N.B. SPRINGERS: SALMON & BEARS

    What a difference a month can make during a Maritime winter! Residents and wild game had a pretty easy go of it up until this month. It seemed when February arrived,so did winter. Successive storms, including back-to-back Nor'Easters, dropped more than four feet of snow on the southern half of the province. This curtailed many of our outdoor activities but there is always something to repair or prepare for in the coming weeks. The weather turned mild after the big dump and as I write this, we have above freezing temperatures during the day and night. That's quite unusual for this time of the year but we'll take all we can get!
    The annual ice fishing tournament at the Key-Hole on Grand Lake was held recently and it was another great day of ice fishing with family and friends. We were there with our regular crew which included myself, my son Curtis and my grand-son Jackson. Here is a photo I took at the start of the tournament.

 We got there early to get our spot and drill our holes and get some chum working. This all takes time and it's nice to have some younger lads on hand to help with the heavier work such as transporting gear across the ice and drilling holes. Here is a photo of Curt and Matt taking a break from drilling holes.

 After getting set up and getting our holes chummed, we took a break while waiting for the horn to blow to start the tournament. I made a short video clip of the area to show the start of the tournament and the fishermen moving in and getting set up.Here is that short clip.

    The fishing started off slowly and it wasn't until a half hour after the start that I pulled up a 16.5 inch  pickerel. Jack took off with his Dad to register the fish and I never bothered to get a photo because it was on the small side and I thought we would catch some bigger ones later on.That proved to be a mistake because we never hooked another fish all day and I only had one other bite that never hooked up. We fished hard but it just didn't happen.

    There were about 138 participants registered and the total fish registered during the tournament was 36. I don't have the numbers from previous tournaments but my guess is that these figures are on the low side. There were a few nice fish caught including a 24.5 and a 23.5 inch fish but the rest of the registered fish were on the small side. I do know that the area where the tournament was held was fished hard the month prior to the tournament and I'm sure that was at least part of the problem of low fish numbers and smaller class fish. I harp on about these situations to the point I'm sure it becomes annoying to hear for some folks but you can't take fish out of a closed pond and expect to have continued good fishing. The resource is finite. There are only so many fish and when they are gone, it's over. Hook and release is very important in these locations.but, unfortunately, some people don't get it.

    Some long time volunteers were honoured with plaques stating their years of service. Jack Trembley and Ralph Goodwin both have 25 years of service and Brian Glenn has 30 years of service. Well done gentlemen and congratulations!

    Here is a photo of one little guy with a fish caught early in the tournament. He was pretty happy with his catch.

 This next photo shows Viola Roi who took third place with her fish and was also the oldest participant registered in the tournament. Well done Vi!

 Overall, this was another great tournament put on by the village of Minto and everyone had a great time with lots of laughs. Hot dogs and hot chocolate was served up for the kids and adults. This is a fun day out for kids and adults alike and I look forward to this tournament every year around this time. Be sure to mark it on your calendar for next year.

    Spring is just around the corner and that means the spring salmon fishing will be coming right along. The April 15th opener will once again find me on the Miramichi River and I can't think of a better place to be to shake off those winter blues. I love fishing the Miramichi and each year I can hardly wait to get that first tug and feel the weight of a fish. I usually fish with family and friends during the first week but many years the fishing will stay good right into May. This is the best time for a beginner to get started fishing salmon. They are a little easier to catch in the spring and a lot easier to land, mainly due to the fact the hooks are larger. I prefer to fish parts of the river that have good shores to cast to with nice runs and lots of quiet water. Here is a photo of my son Curtis with a grilse he caught last year while fishing with me and my grand-son.

 Tyler hooked a nice salmon and played it for forty minutes and lost it at the boat before I could get the net under it. Although he was disappointed he lost the fish, I told him there is always another one waiting to take the fly again. Everyone loses a fish now and then but with more experience comes more success in hooking and landing a salmon. A salmon fisherman must learn how to play a fish, from the moment he hooks it until it's tailed or netted. What a thrill it is for a beginner to land his or her first fish! Here is a short video clip of me playing a fish during an opener a few years ago.

  I have played a large spring salmon for 1.3 hours and lost it. Over time, the hook wears a hole in the fishes mouth and any slack at all will cause the hook to fall out. Here is a photo of a big spring salmon I landed a few years ago.

