Dear HBM-Attached are a couple of pictures of the black bear I killed out of Red Pine Lodge, near Foleyet, Ontario, last week. Six of the hunters in our group of 7 took 4 boars and 2 sows, 5 with bolt action 30-06s and 1 with a lever action 35 Remington. Another rifle hunter from MI, with his wife filming in a pop-up blind, killed one with his 30-06.
Two of three bow hunters from MI, also staying at Red Pine, got the heaviest bears (they hunted close to the Foleyet town dump, while we were out 15 - 25 miles on baits). A summer resident from Indiana also killed one with his muzzleloader. That's 10 for 12!
One of our party, after killing his bear, had a larger second bear hit the bait before he could field dress the one he had killed. It actually licked some of the bait bucket contents off the dead bear. Ron yelled, threw rocks and branches at it and the boar bluff charged to within 25 feet, twice. The second time he fired a shot over its head and it stood on its rear legs, popped its teeth, and growled at him. Finally he dropped back down and slowly walked off at his leisure while huffing and looking over his shoulder at Ron the whole time! Scared the poop out of Ron. Maybe, if he had slowly backed away rather than advancing and yelling at the bear, it may not have felt threatened?
I actually shot the second bear that came to my bait after I missed a larger one 2 hours earlier. Several of our party saw more than one bear on the same day. Thank you for including Aileen and me in your Rio Bonito article - well done.
Later my friend, Neil Koopman – PA