Teenager bags a big bear on her second day

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A crowd gathered around the pickup truck at the Old Town Trading Post on Wednesday as proprietor Dave Hanson hoisted a bear with his winch and weighed the bruin.

Then, with the weighing done, it was time for photos … and the happy hunter hopped onto the tailgate to pose.

Each fall, thousands of bear hunters head to Maine from all over the U.S. Many locals even think of our yearly hunt as an “outsiders affair,” and say the annual hunt isn’t of much interest to most Mainers.

Ask Rebekah Rounds of Hudson if she’s interested.

The petite 18-year-old sported a wide smile as she posed with a bear that was easily twice as large as she is.

Rounds may not the prototypical Maine bear hunter – she admits that she’d never been hunting before Monday, even though her parents and brothers are avid hunters – but on Wednesday morning, she was the face of Maine bear hunting … at least at one tagging station that serves several guides and outfitters.

Hanson stays open until 9:30 or 10 p.m. most nights to tag bears, but by the time Rounds and her guide, John Dykstra of Alton, got her bear out of the woods on Tuesday, it was already past 10.

“I lugged it a little ways,” Rounds joked, tossing a glance at the burly male bear. “An inch or two at a time.”

When Rounds, Dykstra and a posse of family members showed up to tag the bear Wednesday morning, she and her bear were the only show in town. There was no line at the game pole, and her tale was the only one being told.

For the record, Rounds’ bear weighed in at 290 pounds, live weight, and 243 pounds field-dressed. And she shot it on her second day of hunting ever.

Her first day, she said, was Monday.

“I was in the stand on Monday and never saw anything,” she said. “Yesterday I saw two, didn’t shoot the first one, but shot the second.”

Rounds said she decided to start bear hunting for a simple reason: She needed practice.

“I got a moose permit and I wanted to hunt something before that, so I did bear,” she said.

Rounds sat with Dykstra’s son, Josh, and chose not to shoot the first bear she saw.

That first bruin was a three-legged bear that Dykstra and others have seen in the area for the past couple years.

“It stood right there and she said it gave her several different chances for shots, but she said her gun was shaking too much,” Dykstra said.

Rounds disputed that account … just a bit.

“It was a three-legged bear and I couldn’t figure out where the fourth leg should be so I didn’t take a shot because of that,” she said.

Either way was OK with her guide.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Dykstra said. “If you don’t get excited, something’s wrong.”

Now, with a big bear to her credit, Rounds is even more excited about her impending moose hunt. She’ll head to Wildlife Management District 11 in September with a bull permit.

And she realizes that if she’s lucky … and good … she might even end up with Maine’s big three by the end of the year: A bear, a moose and a deer.

“Possibly,” she said, willing to dream a bit. “Maybe. That would be good.”

Early report: Bears elusive

As camouflage-clad bear hunters shopped at Old Town Trading Post before heading back into the woods on Wednesday, it wasn’t hard to judge the mood of the crowd.

Several mentioned that their early efforts during the state’s first week of bear season hadn’t been all that productive.

One hunter said his entire hunting party had yet to see a bear in two days of sitting in tree stands.

Dykstra, who owns Northlands Taxidermy and takes on just a few paying bear hunters each year while focusing primarily on his wildlife mounts, said it’s probably too early to panic.

“[The season’s] only two days old,” Dykstra said. “The first night seemed like a nice night, but nobody saw bears. I talked to a number of different [outfitters] and nobody saw bears. They did have a few come in, so somebody did, but not many.”

Dykstra said there is an abundant supply of natural food available this year, so bears may not head to bait sites as readily. Then again, they may.

“There’s a lot of berries out there,” Dykstra said. “It’s likely to be a difficult year. But last night was a good night. We could have killed three bears.”

One bear, he said, came to within eight feet of the tree his son, Peter, and Peter’s wife were sitting in.

“She saw it over her shoulder, coming behind them on the ground,” Dykstra said. “She was poking [Peter] to get him to notice where the bear was.”

The bear was relatively small, and the hunters chose not to take a shot. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t get quite a show.

“That was about a 100-pound bear, and they watched that for 20 minutes or half an hour,” Dykstra said. “[It was] going back and forth, back and forth.”

If you’ve yet to sit in a tree and watch a Maine black bear pace back and forth, trust me on this: It’s quite an experience … as long as you’re willing to stop breathing (or even blinking) for a few minutes.

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