    Immediately following the spring salmon fishing, Ken and I will start running our bear baits. I always look forward to this season with anticipation because you never know for sure what size bears will show up on the baits. We choose our bait sites carefully to ensure we attract multiple bears to our sites. Some guides just place their baits haphazard  in the woods and hope for the best. Ken and I find the best habitat in the zones we hunt and space our baits far enough apart so we don't have the same bears hitting multiple baits. We also pay close attention to where other guides and hunters have baits to make sure we aren't butting heads with anyone else. This is important because here in New Brunswick bait sites aren't registered with the DNR. It's up to each individual to make sure you aren't too close to another bait. We also try to keep our bait sites clean and natural looking. The bears don't care but we do. Nothing looks any worse than a bear bait with garbage and buckets scattered around the woods. Believe me, we have seen it all. We also select our attractants and bait carefully so we can get the bears to visit regularly especially the bigger dominant bears. Ken and I believe we have a great system and it has proven itself over the years. We start our baits around the first of May and continue right through until the end of the season. We only hunt the most productive period of the season and we just take 4-6 hunters per week. If you choose to hunt with us, you won't get lost in the crowd. Each hunter gets personal attention and we cater the hunt to match each hunters expectations. Here are a few photos of some bears we have had at our baits.

 These photos are from bears we had at our baits last fall that were not killed. The next photo shows Ken with a bear he took a few years ago in zone 18.

 The next photo shows one of our guides with a bear from a few years ago.

 Here is Ken again with a nice bear he took a few years ago. This bear was taken very early in the spring season.

    As you can see, we aren't new to this game and we have great success during the spring and fall bear season. Ken and I are offering up two FREE bear hunts this spring. This offer covers the whole hunt except your hunting licence and taxidermy related costs. To claim one of these hunts you must become the "hunt master" and organize your hunt with a minimum of three fellow hunters. You would take care of booking the actual hunt for your group and supplying all the relevant information to us prior to your hunt. Your fellow hunters must pay the full cost of a hunt with us or, if you are the generous type, the savings can be spread across the entire group. We would like to have one US and one European hunter to claim these savings but we will honour this offer on a "first come, first served" basis. We are doing this to help us grow our business a little and make contact with more international hunters. Our new friends from Germany, Nils Otterpohl and his wife Elli, had a great hunt with us last fall and that experience prompted us to make this offer available to sports looking for a bear hunt at a reasonable cost. Please contact me through the channels provided on this web site and we will get right to work on setting up a spring black bear hunt here in the beautiful Grand Lake area of New Brunswick.

Until then, this is Dale Bauer saying "Happy Trails to You.....Until we Meet Again!"

BIG NEW BRUNSWICK BUCKS & BEARS

    This month brought a mix of weather to the Grand Lake area. We received about two feet of snow and a wind storm that caused considerable damage. There were many downed trees and power outages right across the province. Here at home on Salmon River, the high winds caused havoc by blowing over a large jack pine in my yard and a second tree downed the power line. The pine tree caused damage to one vehicle and we had to use our generator for about twenty-four hours. No serious damage but a real pain in the butt getting things cleaned up and back on the power grid. Here are a couple of photos of this weather event. Coltons car took the worst of the damage done during the storm.

As you can see, my truck barely escaped getting some serious damage

The middle of the month brought us a nice thaw that reduced the snow pac considerably and gave our suffering deer herd a nice break. A thaw like this gives the deer herd a leg up and really increases their chance of survival. They are able to feed and travel easily and this postpones having to use fat reserves until later in the year when they really need it. This is good news for deer and deer hunters.
    The New Brunswick DNR has sent out a deer survey to selected deer hunters and although this survey is supposed to be a positive endeavor, most hunters, myself included, consider this to be an insult to the intelligence of deer hunters and New Brunswickers in general. That might sound a bit harsh but after all that has been said about the state of our deer herd and our forests in general, this survey is redundant. It's all been said and the truth is out there. Why would DNR put out a survey when they know damned well what the problems are? I will fill mine out and it won't be sugar coated. The DNR has totally failed in their mandate to protect and promote deer hunting in this province and New Brunswickers know this! This issue isn't going away anytime soon and there will definitely be repercussions at the the polls in the next election. People are organizing and social media is fanning the flames of discontent and only time will tell what happens. Hopefully the outcome of this mess will be positive for deer and deer hunters.
    Although white-tailed deer numbers are at historic lows, there were still some beautiful bucks taken across the province. This speaks to the potential of the quality of our bucks overall and with a little help, we may once again regain the glory days of white-tail hunting. The following photos show some of the nice bucks taken across the province last season. This buck was taken on the first day of the 2016 season.

