Greg Hamm, Outfitter and Owner of Bone Quest Outfitters spends some time in the forest, down a swampy trail, talking about Bone Quest Outfitters and Black Bear Hunting in the boreal forests and farmland fringe of Saskatchewan.

How long have you been outfitting?

I’ve been a guide for 20 years, 20 plus, more like 24 years and I’ve now had my own outfit here for 9 years going on 10.

How did you start in the outdoors industry and then Outfitting?

You know as a young adolescent at 15 years old I started as a dishwasher at Scott Lake Lodge a flying fishing camp in the north. I saw a bunch of characters that were guides who are still guides now to this day, and kind of looked at them and saw hey there’s, you know you can actually make a living doing this, and from there I started guiding fishing and then when the opportunity to buy a big game outfit came available I jumped on it. It was always an interest and a passion.

When did the tradition of hunting start for you?

You know my my parents weren’t hunters. They were interested in the outdoors and introduced me to the outdoors as a kid and it was something that I just love to do and love to be outside. so when I was 13 years old I was able to to save up enough money to purchase my own archery equipment and started bow hunting whitetails and from there then as I, you know, was older and purchased some firearms started gun hunting and it’s turned, it was a passion then, and now it’s turned into a more than just a lifestyle.

What animals do you hunt?

My favorite to personally hunt is elk. Locally here we have some elk. I compare it, I’ve never turkey hunted, but I compare it to turkey hunting for people that do turkey hunt just because you communicate back and forth. You hunt the bulls in the rut and you can get them chirping or get them bugling and the communication back and forth is a rush and have them come storming in is is something that uh I’ve been fortunate enough to experience enough times.

What changes have you made since you bought Bone Quest?

Well it it was formerly Kevin Turand Outfitting and the late Kevin Turand, he was a knowledgeable guy. Unfortunately I never had the chance to meet him. Our lodge was his lodge on a different site so we’ve moved, we moved that building 10 probably 12 miles over to the site it’s on now. Set that up. We used to do our skinning the first early years we skinned and gut outside in the wind and blizzards and cold weather and we got past that. But now we have a nice warm shop to do it in and a guide house and so that’s been just a a little bit of a change of the lodge location. We still hunt a lot of the same, well the same area, but that’s probably the largest change.

The Lodge

Maygen Chessall

What do you do at Bone Quest?

So I do the bookkeeping and I do a lot of the cooking for bear season, mainly. I take care of our little boy Seager. Grocery runs, part runs, kind of all aspects of it.

How long have you been hunting?

Yeah I’ve been hunting only for about seven years. I’ve got a bear so far as well as an elk. I went for a few whitetail hunts but didn’t quite see the one that I wanted so I’ll keep trying on that.

What got you started in hunting?

To be honest I never grew up around it, I didn’t have family that hunted, just being in the area of Nipiwin having so many friends having that as a hobby, kind of tagged along on a few of their adventures and I just realized myself that I really liked it so I thought I’d try it out and I see why everybody likes it so much.

What’s the difference between a first time hunter and a returning hunter to Bone Quest?

The difference is just how much more you know them, You know you get to know them a little bit on their first hunt for sure which kind of makes it really easy to have conversation when they come back. You know about their wife or their grandkids or their kids or their pets or their hobbies at home and you just know a lot more about them so having repeat guests is just it almost feels like friends like close friends for years or family even some of them and we do keep in touch with most of them, even when they’re not in camp.

What’s a typical day of bear season like for you?

Okay so typical day of bear season, get up pretty early in the morning. I usually do fresh baked muffins, we do like continental breakfast sort of thing so yeah muffins, toast, eggs, fruit, yogurts, kind of get that spread out for everybody. Come make a fresh pot of coffee. That’s when I have my morning visits with everybody which is great. Through that time I’ll also kind of start getting lunch ready which is a big meal. Kind of your meat and potatoes home-cooked meals. After that’s done I’ll make sandwiches for everybody to go out to their stands with so they have something to snack on at night. If one of our guests has a request or they need a little extra of something in town I run to get that. Crock-pot style meal for everybody when they return between 10 and 11:30 p.m.

What are some things that guests appreciate but that they did not expect?

Most of them say the people like just how friendly we are, how accommodating we are, and the biggest thing is how we make it feel like home. Like it’s not just a job to us we go that extra mile to try and make everybody happy and they can tell that we just enjoy doing it. It’s not a job to us.

How quickly does news of a bear down spread?

Quite quickly. So usually the client will press the button on their Spot on their GPS device and then that generally goes through to all the guides phones of course and mine as well because I am back at camp. So then that way if anybody is at camp with me that has been tagged out already I get to let them know that kind of right away and so yes the news it spreads pretty quickly.

