The skull of a bear

I got my skull back from Lori and Jim at New Frontier Taxidermy! They are incredible. Not only are they tanning my bear hide but they saved my skull. Saved it!

A look into my bear's mouth

One of the things that I did not want to tell people was that when my bear was getting cut up at the butcher's, his skull was cut. I knew it was bad and the look on my guide's face was a give away for how bad it may be. But, I had my bear head, hide and an extra bag with the back part of his skull in it that I took up to New Frontier Taxidermy for Lori and Jim. I lied to people when they asked me about it and hoped against hope that Lori and Jim could but it back together. I wanted a complete skull and if I could make it into the record books, that would be an added bonus.

This past weekend, I got my skull. It is together but not complete.

Not quite the same angle but close.

They had to wrap my skull and the additional piece in cheese cloth to make sure they would be able to find all of the pieces that they needed as they fleshed it out. Jim made me promise to never have that butcher touch any animal that I kill and then assured me that if the pieces were all there, he could rebuild it. I needed it to measure 18 inches in length and width to be a record book bear.

Check out those teeth - left side view

Are you ready for the "bad" views?

Right side - no cheek arch

There was no arch to find and glue back on to the skull. You can also see the cut at the back of the skull where Lori and Jim reattached it to the main part of the head. No cheek arch meant that the skull was unable to be measured, which meant no record book.

From the back

We didnt know it at the time, but the butcher had cut into the skull three times before my guide stopped him. If he hadn't, it is clear that the skull would have been beyond repair.

Lori and Jim did an incredible job gluing the pieces back together and making sure that they got as much of it complete as they could. I asked Lori when I picked it up if she thought that it would have hit 18 inches if the arch was there. She started comparing it to other skulls on the table and guessed that mine would have measured 18 and 9/12 inches. Given that she is a taxidermist, she knows her stuff and can break it down into fractions. He would have made the record books! He is a record sized bear.

I save the deer antlers from the deer that I have shot and have a few sets mounted but I have never kept a deer skull (I might after seeing this bear) but I now have my bear skull. It is not complete but it is still impressive. I will have a bear skin rug with my bear's face and his awesome scars, that will be seen by my friends and family for years to come. My grandkids will see and feel that bear and know the story. This skull is a prop to tell the story with. Every cut and missing piece is a part of the story of my bear hunt. And I am ok with that.

My bear - 457lbs. Shot Oct 13, 2014

Taking Turkeys to Texas

There are a few less turkeys in Maine to hunt this year. A few months ago, Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife in partnership with the National Wild Turkey Federation , captured and released more than 50 birds into East Texas with the hope of rebuilding their population. “Eastern turkeys are where the restocking efforts originally began,” explained Shawn Roberts, Director of Field Operations for the National Wild Turkey Federation, “We tried in the 1920’s but it didn’t work. We tried pen-raised birds and that didn’t work either. The only thing that was successful was to trap birds and relocate them to good habitat.” “We started this current effort in the early ‘80s and we had to begin looking outside the state to see if we could get them moved in. We didn’t want to violate The Lacey Act so we had to come up with a way to compensate the states that were giving up a resource either by trading other wildlife or paying them monetarily,” said Roberts. Texas is on the very edge o

Utilizing technology to make you more aware

Staci and I were roaming around the woods on a piece of property that she knew. It was snowing and we were chasing deer tracks to see if we could find some early sheds. It was a perfect day to be out in the woods and we were relaxed and not really paying attention to where we were going. We knew the border of the property and we knew that if we walked long enough we would hit roads or the bog and find our way back. We got to a point where we thought we knew where we were but we were not sure. Staci got out her compass to take a waypoint to make sure we were going in the right direction to get back to the truck. I took out my phone and turned on OnX. Within seconds we knew where we were, where the property borders were in relation to us and we could watch the dot (that represented us) on the map move as we walked out of the woods and got closer to the truck. In another adventure, my son and I headed out on a shed hunting mission. When we got into the woods, I turned on the tracker

Where are the women?

This week, my interview with Steve at The Maine Outdoorsman went live. Steve said yesterday 200 people hit his site viewing over 500 pages. That is a lot of people reading about little ole me and hunting. Why? When I think of women who are in the general public's eye and hunt, I can think of 2 - Country singer Miranda Lambert and Sarah Palin. Why only two? Why is the female hunter such a fascinating thing? (I should probably note that I do not have cable so any and all female hunters on the hunting stations are lost to me. I'll keep it to the general public because that's what I am familiar with.) People/media were fascinated by the fact that they could get footage of Palin and her gun, shooting (and gutting) animals but I feel like the nostalgia would be lost if they had the same footage of McCain. Lambert and her hubby Blake Shelton tweet photos of their kills, and comment on what/where they are hunting. I only know this because I follow both. That's it.

and a strong cup of coffee

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