I DON’T DO TREE STANDS

By: Hugh Hayden Chris, I don’t do treestands! That was the start of

a phone call I had with my buddy Chris Blaskowski who was prepping a bear camp in Idaho for us last spring. I let Chris know that if I was coming on this bear hunt, he’d have to throw a ground blind together for me 20 yards from the bait barrel. Chris responded by telling me that he could put me on the ground, BUT there would be angry mama bears with cubs that time of year and there would be angry boar bears because they were both hungry, and being ignored by the pretty mama bears.

I didn’t relent, it would be a ground blind or nothing, I’d take my chances on the ground with multitudes or angry, hungry, amorous bears rather than climb up in a tree stand only to fall out and break myself. I could hear Chris’s eyes roll over the phone.

The first evening of the hunt was when the real fellowship happened, we painted each other’s faces for the hunt. There is something that feels like a building tension when we put on the “war paint.” When you know you may go out and engage your quarry, and it may be hands on, it may be so close that you have to lean away from it just to make your arrow comes off the string before it enters the animal and doesn’t jam up in the space in between. There’s something about the putting on of “war paint” that connects me to my primal ancestors that drew animals on cave walls, and I think a lot of hunters feel that. Of course, there are facemasks that you can wear and then take off so you don’t stain your pillow or sleeping bag after the hunt and there are facemasks that will protect you from insects, but why do that when you can have the experience of decorating each other for “battle?”

After I was certain that Chris had not painted any crude pictures or dirty words on my face, because your buddies will do that from time to time, I took the first selfie of my life. We headed to the river where Chris rowed us across and left Kim, my other best buddy and Chris’s lovely bride, on the other side. From there we walked a trail to the bait station. Kim proceeded to sit in her tree stand that was at least 30 or 40 feet up the tree and we devised a plan of hand signals to alert each other if one of us was going to take a particular bear or not.

Now, I try not to cuss because there are so many better words to use, but in this story, I got to my ground blind and said, “Shit!” It was completely appropriate at the time because upon entering my blind that is what was on the floor where I was supposed to sit. It was left there by a very large bear. Now I have to crawl into this blind. It’s not a canvas blind or a popup type of tent, nope it was a crude, haphazard construction of dead cedar branches stacked together with fresh cedar boughs sort of woven into it. I was more or less completely exposed or at least felt like it, and the big pile in question at my feet left no doubt that a big bear was aware of my ground blind and comfortable enough to make itself at home in it. Great, I thought maybe I should have climbed the tree stand that is way up in the air and take my chances. Maybe I could climb up and tell Kim to scoot over?

In just a few minutes after settling in, I looked up to Kim and she was looking at me and pointing to her eye, letting me know that she sees a bear. It walked right in. We had a great game of charades at that time. She pointed at me motioning that I should shoot and I pointed at her motioning her that she should shoot. She pointed back to me and I thought, fine, I’ll take a shot. It wasn’t a big bear but I reminded myself that I had two bear tags so decided I should shoot the first one and get the jitters out of my system and then save the second tag for a big bruiser. I drew my bow just as the bear took a step and turned his rump towards me. I held at full draw for so long I had to let the string down, the bear heard it and ran off.

A few minutes later, another bear came past my right side and spooked and ran, a few minutes after that, a bear came in and laid down 30 yards behind me. I slowly shifted in my blind and caught him watching me. He flipped his head down dramatically and laid in the grass. After several minutes went by, he picked up his head and saw that I was still looking at him so he flipped his head down again. I couldn’t help but laugh although I tried to do it quietly. Yet another bear strolled in and walked right past my blind. I’m not sure exactly how far away he was but it felt like I could reach out and touch it! I looked up to Kim and she was pointing at me to shoot once again. I slowly, but forcefully shook my head, “no”. In exasperation she tossed her hand up and mouthed a dirty word at me and I saw her take her bow off the hook. I was so excited at the thought of getting to see my friend kill a bear, especially with the front row seat I had. But the bear moved off and out of my sight, so I looked up to see that Kim was still drawing her bow. A mere second later I saw her string fly and I heard the tell-tale sound of an arrow making its mark. I heard the crashing through the trees as the bear ran and then I heard nothing.

Seconds later I heard the dying moan come from somewhere in the woods. She did it! She really did it! My Facebook who had become my real-life friend had just killed a bear and I got to be there for it. Kimmy Mac Mamma Bearskowski had the resolve to get to her feet in a treestand, lean out over the emptiness and sling an arrow! She climbed down and I hugged her! Kim then told me the bear had stood up on its hind feet and was looking up the tree at her when she laced it through and through. It was a short blood trail to the bear who had piled up in the brush. I’m not much for sitting still when I hunt, and I’d never been on a bait hunt, but what a rush! We propped up the bear on a fallen log and took the obligatory trophy photo and then I flung it over my shoulders and started packing it to the meeting place on the river to wait for Chris to pick us up. Kim had wisely sunk two beers in the ice-cold river on a string and tied the other end to a rock so we sat in the gravel, hot and bloody and toasted my brother, Shawn Hurla, and of course the bear; always aware of all that an animal gives for us to have something. It was dead dark by the time we reached the other side of the river again and I helped Chris hump the raft along with the bear up through the trees and into the trailer.

When we got back to camp and I asked Kim how many bears had come in as we sat there and she laughed and said “It was the same bear all night. He just kept circling.” The rest of the hunt was similar but along the way, I got to talk whitetails with the famous Gene Wentzel who stopped in at camp. We returned home base to butcher Kim’s bear, watched the season premiere of Yellowstone, got to check trail-cams and re-bait several different stations. We ate biscuits ad gravy, drank bloody Mary’s at a touristy place in the woods which was all great, then hiked into some natural hot springs where an old man took of every stitch of clothing and jumped in with us buck-naked, not my idea of a good time. I won’t be sharing any photos of that encounter.

On an evening at the end of the hunting adventure Chris and I sat in the ground blind and had an exciting encounter with a nice big blonde-cinnamon colored bear. I didn’t get to bring it home but that’s okay. I had a long drive home after the hunt and got to relive it all as I drove. Chris and Kim took me to the northern border and some day I’d like to take them to the southern border. The terrain, the vegetation and the animals will be completely different but the face paint and the friendship will remain the same. And as much as I hope to see them here in my home area, I hope more that they will invite me to bear camp again. Bear or not.