Bear Hunting

Well as I promised, several blogs will be forthcoming about my trip north and the many experiences that happened therein. This shall be the first. The trip up was rather easy. I made it in two days, splitting the distance by stopping in Maine and staying with my Uncle Rick and Aunt Kathy. They have an incredible camp on the lake which they have turned into a year round residence. When I arrived it was too late to enjoy the great outdoors so we had a good time visiting. During our conversations it came up that they had just been up to Nova Scotia and while there had gone bear watching. Apparently the black bear population where I was headed is quite large and growing every year. He had been lucky enough to see four bear in the space of less than an hour, including a mother and her cub. Needless to say this excited me greatly and made me look forward to being up there even more. I left late the next day (I'm thinking about making a blog about all the driving, so I'll leave the boring details out here) and arrived at my destination about eight, local time. With Canada's time being an hour ahead of our own there was still plenty of time for a bear hunting expedition. As bears are dangerous creatures, it was decided that only the bravest and strongest of the men should go. Thus armed only with our eyes and a pair of binoculars my Uncle Phil and I set off. We drove around talking and looking mostly to no avail. We had two false alarms, a blocky wheel (don't ask, just accept it) and a dark bush in the distance. As we were giving up hope we spotted a large black object in road up ahead. It was far enough away that we couldn't tell so we slow down and whipped out the binocs. It was tall, and it was black but it was also just a stack of tires around a mailbox pole. Disappointed yet again, we persevered and drove on. A few minutes later, Success! A large black animal was sitting in the yard in front of somebody's house. Almost certainly we had cornered our prey at last. Large, black, pointy muzzle, and rounded head; we slowed down to get a good look at. It saw us and was watching us as we slowed down to a crawl, but didn't run away. The road was clear so when we were directly across from it we stopped. As soon as we stopped, it jumped up and started barking at us. We just had to laugh and shake our heads. We drove back home not seeing any bear (we did however see a racoon, a distant cousin to the bear) disappointed but happy for a good opportunity to visit and spend some time with each other. So all was well since it ended well, just like this post.