For many years, a group of us would go to Canada for walleye fishing and bear hunting. This is when they had two bear seasons, Spring and Fall. (they later banned the Spring hunts to prevent sows with cubs being shot) Anyway, one year a magazine writer (big bow hunter) asked if he could tag along as he wanted to write an article on bear hunting in the North Woods. Sure, why not? We'd always get into camp (a VERY remote cabin) and set up, then work our butts off and hunt/fish HARD for 10 days. What does he do? He flies in (his own plane) AFTER we'd been there a few days, done all the work setting up camp and getting baits out, blinds built, etc. To make matters worse, he brought a girlfriend with him (and he was married ... NOT to her). Now, we're in a small, 2-room cabin, one bedroom with 6 beds (3-bunk beds). So he takes blankets and hangs them from the ceiling to completely block off one side of the room with "their" bunk behind the curtain. Needless to say, it was a bit uncomfortable when they'd disappear into the bedroom and one of us wanted to enter for a nap or whatever.

Anyway, we had one bait that was getting hit hard every evening, so we saved it for him. He was only going to be there 3 days, then had to fly out to another guided hunt for a story (can't remember where or what game). Well, we'd get him to the working blind every afternoon and pick him up that evening after dark (only accessible by boat). The first day, he took his girlfriend to his blind with him!!! I guess he wanted to show her what a big bear hunter he was. She didn't want to go the next day (too many skeeters), so he went alone. Every dang evening, he'd say he never saw a thing, yet the next morning, the bait would be hit. We'd reset and do it all over again the next afternoon. Same results. On the last day he was to hunt, I went to pick him up and he wasn't at the shoreline. WTF? When my buddies or I had a bear down, we'd wait at the pick-up point until help arrived to get the bear out of the woods. (we'd usually hear the shot back at camp, but this guy was bow hunting) Well, it started getting pretty dark, so I slowly crept in toward the blind from behind, just far enough until I could see him from a distance. His head was slumped forward and he wasn't moving. Heck, for all I knew, he was dead! I whistled to get his attention ... no reaction. So I eased on up behind him and would stop from time to time to give a whistle. No reaction. I finally came right up behind him and noticed he was sound asleep! To make matters worse, he had a book propped up on the edge of the blind in front of him! I guess he fell asleep while reading. I had to actually nudge him to wake him. He said that bear must be hitting the bait at night. Well duh! (I figured AFTER this guy left and the snoring ended)

The next morning, we had to get him (and his girlfriend) back to the landing (12 miles with a 15 hp john boat!) so he could fly to his next "hunt".

One of the crew went out to the blind and as usual, the bait had been hit sometime during the night. As we sat in the cabin discussing this "big magazine writer" ... my buddy picked the tag up off the table, threw it at me and said, "Jimmy, go out and kill that god damned bear!" Now mind you, I'd already killed my bear, but what the heck? We had an unused, "paid for" tag laying there and a point to prove! I got dressed, my buddy took me over to the access point, I slipped in and had that bear on the ground within an hour!

The point of all this? We didn't have any written rules, but we made a couple of unwritten rules that night ... No wimmins OR "professional" hunters allowed in camp!