Diary of a Wisconsin Bear Guide
By Mike Foss
The September Mike Foss bear camp in Washburn, Wisconsin is a place for good
food and good stories.
On Wisconsin Outdoors’ black bear expert Mike Foss operates Northern Wisconsin Outfitters
In Bayfield County. His hunter success rate over a decade as a professional guide is more than 95 percent with a near 100 percent shot opportunity for an average of 20 hunters annually. Hunters benefit in September when Mike Foss begins the quest to bring bears to the bait stations four months before.
In the last few years alone his hunters have harvested a 639 pound bear, with bears in the 300 to 500 pound class not common, but expected. Foss baits over 30 square miles of rugged Lake Superior Country. A highlight for our readers over the past five years was devouring every word of Foss’s accounts of the quest to tag the legendary Snaggletooth, a boar estimated to be 700 pounds in his prime. Snaggletooth was taken at just under 600 pounds in 2011 by hound hunters. The week Snaggletooth died, Foss’s trail camera for the first time captured a 600 pound bear on the very bait station that he had photographed Snaggletooth feeding on many times over many years.
A rifle hunter holds vigil over a Mike Foss bear bait.
Beginning today, we bring Foss’s weekly column, “Diary of a Wisconsin Bear Guide” to the On Wisconsin Outdoors’ website. Thanks for walking the wilderness with Mike each week. Be quiet, make sure to watch behind you…..and make sure you can run faster than at least one hunter walking with us.
June 25, 2012
Although baiting started slowly for me in May with teaser baits to let the bears know we’re here, all stands will be in place by mid-July. New in 2012, I have permission and exclusive rights to place our hunters on an additional 4000 acres of private property. It takes time to scout and set up for new bait stations. It’s a learning process each time I move into a new area. Sometimes it can take a few years to figure a property out.
This year because of heavy rains and wet conditions I will be utilizing a significant number of hollow stumps to protect the bait. This keeps the bait dry in areas where water can be a problem. The game plan is to work hard and be consistent like always. Opening day is September 5th. I offer another hunt which starts September 8th; most hunters the first week should be done by then.
Returned home to Washburn, Wisconsin from the Twin Cities only to find a bear had attacked my bait truck. Call it a sweet revenge for the tags we’ve placed on his relatives over the years. Must have been a smaller bear. Looks like he was trying to get into the bed of the truck and was having a hard time pulling himself up. There was no food or bait in the truck. He must have smelled the goodies I had carried in there from the days before. The bear tore off my bug shield in two pieces and left claw marks up and down the bed of the truck. In all the years I have been doing this not once has this ever happened.
This week we had two days of solid rain. I knew our bait pits would be full of water, and they were. The bears are hungry and on the move. I’ve seen bears literally every day I’ve baited. While traveling on ATV to one of the bear baits I ran into a very large bear over 300 pounds sporting big linebacker shoulders and a dark muzzle. Rounding a corner and into a small open area this big bear stood up in the four feet high grass to get a better look at what was coming. What a beautiful sight. I turned off the ATV and he dropped back down on all fours. Still, I was able to still see the top of his back while he slowly walked away in that tall grass. I started the ATV again and he popped back up to take another look at the intruder in his area. Now that I’m writing this weekly diary for On Wisconsin Outdoors, I know that a good camera will be another good tool like our trail cameras holding constant watch over many of our bait stations; just not as important as the buckets of sweets I’m carrying in for the hunters that will gather here in September.
Couldn’t get to one of my bait stations today. With all the rain we have had the dry creek I usually cross by ATV had three feet high rushing water flowing through it. I could have probably made it but didn’t want to take the chance. I didn’t feel like going for a swim today.
See you next week. Thanks for your company.
Mike Foss