BEAR – CROSSBOW RECORD
1. Chris Wein 21-3/16 2020
Every hunter dreams of owning their own property and in August 2015 this became a reality for me as well. I was fortunate to find 200 plus acres of prime Northern Ontario bush with a pre-existing camp, surrounded by crown land, at an amount I could actually afford. Up until that point, I had been on numerous guided bear hunts and had some good success. However, there is something way more satisfying about putting the work in and baiting your own property for the first time and successfully harvesting the first animal there. For the next five years I would bait spring and fall and would provide lots of opportunities for many of my friends to experience their own first bear hunts.
Fast forward to the spring of 2020 and like years past, I pack the truck and head up to bear camp at the beginning of May to start baiting. I love these initial bait trips as memories of past hunts often flood my mind as I’m lugging in the multiple pails of food needed to sustain the bait sites for a couple of weeks until I can make the five-hour trip north again. I also love the anticipation of what’s to come and eagerly await those first pictures of the season. With the advent of cell cams, today I know right away what is happening and can monitor each site more closely, however, in the past, I would have to wait a couple weeks to pull the card at the next bait session.
A couple weeks passed, and I headed north for the weekend. I baited all three sites and pulled the memory cards from the cameras. I got back to camp and started looking through the pictures and low and behold the very first picture was of a massive bear with what looked like a nice sized pumpkin head. There was only one picture of him, and he was just passing through, but that is all I needed to see to give me a glimmer of hope. In fact, I get lots of big bears at my baits each night but getting them to show up in shooting light is a completely different story and many of the real big ones I never even lay eyes on. It was at that moment that I decided that was the bear I was going to try and kill even if it took me the whole spring and fall to do so.
The spring progressed with no more pictures or sightings of the big bear until one sunny mid-May afternoon. I was headed into my favorite bait, we call the “Swamp bait”, to fill the barrel with a couple of five-gallon buckets of food. This bait is on the edge of an open water Marshland with a number of beaver lodges throughout it. All the biggest bears on my property come to this stand and I have seen and taken some beauties here. As I was approaching the bait, walking with a pail in each arm and my head down I got to within 20 yards of the bait and heard a branch snap. I looked up and there he was sitting at the barrel eating. He saw me, I saw him, and he took off, running way faster than any animal that big should be able to move. Luckily, he wanted nothing to do with me and took off like a flash of lighting the other way.
The rest of May brought a few other pics of him on camera but no more sightings. He was not patternable as he would show up randomly at different times and on different days. That is until June 3, 4, 5, when he began to consistently show up right at first light. He would eat for a half an hour after first light then disappear until the next morning. I had decided on May 26 that I was going to sit everyday for the rest of the season until I got my opportunity and as there were only 20 days left in the season, I went for it. Finally with the big bear beginning to show a pattern I knew it was time to strike.
On the morning of June 6, after 11 straight days, I had decided to go into my climber in the middle of the night and try to beat the big bear there. I would wait for him to arrive and watch him until just after legal light and then shoot and hopefully harvest my bear. I don’t usually like to hunt the mornings for bears as you usually bust them off the bait, but this was the only solid shot I had all spring, and I believed it to be a solid plan. With my crossbow on my back, I headed into the stand in the dark. As I neared my climber tree, I heard something at the bait and it ran off into the bush. I quickly climbed the tree as quietly as possible. The moonlight was bright that night and as soon as I settled into the tree a big black figure emerged from the darkness and headed my way. It walked straight over to the tree I had climbed (and was in) and stood a mere seven feet below me. He looked left, then right, then walked up the trail to where I was when I first scared him, and he just stood there for five minutes staring off into the bush. Once satisfied the threat was not imminent, he headed back to my tree and then off to the bait and then disappeared. My heart sank as I watched the black silhouette disappear into the night. That morning was a bust.
I returned to camp to rest for the day and with a renewed sense of excitement I waited for the evening hunt and at 5:00pm it was time to go. I don’t like to go in too early as most of the big bears usually show up an hour and a half or closer to dark. Being able to not move is so important and I find that I can sit motionless for a good four to five hours before I start to fidget. On this particular night, things would be no different. I parked the quad and walked in. I quickly climbed the tree and began to wait. As I sat waiting, I began to replay the morning’s events over and over in my head. Each time trying to figure out what I could have done differently during the morning encounter with the monster bear.
As the light began to dim and with only 20 minutes left to hunt, I looked towards the marsh and here he comes. He is literally one of the biggest wild animals I have ever laid eyes on; a true giant, with a back at least 3 feet wide. In fact, his body was so big that his 21-inch skull actually looked quite small in comparison. The magnificent creature made its way between me and the bait. Now, if I had my rifle, this is where the story would have ended but with the crossbow I would need for the bear to stop moving, preferably broadside, for long enough for me to get a shot. Well, he sat down right beside the bait and looked right up into the tree at me and stared at me for what felt like five minutes. In reality, it was only a couple seconds, and I admit, I contemplated shooting him right there. I then waited for the magnificent beast to stand and when he did, I steadied myself for the shot. Before I could squeeze the trigger, he bounced up and started to trot away from me. “Hey” I scream. Boom, he stops and looks back my way. At this point it’s too late. The second he stopped, the arrow was on it’s way and hit the giant bear quartering away. The arrow completely passed through the body and ended up sticking in the front arm. The bear let out a giant roar and bolted off into the bush. I then sat silently, waiting and listening for the sweet sounds of success. Within seconds I heard a loud moan that can mean only one thing… Big Bear Down!
I sat quietly for 15 minutes reflecting on what has just happened. By this time, it’s dark and I climbed down to find my arrow and look for blood. I found some blood but not tons and began to follow the sparse trail. It was extremely thick and dark in the bush, and I was struggling to follow a blood trail. I know the bear was dead but after an hour of fumbling around in the dark I still had no bear, and it was getting late. I decided I needed to hear the voice of my encouraging wife, Michelle, and after saying a quick prayer together on the phone, I quickly found my bear. As I walked up to him, I could not believe how big he was. He was huge and that head that I had believed looked small next to his massive body was gigantic. Removing him by myself from the bush was no easy chore. I got him back to camp for pictures and tried to weigh him on a Moultrie 440-pound game scale. Although no official weight was taken the enormous bear maxed out the 440-pound Moultrie scale and was still half laying on the ground. After field dressing him, I packed him with ice and drove him home, back to southern Ontario, to butcher him with the help of a good friend, Sam Jenson. After the 60-day drying period, this Nipissing bruiser ended up with an official score of 21 3/16 and is the new Ontario Crossbow record bear.
