The Toughest One-Day Hunt I've Ever Done: A 2022 Perspective On My 2020 Spring Black Bear

One of the very best days of my entire life, and I was miserable for almost all of it. I’m glad I managed to figure out the timer on the old camera I was using, and got this rare smiling pic.

In early June 2020, I went on the toughest one-day hunt I've ever done. I'll lay some groundwork for the story first, then things will start to get kind of insane fairly fast. Spring black bear season was winding down, and I had one last chance to fill my tag. I had already gone out a couple times during the season, and hadn't managed to get a bear for the freezer. Not having any vacation days left before the end of the season, I had to try to get it done over a weekend. There are many ways to hunt black bears, and on Vancouver Island, the bear population is dense and widespread. If you spend enough time in the right general areas, you will likely encounter a shooter bear without much trouble. On this hunt though, I had one day to locate, kill, and pack out a bear, and one day back home to process it before I had to be back at work at 6:30am the following morning. I didn't have time to spend looking for bears; I had to go to a place where I was reasonably sure a bear would be, and try to kill one quickly. The surest way I know to find bears is to cruise the water around remote ocean beaches by kayak. By paddling into long inlets, and maintaining a good distance from the shore, you can survey large swaths of beach without announcing your presence in any way. Unlike berry patches or salmon streams, ocean beaches provide food sources for bears year-round, in the form of shellfish and grasses. The bears' attention is often focused on their food, leaving the opportunity to land a boat on the downwind side, and work your way on foot toward the animal for a shot. I figured that would be my best chance to get my bear, and would provide some good adventure at the same time. Hunting by kayak is extremely enjoyable; it affords the ability to travel unimpeded to areas that would be inaccessible by any other means. You feel like the whole ocean is your highway. So that's what I planned to do; kill a bear, stuff it into my kayak, and paddle home as quickly as I could.

The night before the hunt, I got off work at 10:30pm. I had my truck packed and ready to go as soon as I got off. I had to drive for about four hours to get to the place I had planned to launch my kayak. Now remember, this was in June 2020, still the relatively early days of Covid-19. At that time, people were being advised not to travel outside of their communities, and all kinds of things that made no sense to close, were closed. Come to think of it, we still haven't progressed past that stage. Anyway, I made sure that before I left, I checked that the public boat launch I intended to use was still open. The Government of Canada website that published information on the launch's availability explicitly stated that the launch was open. Other facilities in the vicinity were closed due to Covid, but the boat launch was supposed to be open. At 2:30am, when I arrived at the road that turned off the highway and led to the launch, I was met by concrete barriers. Perhaps the public boat launch was open, but the road that went there was closed due to Covid-19. All I wanted to do was put a boat in the water and paddle as far from human contact as I could, and here I was in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, being blocked from doing so. My first thought was to simply find a place to leave the truck, and carry the kayak the rest of the way to the ocean. A quick look at the map showed that that would not be as easy as it seemed. There was nowhere in the immediate vicinity where the highway came close enough to the water to make an impromptu portage feasible. In fact the closest place that a road came near the water was off a logging road 30km away. With no other option presenting itself, I drove to the spot on the map that showed the road coming closest to the ocean, and hoped I would find something other than a steep cliff, or the typical west coast 10-foot wall of underbrush. At 4am, after much probing in the dark of possible places to put the boat in the water, I found a small creek with a low bridge over it. There was a pullout on the other side to leave the truck, and it was possible to scramble over the guardrail of the bridge and climb down a jumble of boulders to a small rocky beach. Setting my alarm for 7am, I planned to get 3 hours of sleep, and figure out a way to get the kayak down to the water in the daylight.

After waking up and immediately crushing a citrus-flavored Beaver Buzz Energy, I felt ready to tackle the task of getting the kayak and all my gear over the side of the bridge and down to the water. My boat is a 17-foot ocean kayak, weighing about 60lbs. Even at the best of times, it is an unwieldy craft to haul around solo. Trying to climb over the side of the bridge and down several metres of boulders to the beach was not fun. I was very surprised not to have the boat fall on me, or to have snapped an ankle, or simply to have dropped it and cracked the fibreglass hull. It took about an hour to transfer the kayak and my gear from the truck to the beach, and to load the boat and get dressed for the day's activities. Now, when hunting long distances from an unpowered boat with limited storage capabilities, there are tough decisions that must be made. First, you have to factor in the fact that if all goes well, there will be over 100 extra pounds of meat taking up space on the return trip. Everything that is brought must serve a vital purpose, there is no room for extras. On this particular trip, I planned to paddle about 30km to the head of a bay deep in the inlet. It was 8am, and there would be usable daylight until 10pm. I figured 14 hours of light would be enough time for a 60km round-trip paddle, even if there was a two-hour stop to shoot and field-dress a bear. Worst-case scenario, I would have to finish the last couple hours of the trip in the dark. In hindsight, that sounds insane, and as you will read, it definitely was. So, having determined that I could do the whole trip in a single day, I decided to leave my sleeping bag, tarp, and tent in the truck to save space in the boat for meat. The thought did occur to me that if the weather got bad, or if I couldn't navigate as effectively as I imagined I could in a kayak on the ocean in the dark, I might need those items to make camp somewhere. I did have some experience kayaking long distances on the ocean at night, so I was reasonably satisfied I could handle that if necessary. I had a GPS unit, and had used it to navigate in pitch-black conditions before. As for needing to make camp due to bad weather, I figured I would just turn the boat upside-down on a beach somewhere and sleep underneath it, hopefully with a bear hide to snuggle with. Most of these thoughts were probably fueled in some part by lack of sleep and being fired-up with Beaver Buzz.

