Jonny P's trail cam pics

[Random guy]

Starting to get a few trail cam pics coming in. Having a little / scratch that a lot of trouble with the clocks and dates on the cameras although. One picture it is daylight at 11pm and another it is dark at 3 in the afternoon and some keep switching dates anywhere in August. Some pictures say its the 8th and some say the 30th? Onbe camera had crow pictures from a twenty four hour period with 9 different dates; what the....? Not sure what that is all about as I have also had four cameras just plain quit working all together Anybody else have this kind of trouble with not one but multiple cameras? I wonder if they froze hard or something over the course of the winter. Although I will take some of these nicer bear either way!

I was also impressed with the sow & cub combo in the one picture. She is no slouch and when she comes in from the west the boar books it to the east. Even he knows not to mess with big momma.

[mrklean]

great lookin pics jonny

[leech~~]

Nice JP! Are most of the B&W ones IR pic's? If so that camera really lights up the night!

[Boar]

nice, really get the blood pumping, thanks Johnny.

[Jarrid Houston]

Good Stuff John man that for sharing.

[Outdoor Authority]

Good pics Jon you got some nice lookig bear in the area. Should be a good year for you. Good Luck and hope for a top notch season for you.

[Random guy]

A few more pics from yesterday’s rounds. I am excited to get the new cameras out and get these clocks/date stamps fixed. Luckily we are getting enough bear on each bait the fights are starting and hit times are moving up and into the daylight hours. Soon they will be hitting as make the corner leaving.

I do get a kick out the last picture. He is a smaller bear that likes to cover his kill...and pastries. He buries the bait logs in grass and carries of the bigger chunks of 10-15 yards and covers those in separate piles of grass. I decided we will call him the timber pirate as he is constantly burying his loot. You can see in the picture he is once again gathering up grass.

2nd and 3rd pics are a new arrival we will call "flabby" from over 120 pictures I decided this must be an older boar with just too much skin for his aging body or a bear that has had a tough run and lost some weight. He puts down a big print but just doesn’t look to have the bulk for a bear with those pad measurements. Some pictures I swear his gut skin is dragging on the ground.

4th is hen peck, this guy keeps getting run off of two separate baits by the sows and cubs so now he sneaks in midday.

[Boar]

Awsome johnny, dosent look like you have any trouble with the berries over there, or their strarting to deplete them. Have a good year man, later boar

[Random guy]

LOTS of dang berries! I'm just a pretty good chef when it comes to bear chow. I say that as I knaw away at the hot dogs I burnt and blew up in the microwave for lunch; great with buckets but terrible with pots and pans.

[Boar]

Lol!

[basssmasher*]

Johnny, does that mean when you guide ice fishing someone else is in charge of grubbin?? lol

[Random guy]

Yes, Westwinds or the Cenex station does the cooking.

I went to hang a stand yesterday and check one of my remote baits and look what I found. The logs on that bait are 8' long and my sign is up as high as I can reach just shy off of 8' and that particular bait the rear logs are wedged between the three trees of the bait making it a tall one. When stacked it is just about waist high. The camera is neck high 5'2" on a tree 22 feet away from the bait. Ya he is a freaking monster.

[Boar]

Ok thats it johnny, i coming over. Thats a site for sure, hope somebody tages him.

[Joe]

Nice pictures Johnny. I hope to see some good looking trophy pictures soon! What is it 10 days until the start?

[Random guy]

Well these first shots are not excatly bears, actaully they are a BIG problem as they shutdown one bait and are moving onto another.

And of course an entire family of fisher

and now the bear. Even a long hair color phased mixed in.

[Random guy]

...and the rest that wouldn't fit in the above post.

[Boar]

sweet!

[SouthSide]

Jonny,

Question, are you running any bait stations on the south side of the lake down by Mort’s or JR’s? We have a cabin down there and I saw all the Canine’s in your pics. Couple weeks back the Wife was out on the deck having a smoke at night and a Wolf or Coyote poked it’s head around the corner of our cabin a few feet away and scared the C&^$ out of her and she tore the handle off the screen door trying to get back in. Needless to say she no longer questions why I bring a firearm along and this is not the first time this summer a Wolf or Coyote has been in the yard. Our 2 year old niece saw a “Doggie” in the driveway in June in the middle of the day.

It seems to me there are more Wolf’s or Coyote’s in the area this year then in the past, I’m I correct?

We are bear hunting down in area 51 with just one bait station, nothing on the cam’s as of last Saturday. I think it would be a lot easier to hunt with you up there.

[leech~~]

Jonny,

Question, are you running any bait stations on the south side of the lake down by Mort’s or JR’s? We have a cabin down there and I saw all the Canine’s in your pics. Couple weeks back the Wife was out on the deck having a smoke at night and a Wolf or Coyote poked it’s head around the corner of our cabin a few feet away and scared the C&^$ out of her and she tore the handle off the screen door trying to get back in. Needless to say she no longer questions why I bring a firearm along and this is not the first time this summer a Wolf or Coyote has been in the yard. Our 2 year old niece saw a “Doggie” in the driveway in June in the middle of the day.

