2023 Bear Hunt Day 4 - Blueberry Fields Never

I got up and looked through past bear adventures and reread some of them as well.  I realized that the previous night's scenario was as close to a replay of 2018 as would be possible; given how much can happen in bear hunting, having almost the same number and size of bears from the same stand seems improbable.  Maybe Vance is just trying to torture me and keep me ever second-guessing and beating myself up.

After breakfast I went fishing with Dave.  The morning was cool with just a bit of mist.  The previous night there was a storm which had gone through just north of the area, and parts of it lingered.

We fished a few bays looking for pike.  Top water baits were working quite well.  Most of the pike were small, but even small fish hitting buzz baits is exciting to see.

Dave did hook into an absolute tank of a pike.  I grabbed the net before Dave said the cradle net would be needed.  He asked me, "Have you used a cradle net before?"

"A few times a long time ago."

We switched jobs, me tiring the fish out and bringing it in while he netted it.  It was a big, slimy, awesome 41.5 inch pike.  Once caught and and measured, it was carefully released.  "I broke my rule, never fish for pike with clients."  I was fine with it.

After lunch I went downriver, sitting at the Blueberry stand.  The stand was comfortable but I had a terrible time not squirming.  All day I had the start of a headache and it continued to get worse.  I'm not sure what dude suddenly starts to get migraines after bouncing around the planet for several decades, but here we are.

I still enjoyed the time ... mostly.  At one point what sounded like a family in a canoe came into the channel where the stand sat.  I was annoyed, but in reality the effect was probably minimal since it was still early.

Sadly, I sat all afternoon without seeing anything.  That is a long time to sit with a headache to keep me company and no bears.

As I was waiting to get picked up an incredibly bright full moon rose behind me.  When I first saw it, I actually thought it was a light of someone walking through the bear-infested woods and even wondered if they were getting me from a different direction (had the boat sunk?).  The bright moon cast eerie shadows.  This was made even more disconcerting when I started to hear noises from the bait that were very odd, but I knew it wasn't a bear.  Eventually I couldn't stand it and hit the barrel with my flashlight.  Sitting on top of the barrel was a huge raccoon.  Bears and raccoons do share a lot of similar characteristics, so maybe for the evening racoons are just small, masked bears.

I probably would have enjoyed the 1.5 hours waiting to get picked up, but with my headache it was that much worse.  Eventually Dave made his way to me, "There better be a good story here."  Tad had shot a decent sized sow and Daniel had taken the very large bear he had seen the previous night.  We got the bears loaded in the truck and headed back to camp.  Once in camp, I skipped dinner and went straight to sleep hoping morning would bring relief.