Groveland Twp.- One shot.
That’s what veteran hunter Jason Wilton expects to have in a bear hunting season.
‘You get one chance’and that’s pretty good,? said Wilton, 30, a township resident and area firefighter. ‘You have to take advantage of the opportunity.?
Yet this month’s hunting excursion to rugged eastern Ontonagon County in the western Upper Peninsula proved the exception.
On good roads, it’s a 13-hour drive from Oakland County to the Bergland hunting zone where Jason and his father, Ortonville resident Mike Wilton, along with two other hunting companions, set up camp on about 10 acres. Also on the trip was Jason’s wife, Tammy, who volunteered to help her husband due to a leg injury he suffered in a work accident.
The pair stopped in Escanaba and purchased a 55-gallon drum of cookie dough from a Wisconsin plant for bear bait. The sticky-sweet concoction was then topped off with a few gallons of molasses.
‘The idea is to supply nine bait stations in the area we hunt,? said Jason, a 1996 Brandon graduate. ‘On Sept. 6, five baits were hit by bear after we set the bait out. The next night, eight of the nine baits were found by bear.?
While the local bears? interest in the sweet offering was a good indication of success? supportive wife Tammy’s encounter came just a little too close while toting the mix to the bait pile.
‘I had cookie dough and molasses everywhere on me,? said Tammy. ‘That’s when I heard this stick snap’and a big old black bear with its nose to the ground was just 10 yards from me on the trail. I screamed three times, ‘Jason, you know there’s a bear right there???
The bear thundered off into the woods’but that was just the beginning of a successful hunt.
Just before dark on Sept. 10, while hunting from a ladder stand over a bait pile, Jason missed a bear just before dark with a 460 Smith & Wesson pistol.
‘I looked everywhere for that bear after I shot,? said Jason. ‘Well, that was my chance, I figured.?
‘The next day it was raining when I hobbled out to the stand on my crutches,? said Jason.
‘I got to my spot at about 2 o’clock and I sat in the rain until about 7:45, when a big raccoon came into bait. All of a sudden, he just spooked and took off running. That’s when I looked just to my right and the whole shooting area of my scope was full of bear. Big bear. Just walking toward me to the bait.?
One shot to the chest area with Jason’s 300 Winchester Magnum rifle dropped the bear in its tracks. Field dressed, the bear weighed in at about 405 pounds and stretched out 7 feet, 2 inches. The massive kill marked the second Michigan bear for Jason, who also has connected on four Ontario animals.