Who knew it could come down to a flip of a coin.
But thanks to that coin, Georgette Tillinghast and her partner Jonathan Keller managed to do something that rarely is successful.
They both shot big bears in the same evening at the same bait site. As if that wasn’t difficult enough, they both used muzzleloaders.
Tillinghast’s bear was a 200-pound sow and Keller’s was a 250-pound boar.
The couple, who live in Hope, were hunting in Zone 2, which is the region between the Allagash River and Route 11 in northern Maine. They had several bait sites set up there. Keller guides bear hunts over bait in zones 2 and 5 through Keller’s Backcountry Guide Service.
Tillinghast and Keller usually hunt together, but not at the same sites.
During the second week of bait hunting, Keller’s clients were all gone with their bears so it was just his friend Dave, Tillinghast and himself who had yet to get theirs. They had plenty of bait sites to choose from, but Keller found himself sitting at the same stand where he had been before. No bears showed up.
He decided to move to a different site, but which one.
So he tossed a coin and went to an area where there had been two nice bears the night before. He didn’t get one, but his friend Dave shot a 220-pound bear at 7:10 p.m. at a different site. At 7:20 p.m., a bigger bear came in and pulled the bait bucket away from the dead bear, Keller said.
Tillinghast, who had sat for hours, hadn’t seen anything all week at the site she was watching.
With Dave gone, it was down to Tillinghast and Keller to get their bears. Keller put new barrels in what seemed to be a natural area for them. When he returned to bait the barrels, there was already bear hair on them. Cameras showed there were bears almost every hour at that site.
That made Keller think maybe he and Tillinghast could hunt there at the same time. Other bait sites were doing well too, so he had a decision to make.
“The question was ‘do I sit with (Georgette) or go to another,’” Keller said.
Out came the coin again. Heads he would stay; tails he would go to another site. He flipped the coin.
It was heads.
It was hot that day, he said, and Tillinghast decided to take a little nap. Keller looked at his phone around 5:15 p.m., he said. When he lifted his head, there was a big bear at the bait barrel. He nudged his partner awake.
Tillinghast had been trying to get a boar for the last two years and this was a big sow. The hunters watched it for a while. There were no cubs, so Tillinghast decided to shoot it. It ran but only went about 10 feet away. Keller dragged it about 20 yards away from the bait site.
The hunters sat again.
Thirty minutes later, a couple of small bears came to the bait site. Then a sow that was probably 150 pounds. Another bear came and licked the frosting in the bait barrel, Keller said.
Now it was beginning to push up against the end of legal shooting time. The bear at the site kept looking in a particular direction and suddenly ran off. The reason was a big boar. Keller said he thought it was around 180 pounds. Keller shot it. The bear ran 50-60 yards and dropped. It weighed 250 pounds.
Keller said that while they were getting their two kills out of the bait site, there was another big bear that was snapping its jaws to warn the hunters away from the bait barrel.
He said he thought there wasn’t as much natural food as in past years in Zone 2. The guide service used 50-60 barrels of bait this year, which was 15-20 more than last year. Three barrels equal 1,000 pounds of bait.
Keller and Tillinghast said they like bear meat, and they render the fat for cooking. They also save the hides. They are having one bear mounted: a 380-pound bear they trapped last year.
This was a very special hunt for the couple, and a perfect end to the bear baiting season.
“Being able to do it together at the end of the season was awesome,” Keller said.
Tillinghast said, “The whole thing was awesome.”
The couple also have a shed moose antler business. They use their labs Gracie and Oakley, trained shed antler hunters, to find them. They cut the antlers into dog chews for their business Gracies Moose Antler Dog Chews and sell them in Maine stores.
