Hunting Traditions: The
Learning
Years Part 2
I laugh every time I think about this,
since Gary is actually one of the
hardest working members of the party.
He’s the first one up every morning and
the last one down every night. I was
looking forward to our early morning
coffee time! I was also looking forward
to a little payback. You see, Gary and
Mike never let me pay them one cent
for the cost for shipping our gear to the
field or for the food on our first trip.
This one was on me, and I was also
looking forward to showing them how
much I had learned.
Jeff and I flew out a few days in front
of Gary’s party, encountering a really
good bull moose on the first day we
could hunt, but he managed to put the
slip on us. We’d see him again!
The weather was cooperating and the
grayling were biting as though they
hadn’t eaten since we left last year.
Jeff and I took advantage of the fishing
and spent the first couple of days
hunting, packing and floating into our
first base camp.
We started hunting from a place we
call “Wolf Point”, which is nothing
more than a rock outcropping where
Gary had ambushed
a couple of wolves on
a previous hunt. From
www.LivetheWildLifeTV.com
Wolf
Point,
we
could see our drop
off location and we
got a big kick out of
watching Gary and
Mike pack their gear
to the river.
We
were both happy
that it was them
instead of us, after
having just gone
through that marathon event a
couple days earlier. Getting gear
to the river can be more than half the
battle. Most hunters would rather land
on a bar beside the river and not deal
with the packing, which helps avoid
overcrowding the area.
when Mike looked over at my raft and
said, “Hey Guys, we can’t pass this
opportunity up”. Mike’s idea was to
let all of the air out of two tubes on my
raft and to set it up to look like the bear
It wasn’t long before the
whole gang was in base
camp, and we had a
grand old time. We caught
up on our hunts, shared
meals and campfires and
did our best to pull a few
pranks on one another.
One particular prank they
pulled on me happened
when Mike’s son Shawn
shot a grizzly right next
to our rafts.
He had
been glassing most of the
morning and was taking
a bit of a mid-day siesta
when he woke up looking
at a grizzly that was less
than 17 yards away!
Shawn didn’t hesitate to
shoot, taking his very first
barren ground grizzly.
Mike, Gary and Shawn
were taking pictures and
skinning Shawn’s bear,
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