Coop's Bear-Camp 2013

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

Considering doing a live hunt for our annual bear-camp weekend...

We usually take 2 or 3 bears over the next 4 days. A buddy has a cabin nearby with a satellite internet connection I should be able to send updates through his WiFi. Anybody interested in coming along for the weekend?

Coop

 

[Teeton]

love to but i'm 2000 miles away.. looking very forward to read updates about it here on the rok! have a great hunt, be safe and have fun. tee

 

[Craig Van Arsdale]

Yeah I love the live hunts! Do it.

 

[Ryan Avery]

Do it COOP and send me those Bullets!!

 

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

I'll give it a shot - all the cool kids are doing it! This live hunt might last the rest of bear season if it goes anything like last year for me. We did take 11 or 12 bears, but I held out for a big dawg until the end and ended up with a life-sized mount of my tag.

Ryan, those bullets are my carrot to get you to do whatever I want for the next week or however long needed

Where's my GPS Maps banners!?!?? Good luck this weekend - I'll check in on your hunt while we're up there too. It can be a friendly little Rok vs. Rok - biggest black bear competition.

Coop

 

[shaun]

Do it!!! Looks like that is all the spring bear action I will be getting this year!!

 

[Ryan Avery]

Isn't it hard to hunt with a hangover Coop?

 

[fillthefreezer]

Isn't it hard to hunt with a hangover Coop?

hell no!

 

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

Here's some background on how we run "Bear-Camp".

This process all starts in Early April when I head up to hills and snow-shoe in to tag some of our bait sites. I do this to ensure somebody else isn't "poaching" my spot. These baits are well established and have been here for years - so eventually people stumble onto them. Since they're good spots, some unscrupulous people occasionally try to overtake them or set up nearby. Since I've started the tag the spots early we haven't had any real issues.

On April 15th (the first day we can legally bait) we try to pack some bait and some stink buckets to hang in the trees to a few of the lower sites depending on snow. This year the snow came off early so we got two of the baits rolling April 15th.

We made a few more small trips into the bait sites through the first of May and like clock-work after about 10 days the baits started getting active. May 10th-12th we had the "Baitnanza". A crew of about 8-10 guys with some of our kids pack in about 4000 pounds of bait to all four bait sites, hang treestands, cameras, etc... and get the sites ready to hunt. We return with all the families on Memorial weekend for "Bear-Camp" as our kids have affectionately named it. It's truly their most looked forward to family outing of the year. We have a great time camping and hunting AND working our butts off hauling in another couple thousand pounds of bait. Many of the kids have taken their first big game animals with a bow on these trips. The focus is on ensuring they all get their bears and have a great hunt. All of our stands are set with doubles so you can always hunt with your son/daughter or buddy. O

We also have a really unique bait that is set up for Spot and Stalk. We can watch this site from 130 yards and when a bear comes in we drop off the back of the hill and sneak around to the bait on a quiet trail with good cover. It adds a really fun and relaxed element to the bear hunt and we've taken bears with as many as a dozen onlookers watching from the hill - Talk about pressure!!n

Once the kids are all done, the crew bats clean-up toward the end of the season. The kids don't know it yet, but that's when the big bears show up! They just think we're way better bear hunters than they are - which is a good thing because they listen up pretty good when we talk tactics and do's and dont's.

This weekend we'll have about 16 - 20 people in camp. We'll eat like kings, hunt like indians, and drink like vikings! It's a great time for all and barring any technological hiccups I should be able to take you along with timely updates.

This is not a "hard-core" hunt, but it is arguably one of my favorites for the family and friends we can share it with. I got hooked on hunting in My dad's deer camp and I'll always look back on the great times around the fire and funny stories I heard, getting to drink coffee in the morning like a man, and seeing a little rougher side of the men come out in the mountains. I hope we're sharing that tradition with our kids and helping them create memories that will draw them to the high country for the rest of their lives.

Coop

 

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

Isn't it hard to hunt with a hangover Coop?

I wouldn't know... I do NOT hunt bears in the morning - unless it's on the spot and stalk bait. Then I bring my sleeping bag and cat-nap on the hill. Evenings are far more productive anyway.

 

[Ryan Avery]

Well it's rough!

 

[cmeier117]

I am interested! Wish we could bait in Oregon!

 

[Manosteel]

Here's some background on how we run "Bear-Camp".

