Staci Warren: Her Mainely Girl Adventures

By Staci Warren

Bear baiting season kicked off the last week in July and the season begins on Aug. 26. I’m excited to report that we’ve had several bears, a few large, a couple medium and some small ones, visiting our baits.

Staci Warren

While I would target a single dry sow, I don’t even consider sows with cubs as an option. I watch them and hope that the sow doesn’t get too aggressive. Their noses know when I’m there, but their eyesight prevents them from easily spotting me covered in camouflage. I usually give my foot a good stomp on the treestand, if I think that she is getting too close. It usually sends them all scattering. This year there has been a sow with one cub, and a sow with two cubs, so far. The cubs are cute as can be, and they love to try to climb into our barrels.

As we learn to identify potential targeted bears, we name them simply for ease in figuring out which one is which. I don’t name the sows or cubs; I only name single bears. Little Bear, a small boar that showed up late in the season last year, is back visiting the baits during the day. I’m happy to report that it is much bigger and looks healthy, but he’s still too small to consider a target bear. “Scar” is the bear that interests me the most due to the large scar down its backside. Scar is an older boar that’s been on my bait since at least 2020, and apparently a very smart one since he’s still around. A few years ago, I had another bear that was a fighter; its name was Scrapper. Its ears were all torn up and it had a big scar across its neck. Scrapper came into my stand right at dusk while I was hunting. It was right behind me and by the time it made it where I could take a shot, it was too dark. My simple move to look through my scope to see if I could get a shot from my blind was enough to send the bear scrambling, and it never came back. You can find the entire story in my blog. That encounter is one of the reasons I love bear hunting. It’s not easy, and even when everything falls into place, it’s not a guarantee.

After baiting, we spend a considerable amount of time working on the road for the landowner. We cut brush and haul it to keep the mile long road from growing in. To keep up with the work, we bought a brush cutter this year, and have spent our weekends mowing down brush and plants that have already begun to grow. We’ll be working on a large washout that the spring storms created so that the owner and hikers can make it to the vista, a remarkable view on the mountain that is the Bigelow range and Flagstaff Lake. We love this mountain and treat it as if it were our own.

August also means I’m busy picking black trumpet mushrooms. If we’re lucky, these episodes of rain will continue to produce trumpet mushrooms right into the fall freeze. I’ve picked trumpets while walking out of my hunting stand in November. These are my favorite mushrooms to forage and this recipe makes for a remarkable soup, to either eat with some added cream, or to add to a crockpot roast in place of the dry mushroom/onion soup mixes. I use this soup in my bear roasts and any venison or moose roast that I make in the crockpot. I can’t take credit for it; my friend Alicia shared it with me years ago. I’ve tweaked it a bit, but here it is.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
3 pounds of fresh black trumpets
1 large Vidalia onion, chopped
1 tablespoon of ground sage
1 tablespoon of coarse black pepper
1 tablespoon of ground thyme
1 tablespoons of minced garlic (dry or fresh)
48 ounces of chicken stock (not broth)
1/2 cup of cream sherry (find it in the wine section)
1 stick of salted butter
½ pint heavy cream

Coarsely chop mushrooms in food processor. Small batches work best to prevent pâté. Using a large stock pot, sprinkle salt over mushrooms to release water. Add olive oil, onion, sage, thyme, pepper and garlic-mix well. Sauté over medium heat stirring with wooden spoon until mushrooms start to stick on the bottom of the pan. Add chicken stock and sherry. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer until soup is thick. Puree soup with hand blender or countertop blender but allow soup to cool before using later. Add butter.

Soup is now ready to be eaten by adding cream to taste or omit the cream and ladle into clean half pint or pint canning jars. Wipe rims, add lids and cook in pressure cooker on high for 25 minutes. Label and store on shelf until ready to use. Save a couple pints for my next recipe: Trumpet Jelly.

Wish me luck bear hunting! Hopefully the right one will appear, and I’ll have bear roast and bear bacon for the winter.

Staci Warren provides a unique woman’s perspective and column on the outdoors every month. She is a freelance writer whose blog, My Mainely Girl Adventures, is about a woman hunting, fishing, trapping, foraging and living in the Maine outdoors. She also loves camping, star gazing, wildlife watching, and hunting for fossils. She’s an active member and board member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association and is a monthly columnist and feature writer for The Maine Sportsman Magazine. In her free time, she enjoys mentoring women hunters and trappers. <