Hunting Gear

What is a typical day of bear season?

Well depending where our bait schedule is, you might bait in the morning, if you need to. If the bait schedule is all caught up then it’s a you know load up, get go through machines, maintain things, be ready for the afternoon. Have a big lunch at camp. Then the hunters will get into their guides’ pickups and head head to a location where you unload the the ATV, Argo, or whatever it happens to be. You need to get to your destination and get basically driven into the stand, set up, dropped off, given a communication device so if you have any problem or if you shoot something you’re able to get a hold of your guide instantly and we can get in there ASAP to help you out.

What type of bait do you use?

We do a lot, well I call it organically sourcing our beavers. Which I do a lot of beaver trapping starting in April and try to. It takes a lot. I know this season we’re going to burn through 75 beavers by the time we’re said and done so it takes a little bit of time to trap that many. But we enjoy doing it and it gives us, gets us out a little earlier than we need to be and into the woods as we’re all itching when that spring fever hits.

What makes for a good bait stand/site for bears?

A good bait stand site, we have some bear highways. You know we’ve got the Torch River comes through our territory and we’ve got some stands right on the edge of the river and they’re always on, the river is always productive. On creek runs, on the high ground. A lot of our area is never too far from water and so you want to be somewhat close to water. A bear can cover a lot of ground quick to get to it but you want to make it easy and convenient.

Are some of your season prep days tougher than others?

Absolutely yes yeah yeah some are all peaches and lollipops but there’s those days where you’re clearing trail or it’s raining or muddy or you got to, every year, some of some of the trails, you got to relearn where you’re going to get stuck, where you’re not going to get stuck, and all that fun stuff.

Does weather ever affect your operation?

Yes yes it has. Yeah we’ve had big blowdowns come through, we did it last week here and took a a good four hours of clearing in order to open up a trail that to reach two particular bear stands that we had running and are pretty action-packed so we wanted to make sure we weren’t going to lose access to those.

How do you change the stand set up for rifle vs bow hunters?

For rifle, I mean you got, we still keep our sights relatively close you know unless we have a special request from a fella, but for rifle some of them we will opt out to 50 yards, and where archery equipment you know anywhere, we’ve got some traditional archery hunters that want to keep it under 15 so we, you know, we do that for them and for our compound guys we, and crossbow guys, we like to keep it right at as close to 20 as we can.

Are there differences between spring and fall bear hunting?

Absolutely, yes. In the fall the bears, the bears here, we’re on the forest farmland fringe so they’re they’re going to and from the oat fields is where we find the the biggest bears here in the fall and then they’ll be gorging the farmers, the farmers aren’t too fond of them, but they’ll be taking full advantage of the the ample feed out there so you put your baits close to those oak fields and they’re hit pretty much instantly if you’re if you’re on them. In the spring those same bears then move farther back into the forest. They’ll move a long ways back to hibernate and they’re in the spring they’re more on, they’re more of a grazer on green feed. You know grasses when the grass is fiddleheads, dandelions. That’s probably their main food source in the spring and we’ll supplement it with a little bit of candy and beaver.

How do you instruct hunters to size a bear at the bait?

You look at the barrel there’s always a 45 gallon drum at the barrels so you, if his front shoulders are up to the top of that drum it’s a good bear. If they’re six inches over the drum you better shoot, real quick, and if it’s somewhere in between that second second and top of the barrel in between the middle of the rung there it’s a nice bear, but you know, not a monster. Bears do not trip the trail cameras as much as the whitetails do. The whitetail’s heads are always up and down. The bear’s are down. Their movements are a little, smaller, and lower. You put hunters in you always get, they always see more bears than we see on the trail camera, it seems like. The the good old school tactics you know poop size, the track size are still the king when it comes to scouting for big black bears.

Any examples where a hunter shot a bear you never had on camera?

Yes, and ones that haven’t been shot too. Where you have a hunter sitting in there, we had a gentleman a few years back sitting in his stand and it was, he had a smaller bear on the bait, and all of a sudden he sees this giant slinking through the brush around him. There happened to be a big stand of brush pile, couldn’t really see behind on that particular stand and that bear he saw the giant he saw slinking behind there, disappeared behind it, and all of a sudden he looked up and there was another bear on the bait and he right away up but he was a gun hunter he shot this bear. That one basically dropped in it’s tracks while he watched the big one peel out from behind that brush pile and take off and what had happened it was a giant boar following that sow and he hadn’t seen the sow so there’s those stories. We had no no idea that bear was there.

Black Bear Trophies