Maine couple takes two bears in one night, from the same stand

Posted by Wayne G. Barber

Heather Dykstra (left) and her husband, Peter Dykstra, show off the two black bears they shot on the same evening from the same ground blind on Sept. 7, 2015. Heather's bear weighed 140 pounds and Peter's was 388 pounds. Photo  John Dykstra

ALTON, Maine — On a sweltering Labor Day afternoon, Peter Dykstra and his wife headed into the woods to sit together in a ground blind and wait for a bear to visit their bait.
They carried one gun, four bullets, and had reached an agreement: If a bear showed up, it would be Heather Dykstra’s — her first ever.
That’s not how it worked out.

Over the course of the afternoon, the Dykstras watched two different pairs of porcupines, a family of raccoons and four different bears visit their site.
And both Dykstras ended up filling their bear tags.
Then things got really exciting.
“[That] was my night to hunt, this was my bear, but I shot it early, and we still had some time [before the end of legal shooting, a half-hour after sunset],” she said.
Five minutes after her shot, another bear came into the bait, but it was skittish and ran away. Shortly after that, another showed up for a snack and also left in a hurry.
Twenty-two minutes after Dykstra pulled the trigger, they found out why: She saw a much larger bear approaching, and she handed the gun to her husband.
Peter Dykstra’s bear ended up weighing in at 388 pounds, live-weight. The bear was the third 300-pounder he has shot in his hunting career.
Then, it was time to drag their bears back to the truck. And Heather Dykstra wasn’t as prepared as she could have been.
“It was so hot on Monday, I didn’t think we were going to see anything,” she said. So I put on my camo [clothing] … but I would not put on boots. I wore flip-flops.”
The duo summoned help, and three people dragged Peter Dykstra’s bear up the steep slope, while Heather Dykstra flip-flopped her way — solo — with her own bear.
“It was tough, but I did it,” she said with a laugh. “It makes you sleep well at night.”
Simply watching the interplay between the smaller animals was amusing, Heather Dykstra said.
“[When the] family of four raccoons came out, they just took the place over,” she said. “The porcupines just scattered.”
Then, after sending a text about the abundant wildlife, her husband saw a much bigger critter ambling toward the bait.
“He said, ‘Bear. Big one. This one is yours,’” Dykstra said.
While she has had success hunting turkeys in the past, she admitted that she was a bit uneasy as the bear approached the bait, and as she waited for the perfect shot.
“I was so nervous, [trying to aim for] that exact spot,” she said. “I didn’t want to mess it up or make a bad shot.”
She didn’t, and at 6:53 p.m., she pulled the trigger, and the bear — a 140-pounder — went down.
Wildlife biologist Randy Cross of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said shooting two bears out of the same stand or ground blind is quite rare.
“Double-kills are very unusual, mostly because there is only one bear hunter in most stands,” he said in an email. “However, hunters who stay put after they shoot do often see more bears visiting the bait after shooting one if they shoot the first one early in the afternoon.”
He said that after shooting a bear, having other bears come to the site so soon also is a surprise.
The bear Peter Dykstra caught was familiar to Cross, who leads the field crew in the state’s bear research project. In fact, it was a tagged bear that researchers had captured earlier this year. The wildlife biologist said the bear is named “Morel,” the label he also uses to refer to the site where it was captured.
“He was caught about 12 miles northeast of where it was shot on May 31,” he said. “[It was] 18 years old and small for his age — he weighed 320 pounds at that time and likely lost a significant amount of weight after our capture [during mating season] before gaining it back.”
In addition to that capture, Cross said his crew had run across the bear on two other occasions. On May 18, 1999, the crew caught the bear as a 90-pound 2-year-old, and on June 26, 2002, the 5-year-old weighed 154 pounds — also small for his age. Source; John Holyoke BDN Staff