The Bear Necessities

Sunday, November 07, 2004

By DAVE SHERWOOD Outdoors Writer

"You have to be a little crazy to hunt in these mountains," said Doug Kane, avid bear hunter and wildlife biologist for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Kane hunts bear in a rugged, mountainous region north of Moosehead Lake. He runs Plott Hounds, a unique breed of dog that the American Kennel Club recognizes for its stamina, endurance, determination and athletic ability. They're bred, and trained, to hunt bear -- and that is what they most love to do.

On Oct. 27, two days before the end of the season, they rode north with Kane from his home in Elliotsville, just south of Greenville. The hounds -- their heads protruding from the plywood dog box in the back of his pick-up truck -- let out an occasional howl of excitement as Kane traveled through country ever more remote.

The winding logging roads in this region of Maine, complete with washouts, rickety wooden bridges and downed trees, make access difficult.

But the mountains, cedar swamps and dense evergreen thickets that these bears call home are perhaps the only thing more treacherous. Every bear hunt begins near the road, but rarely do bears concede to hounds in open, gentle terrain.

Inland Fisheries and Wildlife estimates that Maine has over 23,000 black bears -- among the largest populations in the lower 48 states.

The fact that they're out there, though, doesn't make them any easier to find. Bears are exceptionally elusive and wary. When pressured, they turn to the steep cliffs and dense spruce thickets of high mountain slopes, where they often outmaneuver, out climb and outrun the dogs. It's their home terrain, where the big bruins feed and rest -- and they play it to their advantage.

Kane has hunted with hounds for 20 years, and has been a regional wildlife biologist for the Department nearly as long. He's always been a hunter, but his love for the game he pursues, and the great outdoors, led him to wildlife biology. He holds bachelors and masters degrees in wildlife ecology and management.

"As a biologist, I'm a student of bears and the places they live. But the best research book is following my dogs -- you see and learn more that way than through any text book," he said.

In Maine, there are three commonly used methods for hunting bear: Baiting, hounding, and still hunting. Hunting over bait is the most common -- nearly 80 percent of bears are hunted this way. In this method, the hunter attempts to attract a bear to a particular bait site, where he or she lies in wait.

Stalking is the least-used method. When stalking, the hunter hopes to happen upon a bear while walking, or sitting, in a natural setting -- a very unlikely prospect because of Maine's dense forests and the exceptionally shy nature of bears.

The remainder of hunters -- less than 10 percent in Maine-- run hounds.

All hounds, by instinct and breeding, have remarkably keen noses that allow them to track minute amounts of scent over long distances. When they strike a scent trail, they bark, or bay, continuously, allowing hunters to track them through the woods on foot. Often the chase will lead both bears and hunters cross-country over many miles.

The dogs make a distinctive sound when they're hot on a trail, and another when they've treed, or cornered a bear. The handler, through many months, and often years, of training, learns to recognize the differences in the dogs' "voices."

Hounds, and their keen noses, allow hunters to cover large, remote areas effectively. But to do it safely, and successfully, this method requires an intimate knowledge of the terrain -- and more importantly, of bears, their habitats and their preferred food sources. The dogs, if properly trained, will find the bears. But getting them to good starting locations, then finding the dogs afterwards, requires preparation, experience and woodsmanship.

SEARCHING FOR SIGN

The trail to Kane's bait site runs through an open ridge dominated by towering northern hardwoods -- birch, maple and beech. High above, an unnamed mountain, cloaked in dense spruce thickets and laced with steep rock cliffs and ravines, looms.

As Kane made his way to his bait along the trail, his well-trained eyes turned from the mountain peak to the forest floor.

He pointed out a pile of bear scat almost hidden beneath leaves alongside the path.

"That's about a week old," he said. "See how it's filled with grass? This time of year, that's a sign of limited natural food sources -- the bears eat grass when food is running out. They'll den early this year because of it."

On a typical year, Kane doesn't start his dogs on baits. He prefers to walk them through open beech and hardwood ridges in these northern mountains, covering broad swaths of country, untracked by roads, hoping to cut, or "strike" a bear's scent trail.

But this year, the poor beech nut crop has made finding bears difficult.

At the bait site, Kane knelt down and gently picked away freshly fallen beech leaves from a patch of sand and gravel. Bear hunters often lay down sand and gravel at the foot of a bait, to help them capture the tracks of animals that might have visited overnight.

"That's a pine marten," said Kane, pointing at one of the many tracks in the sand. "See how it has five toes and shows its claws? And that one over there is a fisher -- similar track, just a bit larger," he said.

Near the edge of the sand and gravel, he thought he could see a bobcat track.

"Bobcats show four toes, and retract their claws -- their tracks are usually easy to identify," Kane said.

But most intriguing was a deep depression directly in the middle of the sand.

"Something sat here and ate last night -- looks like a bear," he said, with excitement building in his voice.

