Alberta Bear Hunt 2025!

[Ryan Rothhaar]

Still in camp with a 2nd tag in hand, and a couple days to hunt.

Full story to come, but here's a teaser. From the bear board in the cook tent.....

[WFC]

 

Can't wait for the res of the story.

[Jack Denbow]

I can't wait to hear the story, I hope you have plenty of pictures.

[Mike Bolin]

Heck of a bear Ryan. Congratulations!

[Ryan Rothhaar]

Travelling home now, I'll work this along as time permits.

We hunted with Gerard at East to West outfitting, near Grande Prairie Alberta. Gerard was a longtime guide for Mike Ukrainetz and has just struck out on his own. Gerard has a fantastic bear area and is implementing the same program that has enabled Mike to consistently kill great trophy bears in a sustainable manner for decades.

After loading the Subaru to the gills, my buddy and I made a 2 1/2 day, 32 hour drive to Gerard's camp.

Some camp pics to follow. Hunters stay in wall tents. Generator electricity with satellite WiFi during the day. Hot shower available, and a culinary school trained chef does some fantastic camp cooking.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

Client tents, view of camp with cook and eating tents, shower setup.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

The first night I was sitting a treestand 12 yards from a bait with two target bears. Target bears for this outfit are 300+ lbs and mature boars. The baits are all setup with the posts with white tops (36 inches high) - a bear should be as tall as the post at the shoulder to be a shooter bear. Also the logs in front of the bait are 5 ft long - the bear should be this long from nose to tail with his head pointed down as if eating from the ground. Additionally you are instructed to judge if you could shove the bear in the barrel and get the lid on as a final size check.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

The baits are all checked by trail cam to assure they are being hit by at least one target sized bear, although these mature bears are generally not super predictable at least you know there is one frequenting the bait.

Shortly after I settled in this guy showed up.  This is a good example of the size bears that need to be passed up at this camp to assure future trophy bears. This guy was well over 200 lbs and was certainly a P/Y scoring bear. Another couple years and he will be a beauty.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

He had to come over and check me out, I missed getting his pic when he stood up on the ladder sticks. Then went and rolled around in the waste oats.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

Taking a snooze to digest his meal.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

Time to hit the hay....more tomorrow

R

[smokin joe]

I can't wait to see more photos. It looks like a great setup.

[rastaman]

Can't wait to "hear" the rest of the story Ryan! Cool pictures of a lazy bear that knew you weren't going  to be a threat!

[Ryan Rothhaar]

As this bear was on the bait I heard teeth popping back in the brush and he quickly woke up and hustled out of there. I thought maybe things would get exciting presently, and stood up and got ahold of my bow. Shortly a cub showed up, followed by Mom who was quite vocal and aggressively patrolling the bait site. I've never seen sows act the way they did here, as cautious and nervous. There are plenty of big bears in the area, but this is wilderness, and grizzly country as well, so maybe that accounts for some of the behavior. Ne fellow in camp had two immature twin grizzlies on his bait two nights in a row, and several baits had damaged barrels from grizzlies.  Those were all the bears I saw first night, but one compound hunter brought n a dandy 400 lb/20 inch bear that evening.

[Ryan Rothhaar]

So typically in this camp you will sit the same stand for the first 3 nights then move around the final 3 nights based on what the bears are doing. The second night due to some logistics, I went into the stand around 230 pm. With last shooting light around 1040 pm this would be a long sit.

Around 430 I heard a stick break off to the right. The bear moved around me through the brush to downwind and behind. I could hear it moving around, then it started approaching while intermittently growling and moaning.

Finally the bear entered some thinner brush to my left and I could see it was a good sized one, but in the thick cover hard to judge.

The bear circled around behind the crib, then tried to get at the beaver in the metal cage through the back of the crib.

Stymied in that attempt, he walked around the front of the crib and plopped down in front of the barrels.

As he walked in past the post he looked pretty close to the same height at the shoulder. He had that fat polar-bear look to him with no neck and a visible crease down the forehead. Also judging him next to the barrel he looked like a barrel with a head attached, and his ass looked wide enough it would not fit into the barrel at all, no way you were shoving him in that barrel!

[KAZ]

I'm in, carry on  

[Herdbull]

Ryan, are the measuring logs left lying around the bait cut at 5 feet? Mike

[Ryan Rothhaar]

Hey Mike, yes, 5 ft. I found those to be the hardest to use to judge as you have to get a look at the bear in the perfect position.

Congrats on your pig of a bear!

R

[Ryan Rothhaar]

So the bear ate for a bit facing away then got up, walked over to my tree, and stood up on the ladder to check me out. After evidently deciding I wasn't a threat he went back to the bait and went for the beaver cage, giving me a broadside shot. I put a good shot on him, with the arrow passing through and sticking on the crib log behind. He whirled and ran out the left side of the bait, made a little circle, and jumped up on a tree 20 yards to my left before going down and letting out a few moans. He went about 40 yards total.

64 lb black widow, 680gr carbon and a big Snuffer.

As he lay

[Ryan Rothhaar]

I checked out the bear, then got back up in the tree to see if one of the target bears would show up. They were both significantly bigger than this one.....

A couple hours later the guide came in, we took some pics, and managed to load the bear on the quad.

Hero pics..