 The next photo shows a hunter with a bow killed buck.

 This photo shows another buck taken on the first day of the 2016 season.

 This buck was taken during the first week of the 2016 season near Hampstead.

 The next photo shows a big buck taken during the 2016 season.

 The next buck had nine points and was taken in Zone 16. It dressed out at 254 lbs.

 The next photo shows a nice 10 pt buck taken during the second week of the 2016 season.

 The next buck was taken during the third week of the season and had a live weight of 288 lbs.

 This buck sported 13 pts and was taken during the 2016 season.

 The buck in the next photo had ten pts. and dressed out at 214 lbs. with a 22.5 inch spread.

 The next photo shows a nice 11 pt. buck.

 This next buck was a dandy taken during the 2016 season.

 This nice buck was taken by an old timer during the 2016 season.

 The buck in this photo was a super 6x5 taken after having photos for five years and finding one of his sheds.

 The next photo shows a hunter with a buck he harvested during the 2016 season. A big ridge runner!

 The next buck was a nice non-typical with a long drop tine.

 The next photo shows a nice buck with 10 pts. taken at last light on the last day of the 2016 season. This was the hunters first buck.

 This photo shows another nice buck taken during the waning moments of the 2016 season. A nice first deer.

 Here is another big buck taken on the last day of the 2016 deer season.

The next photo shows three hunters with their top bucks taken in the Miramichi region in 2016.

 As you can see from these photos, there are still some real trophy bucks running around our province. I urge my readers to also be aware that this sampling of big bucks were taken by residents from all regions of the province. These bucks were also taken on private land for the most part.    

    Ken and I  had to take a back seat to the younger deer hunters in our group this year. We didn't score but Jamie, Dallas and Brooke all harvested nice deer this year. Brooke started things off with a nice six pt. buck taken early in the second week of the season.

 Dallas followed up a couple of days later with a nice eight pt. buck that came into the bait when he blew his doe bleat.

 As usual, Jamie topped things off with the biggest buck. This deer was his first buck over 200 lbs. It tipped the scale to 248 lbs, dressed. The big 9 pt. was an old warrior who had survived several seasons on crown land before running into Jamie.

 When Jamie got his deer weighed there were two more bucks on site getting weighed also. This was the first time in many years that we got to look at three trophy bucks hanging in one spot. Here are a couple of photos of those bucks.

 \This photo shows the two bucks that were already hanging.

 Ken and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the deer hunters who were successful in harvesting a nice buck this past season. Most of these bucks were taken with hard work and determination under trying conditions.

Although the spring bear season is around three months away, I wanted to show our readers a few photos of the big black bears that were hitting our baits last fall. We have a surplus of big mature  bears in our hunting area and our baits were pounded all fall by bruins of  various sizes. Ken and I were pleasantly surprised by the sheer numbers of LARGE bears regularly visiting our baits. Our technique for baiting bears has been refined by us over many years and we think our method gives the best results for attracting and keeping big bears on our baits. We pick specific habitat for placing our baits and they are spaced out far enough that we don't get the same bears hitting multiple baits. Trail cams are placed on all of our baits and that takes the guess work out of the situation. Another thing we are very particular about is the condition of our bait sites. We prefer to keep the sites very natural looking and free of debris. We know what other bait sites look like that are used by guides and its not a pretty site. Actually, it's a pet peeve of mine and I wish the DNR would update the rules and regulations for baiting bears in New Brunswick. It's not our call and it is what it is, so I'll leave it at that. Here is a photo of one of the nicer bears we had at one of our baits.

 This bear was a regular visitor during daylight hours. The next photo shows a bear with a belly that was almost touching the ground!

 This bait had a couple of big bears hitting it on a regular basis during shooting hours. 

 Finally, a couple  of photos of two more big bruins.

 

    If any bear hunters are looking for a good spring hunt please don't hesitate to call me. Ken and I have a super deal available to hunters who qualify for a couple of the spring bear hunts coming up. I will give the details in my next post or contact me to get in on this one time offering.

    Until then, this is Dale Bauer saying "Happy Trails to You....Until we Meet Again!"

                                                                               

    

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Ken and I would like to wish all our friends and family a Happy New Year and all the best in the days to come! Look forward to more blog entries on the 2016 deer hunt as well as the latest on the ice fishing in our area next month. Cheers and drive safely!