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.