Bears are winning....

Well this is the one thing we have no control over, Mother Nature. It is very frustrating as a guide and a guide service to not have the animals coming into camp. Thus far we have had 19 hunters and only 3 bear into camp. 2 bear were cleanly missed and 1 wounded that we tracked and could not recover from a bad shot. So had these come in, it would still only be 6 out of 19; these are not good numbers. The first questions people ask at the sports shows are, " how many bear did you get last year?", "how many hunters?", "what was your percentage?" I believe in honesty as the very best policy, however people will look at you, here bad numbers and think "well, they can't be very good guides then". This is a very unfair opinion, but I know how it all works. We have no idea exactly why this is happening. The bait sites were being hammered and the game cameras were showing us 5 to 7 bears on each bait site with some awesome trophy sized bears. We have several different areas as we usually hunt a different area for each week so that the sites are always fresh when the new hunters come in for the week. After that we may move around to what is being worked and hit. We have done everything we can think of; pulled out all the bags of tricks and still no bears.....
This can make or break a business like ours and it has me very worried. On top of all this we have dealt with the crew all getting colds and not feeling as well as we would like, which only adds to the frustration. I do feel fortunate that folks do understand hunting is hunting and not killing; however there is still that part of me that says as my alias "Blackcloud", always does, "it is not enough..."
So we tried honey burns on all the baits that were being hunted....no bears. We put out new anise scent which we use regularly....no bears. We moved onto fresh bait sites....no bears. So here I sit, wondering what else can we do? Big E and Peter are thinking, what else can we do? No quick answers; only hope that tonight will be the night!
We have just 2 hunters coming in for the last week of baiting season who they have been coming for 8 years now and are much more like family. It will be a much more relaxed week which will be welcomed after such big busy weeks and hopefully will heal some of our wounded feelings. Hopefully my next post with be much more light hearted and upbeat!!