Alberta Bear Hunt for a Large Cinnamon Color Phase

The thicket was muddy and dark. But bears? Cheerier spots had produced none.

Fragmented behind the spruce, the evening’s sun was scarlet when the black bear re-appeared. It stopped, 40 yards on my flank, and peered back over its shoulder. Just behind it, a huge, red head rose from the bush. The shoulders that powered it forward were massive. But the red bear showed no interest in the other. It was cautious, checking the wind, looking about, pausing to listen. It turned back, picking its way through the timber and deadfall. I caught brief glimpses of its back and ears as it circled downwind. Then it was gone.

Alberta Bruins

Clayton Royer is a native Albertan whose camps have hosted hunters since 1999. “We hunt bears in the spring, whitetails in the fall,” he told me. Returning hunters and word-of-mouth reports, plus industry-related groups, account for nearly all bookings at Royer’s Grand Slam Adventures camps. His 66 openings for nonresident bear hunters can yield 132 bears, as each client is allowed two. That’s a lot of bears to find.

“We have them,” my host assured me. “This is a big hunting unit. Some bears visiting our baits live where they don’t see people.”

Baiting is the only practical way to hunt bears on the northern hem of Alberta’s farmland where the forests are thick with heavy spruce, willow and poplar. Game trails are less in evidence than in the Mountain West, leaving bears less committed to beaten paths. Also, the soft feet of even big bears leave scant trace of their passage.

“Stay in the stand,” admonished Royer, the first evening in camp. “Don’t walk anywhere, even on a trail. If you get turned around, don’t expect to find a road. The forest here is unforgiving.”

Treestand Trepidations

We were each given two requisites for spring hunts: a butane-fueled Thermacell unit to repel the insect Luftwaffe, and a Hunter Safety Systems outfit to suspend us painlessly, like marionettes, if we fell out of trees. The Thermacell was easily mastered. But with little more time spent aloft than a gopher, I fumbled with the harness. My companions donned theirs like veteran linemen.

Zach, my guide, had been with Royer for 13 years. Quiet, courteous and capable, he was assigned to shepherd Duncan Grant and myself. A smooth-running Cummins in a tired Dodge the color of Alberta earth brought us to road’s end. A southern gentleman, Grant wished me luck as Zach and I boarded his six-wheel Can-Am and rocked off through the thickets on a two-track that periodically vanished in bonnet-deep muddy water. Above, the forest swayed to howling wind.

We stopped in a wee clearing where a 55-gallon drum was chained to a big conifer. Into the drum, Zach dumped a pail of past-date granola and left a pile of grain outside. He leaned a three-foot stick into a hole the size of a coffee can halfway up the side of the drum. “A bear will knock that stick aside to reach in,” he said. “Proof of the visit.”

He pointed up to a steel grate in a tall spruce weaving to powerful gusts. “There’s your stand.” The grate wasn’t much bigger than my size 14 feet pressed together. The unspoken truth: Platoons of whitetail hunters use these perches each year to lay down bucks too smart to kill from the ground. Gamely, I nodded. He cranked the UTV around. “See you at dark. Sooner if I hear you shoot.”

Getting to the stand with my rifle and daypack was an adventure, the spruce trying to shed me at every step. I settled in for a bumpy ride. The shot would be 30 yards–easy even with the open sights on my rifle, a .45-70 reproduction of Winchester’s ’86 from Uberti. Its half-magazine held 300-grain Federal Fusion loads. I chambered one.

Wind continued to pummel the forest as the treetops bobbed to its blows. So did the rifle’s bead when I tried to aim at the drum’s hole. After an hour, I climbed down and fashioned a nest near the tree’s base. No bears appeared before Zach fetched me at dark. Grant had seen bears, but none to shoot. With the Can-Am loaded on the flatbed, we made for camp. Our chef, from Quebec, had fed us well eight hours ago, but we attacked his midnight cauldron of homemade soup.

Brad Fenson and his guide rolled in soon thereafter with two mature bears. An Alberta resident and savvy bear hunter, Fenson surprised no one with his early success. He’d used a new Franchi Momentum bolt rifle in .308, as did J.J. Reich, who later killed a truly big boar. Two other bears fell that first evening.

The Success of Others

The next afternoon, Zach took Grant and I down a long track that brought mud in over the side of  his Can-Am. Tires churned through holes thigh-deep in water. Miles beyond the reach of any truck, we climbed into trees and waited for something to happen. The day was sunny, all but windless and pleasantly cool. To earn arboreal credentials, I sat in the stand until 9 o’clock. “No sense waiting ‘til 10,” I told Zach. “My eyes don’t see open sights that late.”

