Unless you've been living under a rock then you probably know the 2008 BC LEH draw has been completed.

You can Check Your LEH Results Here

I was sucessfully drawn for Fall Grizzly on the Liard Plateau (7-53) and will probably spend a few days after this years stone's sheep hunt looking for a Grizzly.  The odds were very generous but the area is massive and largely inaccesible.  There is a small road network and we'll be exploring it on ATV's.  If any of you have any tips on the area feel free!

Happy Hunting!
Carl

Tom Leonard failed to return from a fall hunting trip in Northwestern British Columbia at Spatsizi Plateau Provincial Wilderness Park. Tom signed in at the Eaglenest Trail Head on September 11, 2005 and continued on backpacking on his limited entry sheep hunt. When he failed to return home on October 2, 2005 RCMP conducted a search and located his truck at the base of the mountain at Eaglenest Trail. Search and rescue was called in and they conducted a search using aircraft and ground trackers but there was no trace of the missing man. Due to weather conditions the search was called off on October 8, 2005 and the family was reassured that a recovery operation would be conducted in the spring when weather conditions permitted.

In late June, an extensive one week voluntary search was conducted by family and friends searching various areas of the park. Again poor weather hampered the search.

In mid July, an RCMP air search was conducted for 5 days but again failed to produce any answers. Tom's clothing was all camouflaged, including his backpack. He was packing a brown tent and quite a bit of gear.

 Missing Spatsizi Hunter Website

The 2007 Spring Grizzly Hunt Allocations Were Released On Monday.

This is the number of tags available for the 2007 spring hunt draw and for the most part it looks like there has been quite an increase in tags available to certain areas. For some of the sub-regions the numbers appear unchanged or they have shifted a few tags from one sub-region to another in a few cases as well.

2007 Spring Grizzly Hunt Tag Allocations

The areas I put in for Spring Grizz the allocations increased 300% for my 1st choice and 500% for my 2nd choice area so I am pretty excited about that. If you haven’t put in yet you still have time! Applications must be into Victoria by 4:30 pm on
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9th. Notification of draw results will be sent on February 20, 2007.

If you’re this late though I would courier it to Victoria.

Good Luck!
Carl

Every year in BC and across Canada for that matter law abiding hunters may by accident wound or lose a big game animal such as a Moose or a Black Bear. Unfortunately if a hunter doesn’t have access to some trained tracking dogs recovering the animal can be next to impossible depending on the situation.

The Canadian Game Trackers Association hopes to change that… They are a new organization created by Canadian hunters who are also active houndsman. The goal of the association is to help regular hunters in legal situations recover their lost or wounded game animal.

Many of the founding members of the Canadian Game Trackers Association own and work with or have direct access to their own highly trained game tracking dogs. Their trackers are extremely active and have many years of tracking experience. As a group they are responsible for recovering many wounded or lost big game animals every year. Now they want to offer their tracking dog services to not only their clients on guided hunts but also to resident hunters who may need the service of trained tracking dogs at some point.

The Canadian Game Trackers will track with their dogs solely within the laws of the province or territory they are located in and only in situations where the animal was harvested legally.

The association’s goals are to:

Click Here To Visit The Canadian Game Trackers Website

Happy Hunting!
Carl

Well it’s that time of year again… I am busy packing up all my gear to head north Wednesday AM on the first ferry. I’ll be headed to Fort St. John for the annual deer hunting trip and will hopefully return with some real good video footage for the site and maybe some pictures of the bucks I pass up

If I play my cards right and put the time I hope to be rewarded with a nice buck (or two)

I’ll also be going to take a farmed buffalo for meat. I’ll video that too for everyone

Happy Hunting!
Carl

The mountains of British Columbia offer some of the best wild sheep hunting in the world. With 3 major species Dalls, Bighorns & Stones and 2 sub-species California Bighorn and Fannin (cross between Dall & Stone)it’s a sheep hunters dream.

If you’ve never hunted sheep before for the most part they are a very challenging animal to hunt. Aside from some Bighorns which are sometimes taken in very close proximity to a road you can expect you’re going to have to hike for your trophy ram.

If you’re hunting stones or dalls get ready to hike for sure and if you’re smart you’ll be getting ready several months ahead of the game.

Last year was my first sheep hunt and coming from a family of outfitters I’ve been fortunate to learn from some of the best guides in the province but no amount of advice can prepare you for the physical endurance needed to actual carry yourself and your gear up some of the mountains you may find sheep on.

