We had another very successful year this past spring on our bear hunts. We ran the hunts May 11 to June 8 which was a good choice because of the somewhat late green-up. The limited food got the baits going strong right from the start. The weather was also very cooperative with little rain and no freak snow storms. All of this resulted in the highest number of bears we have ever seen. It was pretty unbelievable. Many guys saw 10 to 15 bears in a single evening. Several of the hunters saw 40 or more, (it was hard to keep track of them all), different bears in a week. A few of the baits had 15 to 25 bears hitting them. Just about everybody could have taken 2 mature bears. We really tried to only shoot males, preferably big ones, and not females and especially not females of breeding age. Shooting these bears can be tough to resist when you have a beautiful 350 lb. cinnamon in front of you that happens to be a sow, but everybody understood that we have to preserve the breeding stock. This did keep the total number of bears killed down though.

We ended up taking 13 bears for 15 hunters, 11 boars and only 2 sows. Four colored oneswere shot. Our kill success on Pope & Young size, 18 inch plus skull bears was 33%. The first P & Y. bear of the season was shot by repeat client Bob Carmack from Ohio. It was a big 300 lb., 18 12/16 skull, brown colored bear. Ron Stover also took a large 18 4/16 black bear that same week. Another Ohio resident, Chris Jones came the 2nd week and took a beautiful bear whose hide squared out at just over seven feet, weighed about 350 lbs. and had a skull of 19 4/16. Thanks goes out to Tom Hentrick from Ohio who organized both weeks of hunters. Sorry you didn't get that giant you were holding out for Tom.

The 3rd week was the Lee Sells group, with Randy, Mike, and Furman. They were a great bunch of hard hunting guys who also had some fantastic fishing at a nearby lake. They saw lots of bears, shot 3 nice ones, but just couldn't get any big ones to cooperate and come right into the baits. A couple big ones did come into the baits the next week though.

This was the week of the Texas/South Dakota group organized by Joel Adam. Joel has been on 5 bear hunts and 2 deer hunts with us. Joel's buddy, Jeff Kelly who is another repeat client was thrilled to break a string of bad luck and shot a big bear with a 18 10/16 skull. The giant of the year, an old cautious boar was taken by Ted Miller. It had a 51 inch chest girth giving it a weight of around 400lbs. It squared out at 7 feet and had a skull of 19 10/16. Cheri Miller, Ted's daughter, also deserves special mention for getting her first bear ever and did it with a bow. It was a very nice cinnamon colored bear. She also saw a big chocolate colored boar that just wouldn't give her an ethical shot. You'll have to come back next year and get him Cheri.

Overall it was a great year and there were plenty of bears left for the next several years. We didn't even get a chance to hunt some hard hit baits. We are going to run the 4 weeks of hunters May 9 till June 6 in 2004. This will fit with what has been the peak good hunting over the last several years. These hunts have always filled up quickly so if you are interested you should call right away, especially if you want to book a group of hunters.

I also have fall hunts available for trophy mule deer with rifle or bow and exciting, very successful decoy hunts for archery antelope.

Yours Truly
Mike Ukrainetz