My parents have been building a ‘Bunk House’ up at Conrads  this past summer, and it’s shaping up nicely.  They contracted the cement work and framing out to a local contractor, but decided to do the siding and interior work by themselves. 

The exterior siding is horizontal cedar planking.

The interior is pre-finished, tongue-n-groove, pine siding provided by Sam’s company.

The A-frame bunk house is equiped with in-floor heat (fancy, fancy), plenty of windows and a nice small deck/patio.

Too warm; Too wet.  Jason and I hunted Thursday, Friday and Saturday without any luck whatsoever.  Our bait stations were being hit, but no bears decided to come out during daylight hours.  We did however get visited by a few other creatures during our time in the stand.  On Thursday night a wolverine wandered under our tree (which was a bit unnerving), and into the bait station.  I had never seen a wolverine before so it was pretty cool; they sure do look mean.  Their marks/striping give them a menacing look.  Just before dark we heard what we hoped was a bear…only to be disappointed by 3 well-fed raccoons.   After watching them crawl all over the logs at our bait station, we scared them away and headed back to Conrads to clean up. 

Despite being shut out by the bear on Thursday, we decided to celebrate bear hunting season by splurging on frozen pizza and Premium Grainbelt at Doc’s Bar in Sturgeon Lake.  Unfortunately we were 1 day too early to be entertained by Karaoke Ken, but I did kick Jason’s butt in Big buck Hunter.

Friday Jason and I helped my Dad (along with Dave Tatge) finish up the exterior siding on the bunkhouse.  The bunkhouse is really looking better and better! 

Friday night was Jason’s turn to hunt, will I manned the camera.  I was “sure” a HUGE bear would walk in front of Jason with a bulls eye painted on it’s chest (I will devote a future blog entry to Jason’s trophy wall vs. mine), but (un)fortunately the only visitors of the night were the same 3 raccoons at dusk.

It rained all day on Saturday and we decided that it would be wise for us to split up and double our odds of getting a bear that night.  It rained the majority of the time in the stand, which made it impossible to hear anything except for the billions of raindrops bouncing off of everything in the woods.  The only sign of life I saw that night was a lonely skunk and a few woodpeckers.  Jason was visited by the wolverine and raccoons.

Overall, the hunting was a bust, but I’m not complaining.  Getting out in the woods, and up in the tree stand is a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of “real” life.  Ah, but it’s nice to be home again.

This past Sunday (Sept. 7th) Jason and I made the trip to Moose Lake to bait one last time before we begin to hunt.  We baited our Moose Lake bait station first.  Once we arrived at the bait site, we were both surprised and happy to see that all of our bait (doughnuts and cereal) had been cleaned out of the bait pit.  Interestingly, the bottom 2-3 inches of the pit was filled with a sandy sludge which could have been partially composed of our bait.  Along with the empty bait pit, we also found a number of trails coming and going into the site.  From the condition of the trails it appears that a bear (or bears) have been visiting the site regularly.  We also found a good size pile of bear feces on one of the trails. 

Jason setup a bow stand in a nearby pine tree with enough room for us to place another stand next to it for the cameraman to sit in.  At this point we hadn’t decided which of our two bait sites we’d be hunting at, but did decided that we were both going to sit at the same bait station when we do begin to hunt.  We decided this because we’ve both shot bear already, and we’d rather shoot 1 bear and get it on video, as opposed to having better odds of shooting 2 bears and missing out on video taping either of the hunts. 

The Barnum bait station had also been hit, but only about half of the bait had been eaten.  We did find one hind bear print in the mud surrounding the bait pit, but it looked like a smaller bear.  I put up a bow stand in a nearby pine tree and we baited the station. 

Our plan for hunting is to take Thursday and Friday (Sept. 11 and 12) off from work and hunt the extended 4-day weekend.  The ‘plan’ if you can call it that is to fill both of our tags in these 4 days and be done with hunting.  As much fun as it is to sit in the woods and hunt, bear hunting is an exhausting endevour; not to mention time-consuming.  Let’s hope my next post will include pictures of two bears.

