Bear Hunt

Imagine going to a family reunion for someone you’ve meet once and upon arrival they say their best friend is out on a bear hunt at that exact moment and do we want to meet up? What do you do?

Well we said yes! AHAHA And all you need to do is look at my face in this picture to see how it went.

No but it was seriously one of the craziest experiences but we had so much fun.

So Joe’s friend Cody and his dad own a bunch of hound dogs that they treat like royalty – there is no expense spared on these dogs. I guess how it works is in Michigan only so many people get tags to hunt for black bears there. Cody and his dad train their dogs and people hire them to help them use their tag if they get one for the season. Again, this is all if I understood right. 

So when we went – it wasn’t actually hunting season – they were just training their dogs, they had been tracking a black bear and thought they knew where it was to find it and tree it. 

Now I’m think we’re going to drive up to these guys say hey and then go back. Oh no. We pull up and there are two guys BARRELING through the woods yelling “get in” and we take off in a strangers car driving through brush and trees – not roads. We stop at one point and Cody’s dad starts taking off but hands me and Libby dog collars.. I had no idea at the time why – but now I know it was because they RUN through the woods and if we got lost the collars had GPS on them. And when I say run, my run is to jump over things – there’s was to plow right through. I couldn’t keep up for the life of me. 

Anyway – we find the bear and the dogs “tree it” so it basically climbs up a tree – I’m filming the whole thing and Cody’s dad says “here stand right here” and positions me right under the tree where the bear is and then starts to hit the tree with a branch. Apparently bears don’t like the vibrations so it starts to climb down and he’s telling me to film towards the bear and it jumps out of the tree RIGHT OVER MY HEAD! Oh my gosh. I’ve never laughed so much. It was nuts!

I even have a video we edited together. It’s worth a watch.