We went to Rangeley to hunt black bears with hounds. In three hunting days, we never saw a bear and never got a shot at one. We did get a goose and some turkeys, a better understanding of what a hound hunt actually looks like, and another trip booked for next year. Somewhere in between, a shower leaked through the ceiling, Dre turned green in the back of a truck, and a pack of dogs brought the hunt close enough that we could hear it fall apart without ever seeing the animal we had come for.

Mike, Dre and I were used to Rangeley in November for deer season. Arriving in September felt strange: it was warm, the trees still had leaves, and the hills were just starting to turn. I drove up with Dre, and we met Mike for lunch in Portsmouth before continuing north. Once we had groceries and had checked our rifles, we met Tyler, our primary guide with BMC Guide Service. His news was less encouraging than the scenery. Mushrooms had appeared in the previous few days, and the bait sites had gone unusually quiet. He suspected the bears had plenty to eat without visiting his barrels. We would be relying heavily on the hounds. At that point, that sounded pretty exciting.

Day 1: Learning to follow the dogs

I was up making coffee at four. After breakfast at Oquossoc Grocery, the OG, the operation began to take shape: four trucks, eleven hounds and a plan. Before long I was counting five trucks and correcting my own journal. This was a fleet, not a caravan. Jeff and Ray-Ray were the West Virginia houndsmen we started with, part of the Rough Run crew. Tyler was our primary guide, with another Matt, also a guide, and Chris helping during the hunt. Watching the trucks, dog boxes, GPS units and radios come together was an experience in itself.

Our first plan disappeared when a moose walked through the site where we intended to release the dogs. Nobody wanted them following that scent, so we moved on to check sites without cell service. At one, a tipped barrel led us to a camera showing a sow and cubs. They were apparently still nearby; we could hear movement in the woods about fifty yards away, but never got eyes on them. That was genuinely cool. It was also about as much bear activity as we were getting. Tyler said he had never seen the sites so quiet in ten years on that lease. The mushrooms were his explanation, not something we could prove.

The technology gave us plenty to watch while the bears gave us very little. The guide trucks had magnet-mounted mobile Starlink setups, which made connectivity possible where our phones had none. I chose not to connect. Meanwhile, one of the guys had a Garmin 300i that wasn’t cooperating, and about five of us spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to diagnose it. By late morning, neither set of dogs had found anything worth running. By early afternoon, our bear hunting was done for the day, and the guide’s truck was also developing an overheating problem. Mike, Dre and I have a long-running theory that our hunting trips are cursed. Rangeley was making a persuasive case.

The sacrificial goose

I thought I might rescue the afternoon by finding a turkey. Instead, I spotted Canada geese from the road and managed to sneak in on them. I got to about thirty-five yards before running out of cover, then flushed them and took one on the wing. The whole thing was on video. We had come to Maine for a guided bear hunt, and the first animal I took was a goose I had spotted while looking for something else.

Naturally, we gave that goose more responsibility than it deserved. It became the sacrificial goose, the offering that would get our mojo and karma back. Tomorrow, obviously, the bears would cooperate. It was exactly the kind of dumb running joke that makes a trip with these guys worth remembering, and one reason I was glad I had started keeping a journal. I had been doing trips like this for years without writing down the little moments. There are a lot of them I wish I still had.

We finished the evening with dinner at Bald Mountain Camps Kitchen, then returned to the rental. My upstairs bathroom had a claw-foot tub. After I showered, some water outside it found a way through the floor and into Mike’s bathroom below. We had made our offering to the hunting gods and were rewarded with indoor rain. The goose had apparently not settled the account.

Day 2: A necessary change of plans

The next morning brought more hunters than we had expected, and we were frustrated about what that might mean for our chances. Across the operation there were three groups of three hunters, three houndsmen and eighteen dogs. We did get an early burst of excitement when the dogs seemed to pick up a bear, but they eventually lost it. By midday, the woods were dry, the sites were quiet and we were demoralized. We had expected a lot more bear action. A big temperature drop was forecast for the night, and we were pinning our remaining hopes on it getting bears moving before our last morning.

