Going on a bear hunt

I come from a family of hunters, I am not a hunter and my husband is not a hunter, but if you have been to my house growing up then you know that the men are hunters. You also know about the Duck Room and you know NOT TO TOUCH THE DUCKS!

Every year throughout my childhood we would go camping at Flaming Gorge for the deer hunt, then to fish, or just to be with good friends, but as time has gone on and we have gotten older the family hunting has ended and we now have a little place there just to get away to. My brother has been consistent in hunting throughout the years, my dad only hunts ducks, but this year of the 6 tags offered at Flaming Gorge for the bear hunt, my family drew 3 of them! My dad, brother and nephew were the lucky 3. Now here is a story that should be saved for the FG Journal but I think its good enough to add to my blog.

For the past month or two, my dad and brother have been preparing for this hunt. What a freaking process... They hike miles to their destination of where they want to set up camp carrying tree stands on their backs.

Then they have to hook slats to the tree so they can climb it with the stand on their backs and then install the dang things

Then they carry in 100's of pounds of nasty stinky food to bait the bears in (or wild turkeys in this case)

then they set up cameras that take pictures of any movement that may occur in this area.

Once they are ready they climb into their tree stands and wait.

in silence.

for hours.

and hours.

They went in Thursday morning and night, Friday morning and night. Went back in Saturday morning then evening, and finally at 6:30 they saw the alpha male and my dad decided to take him. The arrow was a bad shot, it went through his shoulder, the bear got pissed and took of running, he was gone in less than a second. My brother went down to try and locate him but only found a broken arrow with little blood so they know he was not badly wounded. Back in the tree stands they went waiting around to spot another bear, now that the alpha male had taken off they were hoping that the other bears would want to come into the bait. Well they did, all at once 3 bears came into the camp surrounding the tree my brother and dad were in. (let me remind you that "bears climb trees faster than they run"- Dwight Schrutte) And let me also remind you that NEITHER of them have guns, JUST BOWS AND ARROWS. My dad was sitting about 12 feet above the ground as one of the bears started heading up to him he was sniffing and grunting and about 4 feet below my dad. My dad moved and scared him off, but he came back. This time my terrified dad sat still, my brother who was higher up in the tree looked around trying to see where the bear was and he spotted him, they made eye contact and the bear grunted and growled and LUCKILY took off. By now it is pitch dark, they aren't sure where the 3 bears are and they are terrified to get out of the tree. After a while they decided they better go NOW. They did, and they made it out safe. My dad said his heart raced for about 27 hours, he didn't sleep for a couple of nights but had so much fun that they are going back this weekend to find him again.

CRAZY SONS OF B's!