THE BEAR CAMP REVISITED
Ontario offers hunters a chance to kick off the their
season a month early and it can be as close as a 12-hour drive.
From St. Paul take MN 35 to Duluth and then follow Highway 61 along the scenic north shore of Lake Superior to the Canadian border. Once customs are cleared you are only about 45 minutes from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Thunder Bay boast of 100,000 inhabitants and it is as metropolitan as any stateside city of the same size. Have the urge for a Big Mac or a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut? There is no problem satisfying those hunger pangs with something familiar or with something ethnic at one of the local Finnish restaurants.
Just outside of Thunder Bay you take a left onto Hwy 527. This is the major artery that will eventually bring you to Armstrong. You will have about a 3.5 hour picturesque drive that is punctuated with signs for resorts and camps. If you happen to drive a logging truck you can cut drive time considerably. There are seemingly endless stretches of beautiful wilderness landscapes along which signs imprinted with a moose silhouette warn of the “night danger” at possible moose crossings. Don’t be surprised to see a wolf loping along the edge of the tree line unconcerned at the occasional passing motor vehicle.
Once in Armstrong you can refuel at either of the two restaurants and you can top off your tank at the gas station for the 25 miles drive to the camp site. Just past kilometer marker 39 you’ll find a clearing with 6 wall tents set in a row and several smaller trailer campers parked around the perimeter. This is home for the next 7 days.
Book early and you are assured of getting one of the wall tents for sleeping and one of the mess tents for cooking; although the individual trailers have cooking and sleeping accommodations in each unit. The mess tents have a full sized refrigerator, cook stove and microwave powered by electricity from a generator. Wilderness camping doesn’t get any better. The camp also has two full sized chest freezers for preserving the hides and meat of bear taken by hunters.
My husband, Jerry, and I have hunted with 6 different bear outfitters and The Bear Camp is by far the best. Duane Boucher’s goal is to offer each hunter the most successful experience he can. He has access to more than 800 square miles of prime bear habitat and over the years he has established bait sites that bring in many Pope and Young bears. I’ve taken two Pope and Young quality bears with my Reflex bow in three visits to the camp.
Ontario’s fall bear season begins on August 15. The Bear Camp offers hunts that start on a Sunday and end on the following Saturday. With the 2007 hunting season beginning on a Wednesday, the first group of clients had only 4 days to hunt. Bourcher offered any hunter the option of arriving early to set up stands, pick wild blueberries or to even do a little fishing before the hunt actually started.
We arrived late Saturday evening and after a restful night’s sleep Bourcher showed us which active bait site, out of some 36 sites he and his assistant were maintaining, he’d assigned to Jerry and me. He offered suggestions as to in which tree our stands should be place for maximum cover as well as being the correct distance from the bait so each of us would be within our comfort zone for shooting.
Bourcher scheduled 17 hunters for the first season so arriving early let him and his staff guide each group to their assigned sites as they began pulling into camp those first few days. Many of the 17 we knew from previous visits to The Bear Camp. Bourcher has cultivated quite a following of woodsmen and woodswomen who return year after year.
Once we had our stands up we were free to fish or pick blueberries. A boat with motor was placed at a small lake near the camp for hunters’ use and Boucher even provided the minnows. He and his crew knew where the largest and sweetest wild blueberries could be found. There are also nearby waters full of trout and northern pike just ready to provide any guest with a shore lunch or a tasty evening meal.
Enthusiasm was at its peak on the 15th when everyone showered and camoed up for the first sit. Years ago Bourcher gutted a small mobile trailer, installed two bathroom sinks, a shower and a 30 gallon water tank that had no trouble keeping up with the demands of the entire camp. In my opinion having a place to take a hot shower and plug in a hair dryer trumps a flush toilet any day. I think all the hunters agreed on that point as they washed off the day’s grime and applied Scent Killer before heading to their stations.
Camp was nearly deserted by 4 PM. Only a couple of camp staff stayed to monitor the radio for calls from hunters who may have needed help with recovery. At 5:20 PM my husband had his bear. At 7:10 PM I heard, John, one of the two gun hunters in camp fire so I figured there would be at least one bear to process that evening. I didn’t know then that my husband had his bear by 5:20 PM.
About a half hour before sunset a massive storm front moved in bringing thunder, lightening, rain and hail with it. I radioed Boucher that I was ready to meet him at the pickup point and just as I grabbed the teaser bait bucket, the sky opened up. I couldn’t have gotten any wetter if someone had doused me with a pail of water. In addition to John and my husband, five more hunters took bear that first day. The largest weighed 340 pounds and taken by the first crossbow hunter the camp had ever booked.
Before the 4-day hunt ended on Saturday 12 of the 17 hunters would be applying for export tags to bring their bears across the Canadian border into the States. Several of the hunters did not stay all 4 days because of work commitments and I feel that if they had been able to finish the week, everyone would have gone home with a bear. In addition to two bears, we also brought home our limit of walleyes and 3 gallons of wild blueberries.
What draws most of us back to The Bear Camp goes even beyond the quality of bears and service we experience each year. It allows bear hunters the opportunity to buy a license over the counter rather than participating in the lottery drawing in MN and WI and then perhaps waiting six or more years to draw a license. Ontario’s August 15th bear season gets us afield a full month before the whitetail deer season opens in Minnesota and Wisconsin. To the avid hunter that is a real bonus.
Jerry and I can’t wait to get back to The Bear Camp in 2008.
The Bear Camp - 807/457-6928
R R # 6 Candy Mt Rd,
Thunder Bay, ON P7C 5N5
To see some images from the hunt, click on the "Pictures" link on the Home Page !