This process all starts in Early April when I head up to hills and snow-shoe in to tag some of our bait sites. I do this to ensure somebody else isn't "poaching" my spot. These baits are well established and have been here for years - so eventually people stumble onto them. Since they're good spots, some unscrupulous people occasionally try to overtake them or set up nearby. Since I've started the tag the spots early we haven't had any real issues.

On April 15th (the first day we can legally bait) we try to pack some bait and some stink buckets to hang in the trees to a few of the lower sites depending on snow. This year the snow came off early so we got two of the baits rolling April 15th.

We made a few more small trips into the bait sites through the first of May and like clock-work after about 10 days the baits started getting active. May 10th-12th we had the "Baitnanza". A crew of about 8-10 guys with some of our kids pack in about 4000 pounds of bait to all four bait sites, hang treestands, cameras, etc... and get the sites ready to hunt. We return with all the families on Memorial weekend for "Bear-Camp" as our kids have affectionately named it. It's truly their most looked forward to family outing of the year. We have a great time camping and hunting AND working our butts off hauling in another couple thousand pounds of bait. Many of the kids have taken their first big game animals with a bow on these trips. The focus is on ensuring they all get their bears and have a great hunt. All of our stands are set with doubles so you can always hunt with your son/daughter or buddy. O

We also have a really unique bait that is set up for Spot and Stalk. We can watch this site from 130 yards and when a bear comes in we drop off the back of the hill and sneak around to the bait on a quiet trail with good cover. It adds a really fun and relaxed element to the bear hunt and we've taken bears with as many as a dozen onlookers watching from the hill - Talk about pressure!!n

Once the kids are all done, the crew bats clean-up toward the end of the season. The kids don't know it yet, but that's when the big bears show up! They just think we're way better bear hunters than they are - which is a good thing because they listen up pretty good when we talk tactics and do's and dont's.

This weekend we'll have about 16 - 20 people in camp. We'll eat like kings, hunt like indians, and drink like vikings! It's a great time for all and barring any technological hiccups I should be able to take you along with timely updates.

This is not a "hard-core" hunt, but it is arguably one of my favorites for the family and friends we can share it with. I got hooked on hunting in My dad's deer camp and I'll always look back on the great times around the fire and funny stories I heard, getting to drink coffee in the morning like a man, and seeing a little rougher side of the men come out in the mountains. I hope we're sharing that tradition with our kids and helping them create memories that will draw them to the high country for the rest of their lives.

Coop

Wow! sounds like a great camp and a fantastic way to get the whole family into hunting, especially the kids! Great Job! I remeber those kind of camps when I was a kid, maybe its time I get a little more relaxed and try a family and friends hunt like this in the early fall.

 

[Craig Van Arsdale]

Man that's a ton of bait Darin! What are you using?

 

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

My buddies have a bread products hook up. They haul 90% of it up from Utah - truck and trailer loads. The "doughballs" are compressed into about 35-40 pound balls and bagged. The stout folks will load the two at a time in the packs, kids and gals pack them individually. We basically run a human pack train into the sites, often making 3 - 4+ trips with a dozen people loaded to the hilt. We've found this "method" enables us to keep the baits active and baited for up to two weeks at a time without revisiting. Two weeks is about max though.

Several of my friends that I used to work with at Hoyt make several trips up every year to bait and hunt. We also use grease, oats, and various attractants to sweeten the pot.

We don't use barrels, we just build a crib out of natural materials to contain the bait - angled to hopefully provide a broadside shot from the stand or stalking approach. I'll post up some photos of all four bait-sites for you guys - here's one photo from last season that shows a good example of a "crib" with a load of bait and perfectly posed bear.

Coop

 

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

Here's four of the better bears we took last season

 

[Rizzy]

Sounds like some good hunting.... do it!

Pics?

 

[Becca]

Great pictures and nice bears! Do you have to backpack in to bear camp or is it more of a "heavy camping" kind of trip? Great to see you all getting out there with your families...Sounds like an awesome annual adventure! Look forward to following along...

 

[Ryan Avery]

Love those color phase bears.

 

[Rent Outdoor Gear]

No backpacking other than the bait itself to the bait-sites. We'll be driving the DuraMax right to camp and staying in my Weekend Warrior, but a lot of folks will also be tenting it. I get plenty of tent-life and backpacking the rest of the year so it's nice to have a hot shower and real bed on hand! It's plenty of work hauling bait that I don't even feel guilty pushing the button and hearing the generator purr to life so we can fire up the A/C if it gets hot!

Coop