How did I prepare last year?

I went on a 1.5 hr bike ride daily, around my area. There are some hills that maybe go up a few hundred meters in total. It was a good workout and I lost 24 lbs in about 3 months. Was it enough to be in Sheep Shape? I don’t think so… I should have been doing much more work with my actual pack on my back.

So what I have been doing this year?

This year I put it in full gear and I’ve packed my bag for a 7 day trip into the mountains. My bag is packed ready to go aside from my rifle. I put the pack on and hike for at least an hour everyday around the trails at my house.

After only a few weeks I really noticed a difference carrying the pack. My knees also feel much better while hiking and they used to get sore pretty fast from some old Rugby injuries.

It’s been a few months now and I can scale Mt. Finlayson which is 419 Meters (around 1300 ft.) in elevation in less then an hour fully packed. It’s hard bloody work and I sweat like a pig but at least I am training my body with the full weight I’ll be packing in the mountains on mountainous terrain.

If you don’t have access to hills in your area, consider going to the gym and using the stairmaster with your pack on or else resort to running or lightly jogging up flights of stairs.

Whatever you can do to get yourself physically ready for your sheep hunt will ensure that you have an enjoyable time in the mountains. It’s rugged terrain and you’re going to start hurting after only a few days.

So what have you done to keep yourself in Sheep Shape?

Happy Hunting!
Carl

Well… 2006 was my first ever year to put in for the BC Limited Entry Hunting Draw. And low and behold I guess a little beginners luck kicked in and I was drawn for Mountain Goat in the Skeena region 6-15A with 60 other people who were drawn.

In all reality I’ll bet a little under 50% of the hunters drawn will actually make the trip. But I could be wrong. I am excited as this is a very good area to be drawn in and there is slightly more access to the area then in surrounding LEH goat areas. The potential for a decent Billy is really high if I put the work in.

The draw was yesterday and I have already made loose plans to go on a Goat hunt with a friend that I met through a popular BC hunting website called HuntingBC.Ca. He was drawn in the area right next to mine and invited me to come along with him in January of 2007.

Hopefully as the date gets closer I’ll know for sure if this hunt is going to happen or not. If I go I will document the trip with pictures, video and a good story for the site and my readers. It would be awesome to take a really late season long haired Billie.

I also put in LEHS for Caribou, Island Elk, Buffalo, Grizzly Bear & Bighorn Sheep but was unsuccessful.

And I also purchased several of the special sheep and elk permits which have yet to be drawn.

Happy Hunting!
Carl

The 2006/07 BC LEH draw has been run on the 30th of June 2006. The results are expected to be on the website tuesday July the 4th.

Check Your LEH Draw Here.

Visit The Official BC LEH Page Here.

Post your comments if you got anything cool.

I am pumped about is the special Elk and Sheep tags. I bought several of each but that draw isn’t until the 20th of July.

Happy Hunting!
Carl

While I have to admit I am still somewhat of a beginner black bear hunter. This year was my first bear harvest ever. I did put over 140 hours hunting for my black bear this year. If anything other then the great mature boar that I harvested I gained some valuable experience and some advice given to me previously was definitely understood now!

So if you’re heading out for spring bear on Vancouver Island you may find a tip or two in here useful.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #1 - Don’t sell yourself short by only hunting the later part of the day. If you have the time spend it in the field. You never what can happen and it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I saw and stalked several bears this year at all hours of hunting light.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #2 - When looking for spots to glass I have found more bears on recontoured roads than anything else. The recontoured roads have grass and clover planted on them and they are like a mini-oasis for black bears in the middle of clear cuts and surrounding areas. Look for green grassy hillsides in and around the clearcuts and you’re sure to spot a few bears.