A bright sky and open canopy this day added 20 minutes. A small bear shuffled in, gobbled grain, played with the stick, reached into the drum for granola, got bored and left. On Zach’s return, we splashed back to Grant’s stand. He’d seen five bears. “One was big, but he didn’t come close.” Distant rumblings rode a breeze that rolled up cumulous clouds, tall and dark, as we lurched toward the truck. The storm hit violently. Lightning lanced the sky while thunder cracked like cannon-fire. Our headlight beams ricocheted off sheets of rain, all but blinding us. A lively end to the day.

At camp we were entertained by more successful hunters. Bears were expiring all over the place, except where we posted. I apologized to Zach for drawing such luckless souls.

Ground Game

The third day brought mounting pressure. At breakfast, Royer remarked that “bears move about all day. No telling when they’ll show up.” We took the hint, pulling on our rubber boots, grabbing daypacks and rifles. The Cummins was already at a soft rattle when we joined Zach. After fueling up at the highway station, we motored north, then nosed into the timber on a logging road. Grant was first to a stand. Returning, Zach transferred an old office chair from the pickup to the six-by. “You don’t much like sitting in a tree,” he said. In dappled shade under bright sun, we motored to a small glade, where the stick had been pawed free of the drum. He freshened the bait. “Sit where you like. You know enough to choose.” I tucked into the shadows crosswind, 40 yards from the drum.

Grant and I both got bears that morning. They were beautiful bears, not big bears. Both of our rifles made one-shot kills. The skinning tent was busy as we wolfed mid-afternoon’s supper and hopped back in the pickup.

The Dodge raced north on the highway, then turned east. After posting Grant, Zach took me on the Can-Am through pockets of swamp in low hills that graded to flooded spruce. In a dark, muddy hole, we stirred a record hatch of mosquitoes to access a drum. Zach added granola and grain, set the stick and left. I lugged the chair through the muck to the hem of a windfall-strewn hump, to keep my scent from the drum and late sun from my eyes.

I wasn’t keen to kill another bear. A big one, maybe. But I’d be OK just reading for a couple of hours. The weather was lovely.

As I bent to extract a book from my pack, a shadow moved on my flank. Turning only my eyes, I saw a sizable bear angling toward me through the shin-tangle. It seemed oblivious and passed within five steps. I stayed still. It went to the drum, bellied down and began lapping up grain. After feeding for most of an hour, it removed the stick and reached in to scoop granola before ghosting into the trees.

Its return an hour later surprised me – but not as much as the enormous red noggin rising from the bush behind it. When that goliath vanished downwind, I considered the other bear, perhaps the last I’d see on this hunt. But what was the sense in killing it? I turned my back to the drum.

Seeing Red

The forest was in full shadow when, to my astonishment, the red bear reappeared where it had first emerged. It stood on its hind legs and scratched its back on a naked spruce. I was tempted to take the 60-yard shot. But an upright bear’s vitals can be hard to place. Bear skin slips readily across bullet holes and, with the animal’s long hair, can limit blood lost to the ground. Soft pads make no lasting impressions in spring greenery, let alone on logs or in water. Wounded bears are hard to follow. “Shoot only when the bear is broadside and still,” Royer had told us. Would this animal repeat its Houdini act or offer a shot?

Down on all fours, it paused as if in thought, then, like a mirage, was gone. Again, I had come out second-best in this game of wits and will. Shooting light would soon be too dim for open sights.

I stayed still, eyes to where this bear had twice appeared. It was almost 9 o’clock when an aspen shivered. The beast was suddenly there, looking at me–through me. It moved closer, pivoted slightly. Two spruce bracketed its shoulder. The bead caught a splash of light from the west and settled in the notch. I crushed the trigger. The bear tumbled backward, regained its feet and lunged away through the windfall. It faltered as it swung ‘round the hill and out of sight.

The Can-Am’s throaty buzz came minutes later. Zach killed the engine in the timber, then made his way to me on foot. “Did you shoot?”

I gave a brief account as he fetched his shotgun. Directing him to where the bear had last snapped a branch, I angled to pick up its trail. No blood. Not even on naked windfall. We’d almost converged when I spied the bear, dead in a depression.

Royer and his client were within radio range and came to aid in extraction. It was all the four of us could do to heave the bear into Zach’s ATV. “Bigger by 100 pounds than any color-phase bear we’ve taken from this camp!” enthused Royer. I’d been blessed and said so.

---