A New Bear Story

Adam has had a "bear story" since I met him.  It was about when he was 18 and a bear hunting guide, and has always been entertaining.  But this summer, he got a new bear story, where he was the actual shooter.  He, of course, tells it better in person than I tell it.  But here is the gist of the story.  

 So over the months of July and August we started getting reports that there was a bear on Caribou Lake (one portage to the east of Clearwater Lake where our resort sits) and at the end of Clearwater Lake.  When you go camping, you are supposed to hang your food in a pack in a tree so the bear can't reach it.  Seems like a few people were too lazy and there were some people (no one who outfitted with us) who came out of the woods that had their food eaten by a bear.  It kept going on and the bear became less and less scared by humans, and more into getting food.  It even rolled one bear barrel off.  Many people couldn't scare it away from their campsite.  

One day the head of law enforcement in Superior National Forest stopped by.  They had been out looking to see if these "reports" were accurate.   They told Adam that they were out hiking and looking for the bear, and when they got back to their boat, the bear had found them.  It was in their boat, eating their Subway sandwiches.  The would have removed (shot it) it, but there were some hikers who just came out of the woods, and they didn't want to do it while they were there.  So they left after the bear left, and stopped by our lodge on the way out.  We offered them some lunch sandwiches, which they gladly accepted and said it was the DNR's job to handle it, and they would recommend that it be taken care of.  

The next day a man went missing on the Gunflint Trail and all the crews were tied up with that and taking care of the bear got put on the back burner. I also will mention here that at some point a bear got into our laundry room one night and ate all our decon.  For about a week after that we didn't hear any more stories for a while.  We thought maybe the rat poison did the job.  But alas, the reports started coming in again, and we figured either the bear got over being sick, or there was more than 1 bear, or decon just doesn't do anything to bears.  

Well, finally the Forest Service called one morning and said they were closing all the campsites on Caribou Lake, and they were headed in with motors and possibly the "Beaver Aircraft" to solve the problem.  They came in for 3 days.  The campsites were closed and they couldn't find the bear. So they deemed there was no bear activity and opened the campsites again. 

Then one morning, a particularly busy morning for outfitting, we woke up and came downstairs and there was a huge mess out side in the parking lot and on the outfitting building porch.  We do a trash run every night after dinner so all our garbage's are empty when bears come at night, but a group had a late night campfire and carelessly dumped their trash into the outfitting porch trash can.  Upon finding the trash can, it found the door to the outfitting building was not shut tight, and it came in, busted the door to the food room and got into some stuff like the marshmallows, candy, and coffee single packs, and busted some shelves.  Fortunately it didn't get into the packed food(other than the smores stuff) for the 3 groups we had going out in the morning, and it didn't go in further than half way into the room.  It was a mess to clean up, but it could have been much worse.  

That day the bear came back in the daylight.  We heard Mike (one of our staff) yelling from the laundry room.  We went up and the bear was in the laundry room with him.  When we got it out, it was hanging outside of the food room.  It wasn't scared of us.  Adam only has a .22 gun so he went and got it and got up on the roof of the outfitting building, and tried shooting a nearby tree to scare the bear away.  It ran into the woods.  We figured it would be back since it had found the mother load.  We were right. 

A few hours later, I was checking a group of women into the bunkhouse and when we got there there was a mess of garbage on the porch and one of the screens in the doors broken down.  The ladies promptly asked if there was a room in the lodge, to which I said yes.  I came back to tell Adam that the bear had gotten in the bunkhouse and into the garbage's there.  He had been out asking neighbors to borrow a "real gun"  Way too many of our neighbors had a gun, but no shells.  We finally found some ammunition, and Adam went out to wait for the bear to come back again.  We didn't really want to shoot the bear, but we decided it was enough when it started getting into buildings where people sleep.  Of course it didn't come this time, and Adam came back to eat dinner and we had church that night in a cabin.  After church we came back and one of Erik's dogs started barking, so Adam took the gun and went back to the bunkhouses.  Mike was up there and pointed the bear out.  He found the bear trying to get into an unused staff unit.  Adam knelt down and took a shot with Mike behind him.  The bear turned and ran straight at him. Mike ran in a serpentine fashion to the showerhouse and Adam shot again as he was backing up.  The bear took into the woods and died somewhere.  Adam figures he would have had 2 more shots before it got to him.  (didn't he think, what if i miss?)   My brother, Brian who was up working with us, found the bear later, and there was a shot just above the collar bone and his paw.  We figure the first went in and punctured his lung.  So after we finished work for the night and all the check-ins, we took the kids back to the bear to show them.  It was a medium size black bear that was probably 250 lbs.  They thought it was pretty cool.  Brock didn't  stop asking us to tell him the bear story for weeks.

We called the DNR Conservation officer the next morning.  They asked if it was in our freezer, we said no...we didn't know the protocol and didn't want to have a legal issue with shooting a nuisance bear.  It had been hot and had gone bad at this point and they came and got it and took it away.  They said next time to dress it, and take care of it, but just call them to let them know.  We have also had quite a few forest rangers say thank-you for taking care of the bear, and they haven't had to fill out a report or had a problem since.  

Well that is the story, I'm sure Adam will be happy to make it better in person if you ever ask him.

PS.  We will be using all our Cabela's points we have saved up to buy a "real gun" with real bullets, so if anyone wants to go gun shopping let Adam know.