Black Bear Hunting Tip#3 - Bears are not easy to judge in the field. Especially for beginners. And I was no exception. I glassed dozens of bears and got as close as I could to as many of them as possible only to find they were not nearly as big as I originally had thought. After studying so many bears and their behavior it’s going to be very obvious when you are onto a mature male trophy black bear.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #4 - Unless you’re a dummy you’ll already know this one… Work the wind. I know and have seen many a stinky, sweaty grubby guide who has never worn camo or anything of the sort to give them an advantage over game and they remain highly succesful hunters because they “work the wind” and use the terrain to their advantage.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #5 - Don’t believe the hype that bears have poor eyesight… Sure it’s not the greatest but between their hearing and sense of smell a bear can put two and two together pretty quickly without even having to see you. Always make your final approach on a bear from the downwind side if possible. You’ll see them try and wind you with their nose in the air and when they do they bugger off pretty quick usually.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #6 - Don’t ever rush your shot on a Black Bear. These big game animals are abundant and you’ll pretty much always have another chance on another bear. There is no need to make a rushed shot which may miss and spook the bear or even worse wound the bear and you may not recover him without the help of tracking dogs. If the decision has to be rushed and you have not a good chance to analyze the animal a shot should not be taken.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #7 - Don’t try and see how far of a shot you can make on a Black Bear. If you can use the wind and terrain in your favor there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to get within 100 yards of a black bear. I stalked and have on video over 5 different bears I stalked to within 100 yards of. The black bear I harvested was only a 70 yard shot. When I hear of guys taking 250 or 300 yard shots on a black bear it makes me shudder. Yeah you may very well be capable of hitting something at that range it’s not demonstrating any skills as a hunter in my own opinion.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #8 - You’ve probably heard this one before too and I know I did as well but it really didn’t mean anything to me until it happened. Try and find a bear that is going to be UPHILL from where you’re shooting and is a spot that is going to be easy to access. These are big, heavy animals and moving them around in a clearcut is next to impossible if you have to go anywhere uphill or even on flat ground for that matter. It took two of us two hours to move my bear from where he was shot to the decommissioned road and into my truck less than 100 yards away this includes skinning and quartering!

Black Bear Hunting Tip #9 - TAKE MEASUREMENTS! - My taxidermist wants to kick my ass everytime I come in there with something because I forget to measure the animal. In order to do the best job possible your taxidermist may need to have some measurements of your animal. For a bear my taxidermist wanted Nose to tail (Hide On), Circumference of neck (Hide On), Circumference of chest (Hide On). These measurements help the taxidermist when ordering your forms so that your bear can look exactly as he did before.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #10 - Try to cool the meat as quickly as possible. Black bears are a very dense muscular animal. The meat actually takes longer to cool then smaller species such as deer or calf moose and elk. We cooled my meat down in the river for about an hour before hanging it. It makes a difference in how the meat turns out. Bear meat isn’t known for it’s great taste so every little thing you can do to maintain or enhance the quality of meat will be beneficial.

Hopefully this small selection of tips will help one or two of the BC Bear Hunters out there!

Happy Hunting!
Carl

My Vancouver Island Black Bear hunt started with a trip to the taxidermist…

I was dropping off a nice whitetail that I harvest for a shoulder mount and happened to see a husky 3/4 mount black bear hanging out of the wall. The sheer size and shape of the bear was so impressive, I found myself forgetting all about the whitetail I had just dropped off and all I could think about was getting a nice big bear! Just like the one on the wall at my taxidermists. A trophy sized mature male black bear and I wouldn’t settle for anything less.

The problem… This was November and I wanted to take a spring bear. I was in for a bit of a wait. It wasn’t a bad thing though as I was missing one of the most important parts of getting a Black Bear on the Island. Wheels! I had no vehicle other then my 1975 Jeep CJ-5 and well let’s face it… It’s not something you want to be 250km back in the bush with . It would rattle itself to pieces on the gravel roads. So the first thing I had to do was get myself a truck. I didn’t want to depend on ANYBODY but myself for my outdoor pursuits.

So this year thanks to my online ventures I was finally able to purchase myself a truck. I bought a 2003 Ford F150 Lariat 4×4. The perfect truck for all my hunting exploits. And the perfect truck to get me out there in search of a big bruin. Opening day for spring bear was just around the corner after buying my truck and I had rounded up a good friend and his younger brother to go out and see if we could find an early rising bear.

The opening weekend of April 1st found us barreling down the Island Highway on our way into the area south of Bamfield. Klanawa to be exact. I had been there on several fishing trips with my friends and had the opportunity to do a little scouting and had decided this would be the area we would pound hard. This would be the area that would produce my trophy Island Black Bear.

The first weekend it rained really hard, we did manage to see two bears though and we also got plenty of prelimary scouting in discovering where all the spur roads went and where we thought held the most potential based on the habitat and sign. We went home empty handed that weekend but still had a great time and learned plenty about the area we had just started to hunt.