At 8am off I went, extremely excited for what the day might hold for me. The weather was good to start out, with very little wind, and I was glassing the shores for bears within an hour. As I travelled further up the inlet toward my target bay, however, the weather got steadily worse. Band after band of rainclouds passed through, bringing sheets of rain and hail in twenty-minute bursts, followed by brief glimpses of sun, then plunging back into darkness and rain. It's very humbling, to be in a tiny boat inches above the ocean, with giant snow-capped mountains towering overhead, and to be pelted by alternating bouts of rain and hail. Far from any person or anything man-made of any kind. In that situation, you are fully responsible for everything that happens to you in a very immediate way. It's a valuable feeling for a person to experience from time to time. It certainly changes your perspective about things. It puts into sharp focus those things that are important and real, and reveals the things that might have seemed important, or scary, but may have just been imagined to be so. I paddled for several hours through the worsening weather, eventually catching my first glimpses of a few solitary, smaller bears on the shoreline here and there, as well as a sow with two cubs. Good signs that despite the rain and hail, bears were out and moving around.

I spent most of the day cruising several hundred yards from shore, glassing promising-looking, grassy beaches. On two occasions, I located legal bears, and made my way to shore to attempt stalks. Both times, the bears finished their feed and moved off into the bush before I could get to within shooting distance. So both times, I got back in the boat and continued toward the bay that marked my turn-around point. I finally arrived at the bay at 4pm; later than I had anticipated, but with all the stops to make food and to pursue bears factored in, it was an acceptable halfway split. From more than a kilometre out, I could see a bear on the beach at the head of the bay with the naked eye. Glossy black bears stick out really well on green fields of beach grass. I confirmed with my binoculars that this was a bear I could go after, and began paddling toward a spot that would allow me to make a covert landing. I pulled my kayak up onto the beach, prepared my rifle, and started toward the bear. It was on the other side of a small point of land, which I planned to use as cover for my approach, and then to peer over top of and shoot from once I reached it. While I was slowly making my way along the beach toward the point, the bear was out of sight, and I wouldn't know whether it was where I had last seen it until I looked over the top. When I eventually did get there, and carefully craned my neck over the rocks to look down the beach toward where the bear had been, it was empty. I trudged back toward my kayak dejectedly. Had I not sacrificed enough to the hunting gods to deserve to be looked upon with favor? I pushed the kayak back out into the ocean, and paddled out a few hundred yards to observe the beach from a distance, hoping for more bears to show up.

At 6pm, without another bear sighting, I had a decision to make. I could stay longer, and take advantage of the last few hours of the day, which are always the best producers for bears. That would almost certainly leave me out overnight in the rain with my very limited equipment. Or, with only 4 hours of light left, I could paddle as fast as I could back to where I had left the truck. The second option would still mean paddling until midnight, but at least in six hours I could be warm and out of the rain, and only have to navigate in the dark for the last two hours of the trip. Ultimately, I decided on a compromise. I would leave the bay and start back toward the truck, but I would take my time, glassing until the light ran out, hoping for a last-minute bear somewhere along the way. As luck would have it, I spotted one within half an hour of starting back.

At 6:30pm, I spied a bear on a very small strip of beach with not many options for a landing area. If I was going to have a chance, I would have to bring the kayak in downwind of the bear, at a spot only about a hundred yards from him. Between that spot and where the bear was feeding was a large downed tree that I could keep between myself and the animal to prevent direct line of sight while I hauled the boat out and readied my gun. Once ashore, I crept as quietly as I could up to the tree, knowing that the bear was not far from the other side of it. When I slowly poked my head up over the trunk of the horizontal tree, I found that the bear had been steadily feeding closer to it while he had been out of sight. He was now forty yards away, and walking straight toward me. I rested the barrel of my .30-06 on the tree, and paused to wait for a shot while my heart tried to jump straight out of my body via my throat. I briefly contemplated what I would do if the bear just continued walking straight toward me, and we suddenly found ourselves feet away from each other, with just a tree in between. Luckily, as he crossed a small creek that cut through the beach and emptied into the ocean, he turned broadside and put his head down to take a bite of grass. I shot, and he ran about ten yards before dropping and expiring on the spot.

