Silence, you quickly learn when you sit in a tree in the middle of the Allagash woods, is not an optional behavior. Not if you want to see a bear. Not if you want to avoid having the bear see you.

Not if you’re hunting with guides Wade and Tylor Kelly.

“Remember, we need you to sit as still and as quiet as you can possibly sit,” Tylor Kelly said on Tuesday afternoon, as he dropped a pair of hunters off at a tandem, side-by-side tree stand known simply as “The Double-wide.”

“Especially after 5 o’clock. From then until you leave the stand, you’ve got to be quiet, or the bears just won’t come in,” Tylor Kelly said.

Then he looked at his daughter, Darlene Kelly Dumond, and his expression softened … slightly. “I know you probably know this, but I’ve got to keep telling you.”

Tylor, you see, knows his daughter. He knows she’s … umm … let’s call it “outgoing.” Darlene can find something to talk about … to someone … no matter where she ends up.

Even if she’s in a tree stand … with an outdoors columnist … and even if her father has essentially commanded her to stop doing what she does best.

Bear hunting over bait from an elevated tree stand is not as simple as some would have you believe. Especially when it’s gray and wet and absolutely still, as it was on Monday. And especially if you’re not in the habit of sitting stock still for five hours and assuming that every time you twitch a leg, or scratch your nose, or (Guide forbid) whisper, every bear in the forest will silently slink away … laughing.

Bear hunting is serious business in Allagash. In a town of less than 200 people, there are about 10 outfitters. They employ plenty of other townsfolk as guides, bait-preparers, bear-skinners and the like. And despite the fact that a statewide referendum threatens the hunting season that many of them rely on to make ends meet, an upbeat, workmanlike attitude has prevailed around town this week.

This is – in Allagash terms – “The First Week of Bear.” At Kelly’s Camps, that means that the same gang of hunters has returned for another shot – perhaps their last, if referendum organizers get their way – at a bear hunt in one of Maine’s legendary remote outposts.

Jim Snyder is up from Pennsylvania, just like he is every year. Cosimo Faella, a restauranteur from Wilmington, Del., is, too. So is Ed Fullmer, one of Snyder’s neighbors.

Around here, the faces don’t change all that much from year to year. And neither do the words of wisdom doled out by Tylor Kelly and his son, Wade.

Be quiet. Remain still. And pay close attention to the bait barrel.

The 55-gallon bait barrels, you see, do more than hold bait. According to the Kelly Camps guides, they also serve as perfect yardsticks for measuring the bruins that arrive at that bait.

“If a bear is the same size as the barrel, that’s a 150-pound bear, more or less,” Wade Kelly said on Sunday, as he explained the inexact science of measurement-by-barrel.

“If it can walk into the barrel and turn around, then come back out, it’s very small,” he said with a chuckle. “Don’t shoot those.”

And if it walks up to the barrel and dwarfs it? That’s either a “good” bear, or a “big” bear, depending on how much larger than the barrel it actually is.

“Good” bears are what hunters call bruins that are as large as the ones they’ve seen. “Big” bears are more than that: They’re the bears they wish they’d seen.

All bear-measurement devices, of course, are prone to error. Hunters call it “Ground shrinkage.” That is, when you climb out of the tree and find the bear you knew, without a doubt, was “big,” it turns out to be … well … not so big.

On Monday, Dumond and I saw no good bears. No big bears. No bears whatsoever. We blamed it on the wind (which was non-existent). We blamed it on the rain (which wasn’t). But we didn’t blame it on the snacks we ate, or the times we stretched or scratched, or the occasions we whispered, “I just heard a bear.”

On Tuesday, things were different. Tylor Kelly demanded it.

And though the good-natured guide’s words were simple, and offered with a smile, they rang true.

On Tuesday, we would sit silently until the unused muscles ached. We would not stretch, nor eat, nor drink, nor cough. We would be silent.

As it turns out, our silence was golden.

At 5:30 p.m., after several false starts, the crack of a twig – along with the hasty exit of a massive bait-picking crow – were the only signals of an approaching bear. At least, that’s what we told ourselves … for the 40th time.

This time, we were right: A bear walked silently into view, stepped in front of the bait barrel … and the barrel vanished as the hulking bruin eclipsed it. Twice it ducked into the barrel. Twice it got snacks. Once, it sat on its haunches like a 250-pound labrador retriever, gobbled bait, and stared directly into our tree … at us. Needless to say, neither of us dared breathe … or blink.

Eventually, the bear turned broadside and surveyed the barrel. I leveled my 30-.06, peered through the scope, and found that when what should have been a perfect shot at a “good” bear (or maybe better) wasn’t a shot at all.

A spruce branch 15 feet away from our stand blocked my view of his shoulder, and I couldn’t tell exactly where to place the shot. I stared. The bear didn’t move. I aimed. The bear didn’t move. And neither did the offending spruce branch.

Eventually, likely after a twitch or a blink or a nod from the Double-wide, the bear decided that a snack wasn’t all that important. Spooked, he bolted from sight.

Veteran bear hunters back at camp had told me what to expect when a bear came to the bait. Not from the bear; from myself.

My heart didn’t race too fast, I’m proud to report. My eyes, however, did bug out. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t breathe until we’d succeeded in scaring the bruin away.

“He won’t be back,” Dumond whispered, five minutes later. “We spooked him.”

“He will,” I disagreed, eager to see another bear, and to make up for whatever I’d done to spook the first.

“Ten bucks,” she whispered, and a return nod sealed our bet.

Some hunters would attribute Dumond’s conduct over the next hour to the fact that she wanted to win a bet.

After two days in a tree stand with her, I can tell you that the fact that she began doodling on a notepad (with what I decided was an amazingly loud pencil) had nothing to do with that. It had to do with the fact that the mandatory silence was driving her nuts.

For an hour, I listened to her furtive scratch-scratch-scratching. Finally, at 6:55, I nudged her and slowly mouthed the following words: “Your … father … told … you … to … be …quiet.”

She slowly mouthed back the words I thought she might: “Tomorrow … you … hunt … alone.”

Postscript: At 7 p.m., Dumond and I heard another bear approaching. At 7:04, he arrived, and walked on the far side of the barrel. As he passed it, his back was more than a foot higher than the measuring stick, and his body was longer than it, too. A good bear, at least. Perhaps even a big one.

At 7:05, I fired my 30-.06. Once. The bear ran 10 yards toward our stand … turned and ran 10 yards back toward the barrel, and fell five yards from the bait.

Later that night, we weighed my first bear, and found it weighed 228 pounds, live weight. That, I figure, falls in the “Good” category. To put the bear in perspective, a hunter at nearby Buck Stop Camps shot a 454-pounder on Tuesday. That, folks, counts as “Big.”

But “Good” is good enough for me. I’ll still meet with a taxidermist, and a local butcher will be cutting up some bear when I return to Bangor.

But that can wait. I’ve got my bear. That gives me the right to sit on the porch at Two Rivers Lunch – the restaurant the Kellys own – and tell my story. Over … and over … and over.

When the hunters go out tonight, I won’t be with them. But we’ve been talking about sampling the backstraps of my bear when they return.

I can’t wait.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.