Black Bear Island Cruise

Jun 4

Some folks would insist that a drive through Vancouver Island in spring is a great, scenic vacation. Boating its shorelines and bays would constitute an adventure. Camping in its forests and eating raw and steamed oysters from its waters would make it a world class Nature vacation. We did all that as adjuncts to a bear hunt. Vancouver Island should have been called Black Bear Island, so common are those omnivores on that mountainous, 300x60-mile chunk of rock. The bruins increase in numbers as mature rainforests are clear cut, opening the land to second-growth plants the bears eat. Bear numbers also increase, to the surprise of most, when old boars are shot. I don't say this as an excuse for hunting them, but as simple fact. Old boars defend big territories and eat small cubs. When the grouchy old timers are removed, younger boars do the breeding and more cubs survive. Either way, the island has plenty of bears, always has had and probably always will unless we humans overwhelm the place and destroy too much bear habitat. So it's a great place to procure your bear sausage, bear hams and bear rugs while seeing seals, swans, scoters, bald eagles, blacktail deer, Roosevelt elk, ruffed grouse, blue grouse, pileated woodpeckers and more, such as oysters littering the beaches, free for the eating. Grab, open, gulp. Kim Cyr is a fortunate, lifelong resident of the island smart enough to increase his time afield by guiding hunters through VancouverIslandGuideOutfitters.com. Kim is a competent, confident, no-nonsense veteran who knows bears, where to find them and how to approach them. Time after time he throttled back the 25-horse Yamaha and gently, slowly nudged our 14-foot Lund to shore within 150 yards from grazing bears. "Stalk on up there," he'd say. And we would, several times getting within 40 yards of feeding bears, close enough to see fighting scars on their muzzles and healing bumps on their heads. Old boars must fight a lot. We could have gotten closer, but there was no need since I was shooting them with a 400mm Canon lens and a Borden Timberline bolt-action rifle in 7mm Rem. Mag. That particular rifle, firing Vor-TX ammunition, was capable of putting every 150-grain Barnes TTSX bullet within an inch of where it was aimed out to 400 yards if I held steady. Overgunned? No doubt. But as many have said, there's no such thing as too dead. We strive to kill as quickly and cleanly as possible, and this rifle would do that. Our daily hunts began with a long drive over and through the mountains, past whitewater rivers and still mountain lakes reflecting spires of cedar and fir. We launched the small boat at a rustic campground and then settled in for hours of cruising from flat-out to barely drifting past rocky shorelines, cliffs, mussel-covered beaches, shallow bays. We bounced over waves whipped up by afternoon winds, rolled and surfed on swells pushed in from the Pacific, glided over mirrored bays as the setting sun cast golden beams between mountain peaks and mergansers ducked and poked their serrated beaks into fishy coves. Eight bears entertained us the first day. Just three the second. We steamed oysters over a campfire, hunted until dusk and slept near the water, back on it at dawn to find three more bears, the third one the old boar we sought. Kim parked the boat more than 300 yards from this one, so we had a "long stalk" before setting up across a neck of water 147 yards (laser-measured by Swarovski's new 8x42 EL Range binocular) from the bear. Purple shooting star blossoms nodded beside us. The Borden settled nicely in the Steady Stix, the Z5 crosshair quartering the bruin's neck. The bear collapsed instantly. One of its canines was broken in half. The top incisors were worn to the gum and the bottom nearly so. This was indeed one of the old timers. Several cubs could sleep easier and their mother might find this beach open to grazing. We loaded meat and hide in the bow and settled back for a long vacation cruise back to civilization. # # #

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