I was absolutely jubilant. I had a bear down, there would be plenty of meat to go around until fall, and I had gotten the job done on the only day I had left to do it. I skinned and quartered the bear right there on the beach, loading his meat, hide, and skull into the boat. All that room I had saved by not bringing camping gear provided ample storage! But, the reality of the situation then started dawning on me. I had no tent, no sleeping bag, no tarp. I was nearly 30km by boat from my truck, and it was 8pm. Two hours of daylight left. In perfect conditions, in daylight, with no wind or tides to fight against, if I paddled continuously, I could maybe make it in 5 hours. With a kayak bogged down with over 100 pounds of meat, the wind in my face, the tide flooding into the inlet, and in the dark, though? I had no idea when I would make it back. I just started paddling, and said to myself that if it got too dangerous for whatever reason, I would find a place to land and construct a shelter for the night. After all, I was now the owner of a brand new bear blanket. Despite the continual rain showers, everything was good for the first two hours, while it was still light out. I made some good headway, and was even able to see well enough to navigate by sight for another hour beyond sunset. Once the darkness finally did set in, I had my compass to go by, and I occasionally turned on my GPS to make sure I was where I thought I was. The inlet I was in was full of islands and deep narrow bays, some of which were kilometres long. If I made a wrong turn, I could potentially waste hours of paddling time. I couldn't see anything besides the distant mountains on the horizon, which appeared as a faint silhouette against the backdrop of clouds and stars. To try to stay on track, I would pick out a mountaintop far off in the distance that matched the course I needed to keep for a certain amount of time. Every so often I would re-check my course on the GPS, use the compass to pick out a new mountain, and paddle towards it. At one point, I almost rammed my boat straight into a rock pile, because I mistook the profile of the rocks that were only hundreds of yards away as being that of a mountain range hundreds of kilometres away.

Eventually, some time after midnight, I couldn't even see the mountains on the horizon anymore. I navigated solely by the compass that's set into the deck of my kayak, and by double-checking against the GPS to prevent wandering. For long periods of time, I would be several kilometres from land on any side, unable to see anything except the water that I could illuminate with my headlamp. It was extremely disorienting. Imagine paddling in pitch black, without the ability to judge speed or relative distance. The small amount of water that you can see is being whipped by wind, so it doesn't even look like it's slipping past you, as it normally would. At times, it even looks like it's passing you, as though you were travelling backward. At that point, you just have to trust your instruments and ignore what your eyes are telling you. But for long stretches of time, I was just blindly paddling, exhausted. My shoulders burned, my legs were cramped, my face was numb, and I was in complete darkness for hours, unable to ascertain whether I was even moving at all. It seemed as though my arms were just pushing a paddle through nothing, and I was just stuck in an abyss. When I eventually did see land again, and realized it was the shoreline that I could follow all the way to my truck, I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. A couple more hours of paddling, and one accidental detour into a bay instead of across it, and I sighted the creek that marked the spot where the bridge was, and where my truck was parked. A bridge! And a road! And my truck! A vehicle that didn't require physical exertion to power! I pulled up to the rocky beach at 4am, 20 hours after I had left it. I got out of the kayak and walked for the first time in 8 hours, since I had left the beach where I shot the bear. I nearly fell over with every step. After a short rest, I pulled myself together enough to haul all my gear, meat, and eventually my kayak up the boulders, over the guardrail, and onto the road. I loaded everything into the truck, tied the boat down to the rack on top of it, and basically collapsed in the front seat.

I slept for 2 hours, woke up shortly after 6am, and crushed the second citrus-flavored Beaver Buzz Energy drink of the trip. I found my way back out of the logging road network and onto the paved highway, and started the four-hour drive back home, where I would have to butcher all the bear meat and vacuum-seal it for the freezer. Then sleep for a few hours, and head in to work. Can you imagine, after all that, how it felt to sit at a computer and do spreadsheets? How it felt to read emails? Restful, but purposeless. Or to read that gyms or other businesses are closed because regular life is "too dangerous?" Too dangerous to whom? Who gets to decide that for me? It's jarring to go from situations where every decision is critically important, where you're responsible in a very direct way for your own life, to being back in a world where many seem devoid of responsibility. I didn't get a bear this year, in 2021. I tried; I even started out on a kayak trip very much like the 2020 one. Even had multiple days set aside to do it! The weather was significantly worse, though, and produced waves that simply could not be paddled through. So I returned home and fished and tried other things. I went turkey hunting for the first time, which was awesome. I keep having to come back to this other world, though. The one where we're increasingly told that any level of risk is not tolerable, and that we're incapable of making decisions for ourselves. And I wonder how anyone can know what they're really capable of, if these kinds of barriers are erected in front of them. Sometimes you have to be beat down and exhausted, but choosing to be there, of your own free will, and fully responsible for what happens next.