Kane got up and began to scan the surrounding hardwoods for trails. He was looking for something else -- another sign that would confirm his suspicion.

He found it: One of the trails leading into the bait had been used -- and recently. The signs were subtle. Leaves were turned over just so, and from a distance, at the right angle, you could see where the bear's pads had left impressions in the soil and leaves.

It was time to get the dogs. Kane returned to the truck, packed his bag with essential survival gear, then returned to the bait with his three dogs.

He brought Tina, his "start dog," to the bear's trail first. She immediately started baying, and he released her.

In seconds, she was gone.

Next he unclipped Buck and Rebel, his two younger dogs. They took off not far behind Tina, barking all the way.

Now is when the real work begins, said Kane -- for both hunters and dogs.

"The dogs work as a team, like sheep dogs; each one has its role," Kane said.

Tina, his smallest dog, is 9 years old, and weighs just 50 pounds. But what she lacks in size, she makes up for in experience -- and honesty. When she strikes a scent, Kane can trust that it's a bear, and not a "non-target," like a pine marten, fisher or coyote. Tina has the uncanny ability to work out a track, even a cold one left more than 12 hours ago.

An experienced dog like Tina, Kane says, assures him that the trail is that of a bear. Her expertise and experience also helps Kane teach his younger dogs to track and trail bears -- and not other species, like deer or moose.

Buck, three, and Rebel, two, both weigh 70 pounds -- they're leggy and muscular dogs. Though they're young and less experienced, they're brave and they run hard.

Tina starts the trail, but if she tires, Buck and Rebel will be there for support, Kane said.

Once the hounds are released on a scent trail, bear hunters must do everything they can to stay in touch with their dogs.

"It's big country; and terrible terrain up on top of that mountain, you don't want to head off without knowing exactly where your dogs are," he said.

Kane's experience as a biologist, tracking bears with radio collars in regions to the south and east, has taught him much about bear physiology.

"When we chase these bears to put radio collars on them for studies, they'll run for hours on end without slowing down. They're like marathon runners," Kane said.

"The physical ability of bears, by human standards, is just enormous," he said.

Often, when following a young bear, hunters like Kane will call their dogs off the chase, knowing that they don't stand a chance of catching their target.

It seemed as though that might be necessary this time. His dogs had long since "jumped" a bear, high up on the mountain, but the chase had taken them around the back side and down into a lowland valley of dense cedar, then farther still along a distant lakeshore.

Now, five hours later, they'd returned to the mountain, and were again nearing the summit.

NO GUARANTEES

Kane had last heard from the dogs an hour ago, when Rebel, his youngest, had begun to sound a "tree bark," indicating that he'd perhaps treed a bear.

But the excitement had been short-lived. Rebel was alone on that part of the mountain with the bear, and it had probably come down from the tree and escaped.

"This is the hardest part of the hunt for a dog owner. I think about those dogs up there on that mountain, in places where we just couldn't go. They're my pets just like anybody else's dogs. I worry about them up there," he said.

Kane looked up at the mountain. The dogs had gone silent. Thousands of acres spread out ahead of him on the mountain's flanks. The dogs had been in close contact with the bear, and now, with the silence, he had no way of knowing what had happened.

The bear had most likely escaped, said Kane.

In Maine, between 3,500 and 4,000 bears are harvested annually. Of those, only 10 percent, or roughly 350 bears, are taken with hounds. Because of the extreme nature of the terrain, and the difficulty of the hunt, success rates are low.

This year, Kane ran his hounds almost 25 times during Maine's six-week season, from Sept. 13 to Oct. 29. During this time, he and those he hunted with shot only two bears.

"There's no guarantees; the bears hold all the aces in this game," he said.

As snow clouds began to shroud the summit, Kane decided it was time to call in the dogs. To do so, he would have to use radio telemetry to locate them on the mountain.

Using a radio telemetry receiver and antenna, hunters can tell the general direction and rough distance of radio-collared dogs, then call to them.

"Aye Tina! Aye Buck! Rebel!," Kane called out towards the distant ridge, in the direction that the antenna had placed the dogs.

His call echoed off the mountainside.

He continued to call every few minutes, hoping that the dogs were heading his way. There was no response at first --then Rebel howled in the distance.

"There he is, that's my boy!" Kane said, as though hearing from a long-lost friend.

After a half hour of waiting, and worrying, Kane watched as Tina, his oldest dog, appeared along a distant ridge -- a brown spot trotting down the hillside. She'd literally appeared out of nowhere.

"Hey Tina!" Kane yelled.

He ran up the hill towards her, picking her up when he reached her. She licked his face as he helped her into the dog box.

Not far behind were Rebel and Buck, trotting down the road.

Nearly 10 hours, two mountains and countless miles later, the dogs were home safe.

So were the bears.

Dave Sherwood -- 621-5648

dsherwood@centralmaine.com