Actually… I went home empty handed 4 weekends in a row. We saw nearly 30 bears over the course and I even had several very good opportunities to harvest some average Island Bears in the 5 ft class many of which I have on video. I was holding out for a 6 foot mature male and although we had seen a few, they were just glimpses and we didn’t have time to setup let alone shoot on any of them.

As a first time bear hunter I found it extremely difficult to judge the size of the black bears. I insisted on getting as close as possible to every bear we spotted so I could examine them and watch how they behaved and see their mass and everything about them. I wanted to know black bears inside and out so there would be no mistake when that I spotted the big bruin.

It was getting through mid-may and I had to go to a wedding in Creston. I came home on the Thursday and over a beer at a BBQ friday night I had recruited another friend to go out on the Sunday morning and come back monday of may long weekend. I was excited. It was getting late in the spring bear season and I really wanted that 6ft bear!

Sunday morning came and off we went again into the Klanawa river area. On the way through cowichan we saw 4 or 5 deer out on the road and it looked like the game was moving around. We hoped anyways. We spent most of the day glassing, and driving, and glassing, and driving… You know the drill. It seemed like we had been at it for hours without even the slightest look at a bear.

The sign was everywhere but no bears! that is until the clock stuck about 4pm and look out… The bears were coming out of the woodworks. It seemed like every corner we rounded there was another bear running off the road. We had spotted a potential shooter and were racing to get under the bear on a clearcut and as we’re going down the spur another bear runs right across the road in front of us and gone. It was crazy…

In the next 2 hours I would spot and stalk 3 different bears within shooting distance only to have the bears get into to deep of brush or get themselves into positions where I couldn’t make a good shot. I was starting to feel that the end of the day was coming near and I would again be going home without a bear.

As we were leaving the last clearcut we decided to make a left hand turn and check out some new area we had only glanced at before. It was only 2 minutes away and since it was about 7:45pm it was going to be our last play of the day. So what the hell… away we went.

We pulled into this massive clearcut with a few forked roads and clearcut brush patches in between the roads. We started and glassing and I hear my buddy Ben yell, “Holy Shit” there goes a big bear across the road headed left… Now my buddy Ben isn’t a hunter and I sort of doubted the fact he’d seen a “Big” bear so I laughed and said “sure Ben” “NO REALLY, He was BIG” and I could tell the way he said it he was serious. I noted where the bear went into the timber and it was only 400 or 500 yards through and he would be into a clearcut patch again right adjacent to the road, so I sped up and around to where we thought he might come out.

Low and behold there was a bear already there! And it’s eyes and ears were glued to the bushes where the big bruin was coming through. I said to Ben “This is it…!” “That bear is going to come out right here any minute, we need to get into position” The wind was in our favor and not even 10 yards away from us was a pile of logs, so I scrambled up the pile and used the top log for a rest and to cover us from the bears view. Ben got the camera setup and no sooner that bear came right out where I thought he would.

That bear came out and swaggered down a little and you could just see that he was packing some weight in the front shoulders, and his ears were small and he just looked like he was a bear who’d been around the block. In fact this was HIS block.

We stayed quite and watched the bear go about his business while I field judged him. It was when he stood up on his hind legs to scratch that I realized he was a really good sized bear and that I was going to take him. I loaded a shell in the chamber and he heard me! “Shit” I thought to myself, he’s going to bugger off on me, so I stayed absolutely still, just staring at his face through the scope… Waiting… Waiting for him to turn broadside so I could take the shot.

He turned, and started to head back to the tree, I thought he was going to scratch again but he didn’t he went right broadside and as he started to turn again towards me I touched off a Federal 175grn softpoint with my 7MM Rem Mag and it struck the bear right behind the front shoulder cleanly and quickly tipping that bear over and we got the whole thing on video… I had done it! I had my Island Bear. And a good one too!

We waited a few minutes and then went to go and recover the bruin. He was right there not 5ft from where I had hit him. We thought we could be heros and drag him out of there for pictures well it took more then 15 minutes just to position him for the pictures. He was HEAVY. Probably around the 400 pound mark. The bear measured out at 6′ 3″ from nose to tail.

It took us a while to skin him out and quarter him up being my first bear and I wanted to do an excellent job for my taxidermist. We didn’t make it back to camp until about 10:30pm and we ate a quick campfire dinner of lobster and corn and then hopped in the truck and went to sleep.

First thing in the morning we headed for home… And my bear hunting had come to an end just as fast as it all started.

An awesome experience! I’ll never forget my first bear!

Happy Hunting!
Carl