Ray Howell : Kicking Bear

Memoirs of My Bear Hunts by Ray Howell

After turning 18 years old, bowhunting was one of the main focuses of my life besides my family. I had harvested my first whitetail at the age of 19. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to take a large bear with my bow.

Back then, you could get a deer license and that also included a bear tag and small game license. I had gotten together with a couple of friends of mine and we had gone to Glidden, WI and put out baits once a week for several weeks before the bear season opened. None of us really knew what we were doing. All I knew was that we were having lots of fun and the anticipation of a bear coming in and finding out what kind of man you really were was on my mind constantly from the first bait pile we put out that year.

I remember the first bear I saw. It was like a black "ghost". I couldn't hear it, but I watched it walk around me until it got to the downwind side of me. Just like that-it was gone! What an incredible experience! I never released an arrow, but I was hooked and hooked hard.

I'd run into a group of bow hunters in Wisconsin that year that all they did was live for bowhunting. They invited me on a bear hunt in northern Wisconsin with them and I had no idea of the kind of fun and camaraderie that I was in for.

I met Bob Kostecki who I had heard many stories about who had taken 8 bears 8 years in a row. I found myself very fortunate because I was going to find out the ins and outs of bear hunting from someone who really knew what he was doing.

On my first occasion of baiting bears with Bob during the 3-1/2 hour drive north, the stories he told me were incredible and I was about to start living them! When we went to one of the bait sites that Bob had been successful with for a few years, he showed me how he put his bait out and showed me where he put his stand in the tree. At first I thought he was absolutely nuts! The bait pile was only 10 yards from the tree and his stand was only 8 feet high! I could see by his setup that his arrow was hardly out of the bow before it went through the bear. His comment to me was, "You want to let the bear settle down to make the right shot at the right angle so you take out both of his lungs".

Several weeks went by and we continued to put out many baits together and I had gotten to know a few of the other guys who hunted bears with this group year after year. What a bunch of characters! All of them had nicknames. Such as the first night I was in camp sleeping and at 2:00 AM a man came into the tent and accidentally kicked me in the head. When I jumped up and faced him, he said to me, "Hi, my name is Larry-they call me Tuna". That night several men came into camp with him. I didn't get back to sleep-the stories were incredible. I couldn't wait for the first night of hunting. Some of the other guys that were "regulars" had nicknames such as "Kermit the Frog", "Jet", "Ironman", and "Pecos Bill". Bob's nickname was "Killdecki". These men were some of the most proficient hunters I'd ever met.

I learned a great deal of my shooting skills from John Zardi. What an incredible archer and a great game shot! I still shoot the same arrow setup today that I learned from him back then.

Night after night, sitting in the stands, you couldn't wait to get out and hear the stories and track other bears. What an incredible experience! Finding out what kind of man you are meant you were driving the truck and you had to pick the other hunters up so nobody was coming to the bait to pick you up. I can remember a couple of different times when it was my turn to pick the other guys up. Once when I had a sow and cubs at my bait that wouldn't leave, I started talking to them just before I was getting out of my stand as it was starting to get dark. While I was climbing out of my stand, I talked to the bears because they wouldn't leave the bait pile. Then once my feet hit the ground, I remember backing out of there to the shortest distance to the trail as far away from the bears as I could get-what an adrenalin rush!

One of the men that I went to pick up never came out of his tree so we went in after him, thinking the worst. What we found was that he had gotten so shook up over the bears that had come into the bait that evening that he was afraid to get out of his tree. He realized that night that bear hunting wasn't for him. He packed his stuff and left camp the next morning never to bear hunt again.

We had harvested many great bears on those hunts, but it wasn't just the bear hunting that made all the stories. On the way back to camp one night roads were muddy and slippery and only seemed to be about 5 feet wide. Bob had bought a brand new Jeep for his wife for an anniversary present and she let him take it on this bear hunt to break it in. I'll tell you what-we really "broke" it in. It slipped off the road that night-went down the embankment and piled into a tree and then landed on its side. I was riding in another vehicle right behind him and when I saw this take place, I jumped out of the vehicle and ran down the hill. Steam was coming out of his Jeep like it was going to catch on fire. I started climbing up the side of Jeep to get into the door to get Bob out. Just like that-the door flung open and like a Jack-in-the-box-there was Bob looking at me and he said, "How ya doing"? I couldn't believe it-not a bruise on him.

