Hoffer
FNG
This past spring I had the opportunity to fill my first bear tag in my home province of British Columbia. It was an experience that I'll never forget given the incredible hunting area we explored and the team that helped to make it all come together.
Thanks to one of our hunting pals being a water taxi/barge operator, we had the advantage of using a boat throughout the entire hunt. This degree of freedom and easy accessibility was imperative to our success given the area we hunted was dense forest and steep terrain with minimal glassing opportunity once tucked into said terrain. With the boat, we were able to focus our efforts on glassing up into recent logging cuts or shorelines as the tides would drop. We hunted an area in close proximity to the Sunshine Coast in one of the many inlet areas accessible only by boat. This was my first time having an opportunity to hunt such an area with boat access and it an experience beyond anything I could have anticipated!
Thanks to an awesome group of friends, half of whom are locals to the Sunshine Coast area, all I had to do was show up with was my cooler, pack/personal kit and firearm. Everything else from cooking gear, tents, food/water, food shelter, boating logistics, fishing gear and an available hanger/storage cooler had been sorted without any effort from my end. This was beginning to take shape of what I envision others incur on a trip through a professional outfitter!
We had four days of hunting planned with our travel included in those days. Thankfully as a resident of North Vancouver, a ferry ride over to the Sunshine Coast is under an hour which I now know is a total privilege! Friday morning was a quick ferry ride to the coast where we met our other two party members and promptly loaded up our water-stallion with all the supplies necessary for bear camp. Before12pm Friday afternoon, the boat was in the water and our team of four were on route to bear camp!
After a quick camp set up, we piled back into the boat to get a bit of early afternoon fishing in effort to fill the cooler with fish for dinner. A quick effort jigging close to structure produced 4 Rockfish that were promptly bonked and saved for the evenings meal.
By 4pm that Friday afternoon we switched gears and it was time to get this bear hunt started. A short 30-minute boat ride to our first glassing location, a logging area vacant for probably 2-3 years, put us in sight of our first bear within 15 minutes of glassing. After brief discussion, the decision was made to tuck myself and my pal AJ onto the shore where we could access an old logging road and climb up to the area where we spotted the bear. On route into the area we had seen the first bear, we encountered a younger smaller bear within 20 minutes of the hike in. This bear stood on top of an old stump on a steep slope and checked us out for a while, as we both did, and after a quick photo and a few minutes of admiration we continued up the cut. For the next 2.5 hours we were able to loosely follow the movements of what we assumed were multiple different bears, but anyone who has hunted this type of country before knows that it is difficult to keep eyes on a moving bear in such thick and vertically challenging terrain covered in old stumps, dead fall and new understory growth. We made our way back to the boat with a mounting level of excitement as to what the next few days would bring. Needless to say my hamster wheel was spinning all night and sleep did not come easy.
Saturday morning, it rained. Any west coasters reading this will know that the spring months can bring just as much rain as the winter months do. That morning we hung out in our food shelter tent enjoying some much needed breaky sandwiches and I got to dive head first into learning about cribbage - ha! The rain kept us suppressed in camp until roughly 1pm Saturday afternoon. Although the rain hadn't stopped, everyone was getting antsy to get out and cover some ground to make the most of the day. AJ and myself were dropped back in the same spot we hunted the night before but we had plans to head up the opposite logging road from the previous day. We saw a significant degree of scat through our hiking but no did not get a confirmed visual on any bears. We did hear a bear go crashing off through the bush at one point, a bit of excitement for the day but that was relatively short lived. We made our way down to the boat pick up area with an hour to kill before pickup so we decided to drop our packs and leg it back up into the first cut we explored the Friday evening. On our way back down to the boat pick up area, my eyes connected on a black bear that was high tailing it up the opposite logging road from the boat pick up area...."Where the hell is that bear coming from?" I said to AJ. "Well, our packs are down there..." AJ responded hesitantly. As we approached our packs, it became clear the little devil has gotten into my pack, weaseled his paws into the top opening of my pack, and proceeded to annihilate my beef jerky and chocolate covered peanuts - the nerve! After a good laugh, a few photos and a stark reminder of the powerful noses bears have, we hailed our ride and were headed back to camp for the night.
