Guess Who Is Coming To Dinner
In all the years I went to Georgian Bay one of the things I always enjoyed the most were the black bear stories & one of the things I feared the most was the black bears & especially when I went alone.
I have camped out in the wilderness all over Canada & usually in a tent.
When you go alone you try not to think about Mr. black bear showing up in your campsite because if he does there is not much you can do anyway.
No guns allowed & no bear mace allowed so you are basically in a bad situation.
Black bears in Georgian Bay swim long distances so camping on any island does not guarantee that one will not visit you in the middle of the night.
A black bear can swim many miles to get to islands in Georgian Bay & they like to do this at night.
When they have a bad berry season the bears will go into campsites for dinner & they also will go in large groups.
During normal berry seasons they are mostly loners & very seldom raid camps, cottages or lodges.
They will break into cars, rob boats, refrigerators in cabins & become a real danger when starving.
One year a woman had just been killed in Ontario by a black bear training for the olympics & we heard it on the radio over & over again on the way up.
Then you start thinking about all the stories about people mauled or killed by black bears which really is not that many over a period of many years.
I even bought a book that listed every bear attack ever recorded in The US & Canada.
I probably would have been better off not reading it.
You probably have a better chance of getting killed on the highway on the way up.
None the less it still bothers you & you do think about it & what you would do if the time came that you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong bear that was hell bent on killing you & eating you for dinner.
It does happen & has happened in Ontario, Canada.
I have seen many bears from a distance over the years & have faced them eye to eye before in my campsite.
I camped with 2,200 black bears at Lake Missinabi way up north.
I could write a book about that as we had one bear encounter after another for 10 straight days & nights.
The bears actually lived in the primitive campground with us & that is the only place in North America you can do that.
I also know some campers were killed there where we camped a few years back.
Now that the spriing bear hunt is no longer open I have heard the area we camp in is crawling with big black bears.
I say that because Georgian Bay Black Bears get really big as the islands are full of berries.
I have seen many 350 to 600 pound black bears where I camp & I have seen many mother bears with three cubs rather than just two or one.
When I get in my tent at night I am usually really tired after fishing or canoeing all day so falling asleep is not all that hard to do.
Not in the wilderness.
We would always ask about the bears when we arrived at Camp Dore & sometimes they would have a bear encounter story to tell us.
One year we camped out on The French River at Dallas Rapids & the lodge owner said you are not camping on the rapids are you?
He said there was a real big mean one over there that had been tearing up his boats & cabins at night.
We saw coolers up in trees the bear had stashed there.
Needless to say sleeping that night was difficult.
We put a white gas lantern out in front of the tent & let it burn all night long.
The bear never did show up but we worried about that all week.
The lodge owner had hunters shoot 10 bears on his dump that week just to get rid of some of them.
When fishermen went to their cottge the bears would raid their boats & eat their worms & minnows.
Very sneaky even in broad daylight.
I have a few bear stories but I would like to hear others about black bear encounters on Georgian Bay Islands.
The last encounter I had was momma bear & three cubs 50 feet from me in my campsite when I got out of my tent at 7 A.M.
Lucky for me they headed down the shoreline away from my campsite or I would have been in a really bad situation as she was at least 350 pounds & very healthy & her cubs were also healthy & large.
I was camping alone & picked this spot because I did not think there would be any bears there.
I walked all over this area during the week & had no idea a mother with cubs was in the area.
I could have come face to face with her doing that & had no weapons of any type.
Needless to say I packed up & left after she & her cubs moved off to another area.
That was a great experience I will never forget but I would not want to go through it again.
Georgian Bay Bears are often hard to spot because they book it when they hear boat motors in their areas.
You would not believe how fast they run over the rocky terrain.
There is no way anyone could ever get away from one by running.
When I spot one on the shore ahead I always kill my motor & sit & watch them from a distance.
Pictures are diifficult unless you have a real big tele-photo lense & tri-pod which is useless in a bouncing boat.
Do you have any bear encounter stories?