Rather than go back to the house, we went looking for turkeys. Our afternoon became what we called the turkey safari: riding logging roads, finding birds and having a damn good time. We got some hens and gave them to the houndsmen. After spending the morning worrying about whether we would get a chance at a bear, the change of pace was exactly what we needed. Nothing about the afternoon had to rescue the whole trip. It was simply fun.

Mike had also acquired an unlikely traveling companion. He isn’t much of a dog guy, but Barger, a houndsman who joined later, had a little Chihuahua mix named BabyDog. For two days, Mike ended up riding with BabyDog as his lap dog. Between that partnership and the turkeys, there was still plenty to laugh about. Dinner at The Hungry Trout was appropriately comforting: pork chops for Dre, chicken parm for Mike and meatloaf for me. Then it was back to hoping the weather would do what two days of effort hadn’t.

Day 3: The cameras finally light up

On the last morning, five cameras had recorded bears since midnight. After the previous two days, that felt like a different hunt. Our lead hound got onto something and worked it for a while before coming back, while another group had a real chase going. The radio got busy, and we headed over to help. I had been sitting in the front of Tyler’s parked truck, watching the GPS like it was the best show on Netflix. Dre usually got that seat because he gets bad motion sickness and I don’t. When the call came, he instinctively jumped into the back.

Of course, the one ride when we reversed our usual arrangement was the one that turned him green. Tyler kept telling him how proud he was, and I have about a minute of footage of the whole thing. We joined the other group, and a game of Rochambeau settled the shooting order. That opportunity didn’t go to Mike, Dre or me. We waited along an old logging road, but the bear never appeared. A dog came through instead.

By about ten-thirty, the dogs were tired and it looked as though we might be finished. Then Jeff had one more idea. We would pool the freshest dogs left across the three groups and walk them into another spot. The whole fleet came together for one last effort. After watching the morning’s excitement fade, none of us needed much convincing.

One last chase

Mike walked in with a dog handler while the rest of us spread out along the logging roads. Dre and I stayed with Tyler, waiting and talking about Guide to Wild until we thought we heard barking. Then the handler reported a strike. We could hear the hounds from what seemed like almost a mile away, and their direction kept changing. We watched the GPS and listened to the radio until word came that they were heading our way. Tyler moved us back to where the dogs had originally gone in.

Dre had first shot for our position. He took his rifle, Tyler had the GPS and radio, and I brought my camera and rifle. We started down a trail to get ahead of the chase, only to see the dogs turn toward the truck. We ran back uphill. The pack was coming straight toward us, and we watched the distance shrink on the Garmin: about a hundred yards, then closer. A couple of hounds were still in the truck’s kennel. When they heard the pack approaching, they began barking too.

There was a crash in the woods, then the movement stopped. We heard the dogs yelping and scattering. Based on the hounds’ GPS positions and what we could hear, we figured the bear had come within about sixty yards. We never saw it. Tyler’s read was that it had heard the dogs ahead in the truck and turned back through the pack pursuing it rather than continuing toward the road. No dogs were hurt, thankfully, but the chase was over. Dre never had a shot.

It was heartbreaking and completely exhilarating. We had spent most of three days waiting for the hunt to become the thing we had imagined, and on the last attempt it finally did, right up to the point where it didn’t.

We couldn’t know exactly what the bear had been thinking or what another few yards would have changed. We knew how close the dogs had brought us, and that we wanted to do it again.

Blue biscuits and 1,239 emails

By midafternoon, the hunters, guides and houndsmen regrouped around the trucks. It was time for blue biscuits, their name for Michelob Ultras, and accepting that the hunt was over. We had heard plenty about how unusually slow the week had been, but we didn’t have a definitive explanation for it. Mushrooms, dry conditions, weather: everyone had a theory. What we did have was another trip booked. Three days without seeing a bear had somehow made us want to come back.

That night we went to Bald Mountain Camps, where guides and other hunters came through the bar and I had a good prime rib. The next day I drove home, dropped Dre off and shifted my attention to unpacking, my couch and the Patriots. By Monday morning, I had found 1,239 unread emails. I sent Mike and Dre a few observations: my own bed and good toilet paper were excellent, ignoring email might have gone too far, and we really should have been following a hound on a map instead of going back to work. I still think that last one was right.

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