The next morning we pulled the Jeep up out of the ditch and man what a sorry sight! We actually had to get a welder out there to weld the axle back together in order to pull it home. We were all like a bunch of kids who were in trouble as we pulled the Jeep up to his house. His wife was standing in the yard waiting for us. What an unbelievable sight! I could tell by the look on Bob's face, that he would rather be between a sow and a couple of cubs then to have to tell his wife the whole story on what happened to her new Jeep.

As the years went by, I've hunted with some great hunters and outfitters such as Kenny Angus out of Emo Ontario. Every spring we would go up there with a group of 11 guys. He only charged us $300 each to run the baits and have a camp to stay in. The most fun of the hunt was being back at the cabin after the evening hunt and watching the expression on Kenny's face. As soon as someone would tell him that they shot a bear, Kenny would get every detail from you and if you didn't have the proper shot placement, you were going to hear about it right then and there! He took a great deal of time when we arrived at his camp year after year to talk about and show proper arrow placement and to tell us not to be nervous when the bears come in and just take our time for the proper shot.

On one of the hunts I was able to be with my son Jay and watch him harvest a magnificent black bear. Man-the stories are endless, which brings me back to one of my encounters with a black bear where Jay and I were sitting together. This bear started circling us and when I first saw him, I looked at Jay and I said, "He's a 500 lb. bear". Jay agreed with me-he was big! The bear came in, presented the right angle, and I took the shot. The bear ran out and as it was crashing through the brush, I couldn't believe it. I had put an arrow through a great bear! After a few hours, we started tracking the bear. As I walked up on the bear lying there, I looked at my son and said, "That's not the bear I shot". I couldn't believe it. This bear had severe ground shrinkage! It's amazing how when a bear comes in and what your mind tells you when you see it. This bear went from 500 plus lbs. on the pad to 250 minus lbs on the ground.

So I started doing a lot more talking with some of the previously mentioned characters in my story on how to judge the size of a bear. My quest was to take a great Pope & Young bear with a bow. I studied and learned a lot about bears over the years and what to do and what not to do in preparing to hunt and in actual hunting situations. Most of my learning has come from the "school of hard knocks".

I had taken several nice bears to this point but nothing that really went into the record books very high which brought me on one of the most fun black bear hunts I've ever been on. Night after night I was having different bears come into my bait and it was exciting! Every night I was passing up bears. On one particular evening, I could just feel something was going to happen. Earlier that day, I had gotten extremely sick. I had eaten something that hadn't agreed with me. I was so sick that I took a garbage bag with me up into my stand because I knew I couldn't hold out for the whole evening hunt but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

One bear after another was coming into my bait-in and out. A couple of the bears were circling the bait and snapping branches, trying to intimidate the other bears. One of the bears wouldn't leave the bait pile. I was watching the bait disappear right before my eyes. A second bear came in and got too close to the bait and an incredible fight broke out. It all unfolded right in front of me. The ground was being torn up, fur was flying, and the noise they were making was hair raising. Finally one of the bears left. About 15 minutes later, another bear came running in and chased the first bear off. It happened so quick that I didn't realize how big this bear was until he turned around and slowly walked back into the bait pile. I had everything I could do to keep my control. This bear was everything I ever dreamed of. His size and the large crease down the middle of his head had my heart pounding so loud, I thought he could hear it. I waited until the bear turned completely broadside and as he reached his paw forward, I drew my bow and followed his far leg line up to the center of his body with my pin. The arrow hit perfectly. The bear flipped over backwards, got up, took three jumps and expired right in front of me. I couldn't believe it! It's one of those moments when you had to pinch yourself because it was too good to be true. After measuring the bear, he scored very high in Pope & Young. What a dream come true!

I've had the opportunity to chase my boyhood dreams all over North America with my bow in my hand chasing these big bruins and there is no experience like it-to be one on one and face to face with an animal that with one swat could end your life. But if that's your destiny, then that's exactly what's going to happen if you love bear hunting like I do.