It seems to me there are more Wolf’s or Coyote’s in the area this year then in the past, I’m I correct?

We are bear hunting down in area 51 with just one bait station, nothing on the cam’s as of last Saturday. I think it would be a lot easier to hunt with you up there.

[Random guy]

We have very few coyotes around anymore as the wolves killed most of them also. Although I know of two coyote dens with pups in that area close enough to humans the wolf might leve them alone for now. One is on a homestead and another is down the road a bit on the back side of a farmers home wintering pasture so it might have been a coyote.

I am no expert but I spend my life and living in the woods and this is the most wolves I have ever seen. I have spotted 21 during the daylight hours since I started baiting and I have about 240 trail cam pictures of wolves. The buck I was hunting last year was killed by a 5 wolf pack right under my stand shortly after I left before the snow started to fall that night; about a 1.5 hour window. Wolves have worn paths on the rice paddy dikes and most deer around Waskish are found within earshot of a building as that is the only thing slowing down the wolves. Although local farmer even had wolves come right into his calving barn and start snatching up calves last year. As I said I do not have a degree in critters or a office in St.Paul but I will openly say the state has a upcoming wolf problem.

[Random guy]

We are bear hunting down in area 51 with just one bait station, nothing on the cam’s as of last Saturday. I think it would be a lot easier to hunt with you up there.

Do you have corn nearby? Milky corn the last couple weeks and that pulls bear for a long ways. Mine are just coming out of the corn as far as I can tell.

[Gofishleech]

JP those are some great pics. I think the baiting and photos are the best part of the whole hunt. The wolf pics are awsome!! Not a great thing to have them around though in my opinion, probably eat more deer then the yotes ever did.

[SouthSide]

Jonny,

Thanks for the post. I’m guessing it was a wolf being I don’t think my Wife or a 2 year old would no the difference. I agree the wolf population has grown faster then the DNR wants to admit or even knows, I heard they are not funded for Wolf population studies. I could be wrong but I think that’s what I heard at one point. I guess what do you do, Kind of like the lake level, call, write letters and nobody has any answers while our shoreline get eaten up by the day. Sorry for the rant, posted plenty on the URL forum.

Anyways we hunt Bear west of Moose Lake and there is a Farm less them ½ mile from our bait station so you could be correct. I did find some fresh Bear Scat on a trail and it was a dark green color so I’m not sure what they are eating right now. The other problem is a crow pulled the knot out of the rope holding the stink bait above our station and they ate a few pounds of rotten meat when the jug hit the ground, I saw this on the cam so I know it was them so for a few days no scent. I’m pretty sure we had a bear come in the yard and try to open the barrel we store the bait in, the grass was flatten to the ground all the way around it and the outside was clean as could be which was not how it was the last time we where there. I purchased another cam last night and will set it up on the barrel to see if I’m correct. We are going up on Sunday to bait and check everything out so I’ll let you know what I find.

[jerkbait]

Jonny,

Thanks for the post. I’m guessing it was a wolf being I don’t think my Wife or a 2 year old would no the difference. I agree the wolf population has grown faster then the DNR wants to admit or even knows, I heard they are not funded for Wolf population studies. I could be wrong but I think that’s what I heard at one point. I guess what do you do, Kind of like the lake level, call, write letters and nobody has any answers while our shoreline get eaten up by the day. Sorry for the rant, posted plenty on the URL forum.

Anyways we hunt Bear west of Moose Lake and there is a Farm less them ½ mile from our bait station so you could be correct. I did find some fresh Bear Scat on a trail and it was a dark green color so I’m not sure what they are eating right now. The other problem is a crow pulled the knot out of the rope holding the stink bait above our station and they ate a few pounds of rotten meat when the jug hit the ground, I saw this on the cam so I know it was them so for a few days no scent. I’m pretty sure we had a bear come in the yard and try to open the barrel we store the bait in, the grass was flatten to the ground all the way around it and the outside was clean as could be which was not how it was the last time we where there. I purchased another cam last night and will set it up on the barrel to see if I’m correct. We are going up on Sunday to bait and check everything out so I’ll let you know what I find.

Choot the wolves and blow the dam. Just brain storming. Isn't that a good thing.

[kelly-p]

Quote:

Choot the wolves and blow the dam.

I think that bear will travel a long, long ways to get into a corn field in the milk stage. Also I think that once they learn to make the early fall trip to corn fields they make that trip every fall. Once the corn gets to the dough stage they travel back home.

In my dim and distant memory (With advancing age all memories seem to get dim and distant. ) I read about a bear that was either collered/tagged or very distinctively marked that would travel from the Grand Rapids area to somewhere around Motley to feed in the corn every fall and then travel back to the Rapids area.

A few years back there was a very distinctively marked color phased bear that was seen 10 miles north of Waskish traveling south. A week later it was seen in the corn fields 35 miles south in the Shooks area. A couple weeks later it was seen traveling north past Waskish and back out into the Bog.