Part 3 of 4
I had vowed that if need be I would stay until Sunday night so that I could sit in the stand for a third evening on Sunday and then make the trek home after that, putting me back in Devils Lake around 3 a.m., I did not want to have to go that route, but I was going to exhaust any and every avenue in order to accomplish a bucket list adventure.
We woke the next morning and proceeded to the stand from the previous night. Surprisingly I was optimistic that we would find this bear. My cohort was not as positive, his dismal attitude would soon change. Not 10 minutes into the daylight tracking excursion and I heard my partner say:
“Travis, why don’t you move over here closer to me”.
I questioned this idea as I thought that we had pretty thoroughly searched the area he was indicating. Little did I know, as I approached him, the grin on his face told me the whole story. The wild discussion the previous night were unfounded, there he lay, a 285 pound goliath. This was the second time in our adventure that I had such strong feelings of both heightened excitement for him, and overwhelming anxiety and dread for myself.
Three out of Four ain’t bad, unless you are the 1. We proceeded to go through the skinning, pictures, washing, pictures, laughs, pictures, repeat. We returned to base for a breakfast/lunch and then returned to our cabin, it was 1:00, I was going to my stand at 2:30, I like naps, I like naps A LOT, I was not getting a nap.
Trust me, I tried, but it wasn’t happening. Around 2:15 our host arrived with news that the bait that had the sow and cubs also had a decent size bear coming into it at around 7:15. Do you know what is really the only situation a bear hunter should be afraid of, yup, you guessed it, a sow with cubs, GREAT.
I was not going to let that stop me though, and I tried to muster up as much positive energy as I could and we went to the stand. I got to my stand and got situated and comfortable, or as comfortable as you can be in a 18 foot tree stand with a tree climbing sow and two tree climbing cubs somewhere in the vicinity.
And then……………nothing…………………