Thanks to one of our hunting pals being a water taxi/barge operator, we had the advantage of using a boat throughout the entire hunt. This degree of freedom and easy accessibility was imperative to our success given the area we hunted was dense forest and steep terrain with minimal glassing opportunity once tucked into said terrain. With the boat, we were able to focus our efforts on glassing up into recent logging cuts or shorelines as the tides would drop. We hunted an area in close proximity to the Sunshine Coast in one of the many inlet areas accessible only by boat. This was my first time having an opportunity to hunt such an area with boat access and it an experience beyond anything I could have anticipated!
Thanks to an awesome group of friends, half of whom are locals to the Sunshine Coast area, all I had to do was show up with was my cooler, pack/personal kit and firearm. Everything else from cooking gear, tents, food/water, food shelter, boating logistics, fishing gear and an available hanger/storage cooler had been sorted without any effort from my end. This was beginning to take shape of what I envision others incur on a trip through a professional outfitter!
We had four days of hunting planned with our travel included in those days. Thankfully as a resident of North Vancouver, a ferry ride over to the Sunshine Coast is under an hour which I now know is a total privilege! Friday morning was a quick ferry ride to the coast where we met our other two party members and promptly loaded up our water-stallion with all the supplies necessary for bear camp. Before12pm Friday afternoon, the boat was in the water and our team of four were on route to bear camp!
After a quick camp set up, we piled back into the boat to get a bit of early afternoon fishing in effort to fill the cooler with fish for dinner. A quick effort jigging close to structure produced 4 Rockfish that were promptly bonked and saved for the evenings meal.
By 4pm that Friday afternoon we switched gears and it was time to get this bear hunt started. A short 30-minute boat ride to our first glassing location, a logging area vacant for probably 2-3 years, put us in sight of our first bear within 15 minutes of glassing. After brief discussion, the decision was made to tuck myself and my pal AJ onto the shore where we could access an old logging road and climb up to the area where we spotted the bear. On route into the area we had seen the first bear, we encountered a younger smaller bear within 20 minutes of the hike in. This bear stood on top of an old stump on a steep slope and checked us out for a while, as we both did, and after a quick photo and a few minutes of admiration we continued up the cut. For the next 2.5 hours we were able to loosely follow the movements of what we assumed were multiple different bears, but anyone who has hunted this type of country before knows that it is difficult to keep eyes on a moving bear in such thick and vertically challenging terrain covered in old stumps, dead fall and new understory growth. We made our way back to the boat with a mounting level of excitement as to what the next few days would bring. Needless to say my hamster wheel was spinning all night and sleep did not come easy.
Saturday morning, it rained. Any west coasters reading this will know that the spring months can bring just as much rain as the winter months do. That morning we hung out in our food shelter tent enjoying some much needed breaky sandwiches and I got to dive head first into learning about cribbage - ha! The rain kept us suppressed in camp until roughly 1pm Saturday afternoon. Although the rain hadn't stopped, everyone was getting antsy to get out and cover some ground to make the most of the day. AJ and myself were dropped back in the same spot we hunted the night before but we had plans to head up the opposite logging road from the previous day. We saw a significant degree of scat through our hiking but no did not get a confirmed visual on any bears. We did hear a bear go crashing off through the bush at one point, a bit of excitement for the day but that was relatively short lived. We made our way down to the boat pick up area with an hour to kill before pickup so we decided to drop our packs and leg it back up into the first cut we explored the Friday evening. On our way back down to the boat pick up area, my eyes connected on a black bear that was high tailing it up the opposite logging road from the boat pick up area...."Where the hell is that bear coming from?" I said to AJ. "Well, our packs are down there..." AJ responded hesitantly. As we approached our packs, it became clear the little devil has gotten into my pack, weaseled his paws into the top opening of my pack, and proceeded to annihilate my beef jerky and chocolate covered peanuts - the nerve! After a good laugh, a few photos and a stark reminder of the powerful noses bears have, we hailed our ride and were headed back to camp for the night.
