742.  I actually saw a hunk of skin fly through the air after I made this rookie mistake.  Oh that hurts!

Anyway this is the only blood I saw, unless fish guts count.  No bear, but the baits were being visited.  Not always by bear, as we had several wolves come in on Wednesday evening at my brothers stand, and also had ravens and vultures pay us an unwelcome visit.  If anyone thinks hunting bear over bait is a slam dunk, they don’t have a clue what their talking about.

I (we) busted our butts from sunup till late in the evening.  It’s go, go, go all day long in order to make sure you’ve done everything possible for a successful hunt.   We bear hunters know there are no guarantees in this back breaking sport, but we keep coming back year after year.  I just love the Upper Peninsula, and the Baldwin family is such a joy to be around.  83 Year old Dick hasn’t slowed down very much, as he and his son-in-law Dale cut wood (cherry for veneer) for two straight days.  Gary’s new camp is coming along fine, and I got to see brother Greg one day.  He works for the Federal Fisheries Dept. and we don’t get to visit with him often.

The weather cooperated, but the bear don’t always follow our rule book.  We saw mink, beaver. snakes (didn’t even know they had any around there) partridge, porcupine, deer, eagles, and caught some fish.  So even without seeing a bear, we still had a great experience.  I’ll write about some of our adventures in the soon coming blogs.

I’m going to try and post a picture of a curious beaver that swam within 10 foot of me while I was fishing one day.” Mike

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