Shelly and I travelled to Floriday over Labor Day weekend to attend my high school friend, Brant Lagoon’s wedding.  We left the house on Thursday morning at 6am for our scheduled 7:45am flight, but didn’t end up leaving Minneapolis until closer to 11am.  We met up with Troy McCrady (another high school friend) and the 3 of us flew into Memphis for a 2 hour layover, and our connecting flight to Pensacola.  In Memphis the 3 of us met up with 4 other friends whose desitination was the same as our: Kevin and Kay Jensen, and Jon and Shanna McIntosh.  Once in Florida, we were later joined by Bert and Mel Wagner, and Ryan Ascheman.

Our trip basically included multiple trips to the Pensacola Beach, eating far too much seafood, and drinking an equal amount of alcoholic beverages.  Brant and his fiancee, Amy Soo planned out the majority of our activities and their pick of resturants and bars were superb.   Thank you so much Brant and Amy Soo!

Two establishments of note were a little resturant/coffee shop named, Crema and a night club named, Sammys.  Shelly, Kay, Troy and myself found Crema on Friday morning while driving around downtown Pensacola in search of coffee.  The breakfast was so good we brought the whole crew out for brunch the next morning.  The chef at Crema was another reason for our return visit.  He (we never got his name) came over to our table both mornings, and LOVED to talk.  Shelly and I even got a few fried clams from him.  The other establishment we spent time at was a night club named Sammys.  We ended two of our nights at Sammys because it was open until 3am; one of those nights was after the wedding reception where we brought a total of over 20 people. 

Looming over the weekend was the impending hurricane (”Gustav”) and it’s near-miss of Pensacola.  Luckily for us, we only saw a few minor showers on Sunday night (the night of the wedding), and semi-tropical-storm weather on Monday morning on our drive to the airport.

The trip was great, filled with lots of memories and a great opportunity to see Brant and Amy Soo (not to mention the other White Bear Lake high school friends), and to be a part of their wedding, but I’m glad to be home in Minnesota.  It is safe to say I will not be ordering any shrimp, lobster or crab anytime in the near future.

The 2nd bear baiting session of the season was an individual effort of mine because Jason had family plans over the weekend of the 23rd.  Jason drew the 3rd session, Labor Day weekend because I was in Florida (Brant’s wedding).

2nd weekend

My baiting day went well.  I started off baiting the station in Moose Lake first and brought out three 5-gallon buckets of doughnuts and 1 gunny sack of cereal, as well as a 20 pound container of molasses.  My first trip from the 4-wheeler to the station was accompanied by two buckets of doughnuts and the molasses.  The trail to the station was barely visible, but I’ve made the trek enough to basically know my way around that part of the woods.  I was happy to find that a bear had moved a few of the logs from bait hole.  Not all of the bait had been eaten, but that wasn’t very surprising.  The woods are still plentiful with berries and acorns.  My trip back to the 4 wheeler to collect the remaining bait was uneventful. 

I returned to Conrads to load up with the same amount of bait for my trip to the Barnum bait station.  After finally reaching the bait station in the public land in the Barnum woods, I was again happy to see that a bear had been snooping around our bait.  The logs were pushed aside, but not much much of the bait had been eaten.  In fact, much of the cereal that was coated with the blueberry filling was not even touched.  Nonetheless, I dumped all the bait I brought and coated the nearby trees with remaining the blueberry jelly.

3rd weekend

Jason baited the same amount as I did on Labor Day weekend, and his report was that both stations had been hit fairly hard.  One of the stations had most of the bait pushed out of the hole.  And apparently a few of the trees at the Barnum site had claw marks where I had thrown the blueberry jelly.  So far so good.  One more weekend of baiting before we start to hunt.  Hopefully the natural sources of food start to dry up so that be bears begin to frequent our bait stations more.