As Gunflint Trail residents living in “seasonal solitude,” I can certainly understand how the title of this article might suggest a bitterness towards visitors, but we are not social introverts… yet!
The visitors we dislike are the furry black ones that ransack your property in the middle of the night while searching for a free meal. There wasn’t any food to be found but they sure made a mess looking.
We spent last weekend in St. Paul for the fourth and final wedding to attend this summer while a family of black bears ventured onto the property and made a mess that rivaled young Bo eating spaghetti. They mostly concentrated on my guide boat, tearing through my portage bag for Northern Light Lake and shredding the soft-sided tackle box that contained some artificial minnows and a handheld GPS. They chewed through the Ziploc bag and nibbled on the corner of the bright yellow GPS that is about the size of a cellphone. Lucky for me it must not have tasted as good as it looked.
Rachelle spotted a family of four bears a couple of hundred feet from our driveway the night we returned from St. Paul, but I think they might have been returning for a second look that night since there were no fresh signs in the dirt. If you don’t give them a reason to return they usually will stay away, and I was worried they might come back to devour the garden, but they haven’t.
I am amazed that these dumpster divers would prefer to eat garbage over fresh vegetables. Our garden is full of ripe tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, and yet they overturned our composting barrel (that is located two steps away from the garden) in search of something more rotten.
Bear meat is not high on my list of palatable wild game (since you are what you eat) but grouse season is now open and these little birds are as tasty as they come.
Grouse hunters have been taking aim this past week with very little success on the Gunflint Trail. The leaves are just beginning to change color and the thick underbrush has made it challenging to find the birds. There are too many places for them to hide in the woods right now, but you get lucky and find them eating pebbles along the gravel roads.
Each year the grouse population has been consistently high but my unscientific opinion is that there will be fewer birds harvested on the Gunflint Trail this season. I heard a lot of drumming this spring but I am not seeing many birds and the few that I do find seem to be running a little small. I like the butterballs that can hardly walk from being so round. They are a little easier to hit for a slow shooter like me.
Cory Christianson has worked as a fishing guide on the Gunflint Trail since 2000. If you have any fishing or wildlife reports or stories to share, send an email to: christiansoncory@hotmail.com or call 218-388-0315. You can also visit Cory’s website at Gunflintfishingguide.com.
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