Welcome to the family
Have you ever met someone and from the first moment you felt so comfortable with them it is as though they were your own family? This is how I felt the moment I met Wade & Sue Kelly and their family. They welcomed us so warmly, it was as though we were old friends returning home.
At first glance, Tylor Kelly Camps carries a simple, easy-going charm that draws you in. The gravel parking lot faces a wooden arbor adorned with moose antlers and buffered on each side with flowering bushes. Beyond the arbor along the bank of the river is a fire pit. I’m hopeful we will spend time there tonight with the other guests. The Allagash and St. Johns Rivers flow on each side of the camp just a few hundred yards apart. Further down the road, they meet and continue as the St. John River. The lodge itself is a metal building, though for some reason it seems more than that to me. Maybe it’s the flowering bushes or the outdoor seating area, but it seems so comfortable that you feel at home. Look around in any direction and you’ll find Northern Maine in all its glory. I found it easy to fall in love with Allagash and Tyler Kelly Camps.
Inside the lodge, I was dumbfounded. Wildlife mounts surrounded me wherever I turned. Two full-mount bears prowled in the corners of the floor. Multiple whitetail deer, moose, and muskies hung along every wall. The entire commons area was a home-style kitchen and living room on a grand scale. The kitchen, with its huge griddle, stove, and commercial refrigerator and freezer, was not off-limits. In fact, Sue encouraged us to use it as if it were ours. Of course, Sue was going to be cooking for the most part, but she invited anyone who wanted to jump in and help in the kitchen. And that, we certainly did. The community atmosphere with the other hunters was a lot of fun, and we all shared hunting stories we brought with us to camp.
A short time after we arrived, dinner was served, and I’m here to tell you, Sue can cook! Everyone sat together at large wooden tables like one big family. Wade, Sue & their children, hunters, guides, and friends ate together side by side, told stories of adventures past and maybe a few tall tales as well. It was as a meal among friends should be. I was in good company.
If the meal wasn’t enough, from there everyone moved to the back of camp to the campfire at the river’s edge. More stories were shared as the youngest among us, who was there with his grandpa and dad, poked the fire as kids will do. Oddly enough, we had the good fortune of sharing this week at camp with other Missouri hunters. These guys had been hunting here for many years. They told the best stories about Wade and Sue and the adventures they had over the years they had been coming. Yes, it was gonna be a great week. Even without funnel cakes. I bet if we had asked, Sue would have made us one.
The Hunting Grounds
Have you ever hunted bear? I had not, and I was a bit nervous about the particulars of what an ethical bear hunt included. Those concerns were put to rest as Wade held a quick lesson for all of us there at the camp. He covered what to expect, where to shoot, how to size a bear, and what bears they’d prefer be passed on by a hunter.
The three of us were all bow hunting. That’s something they don’t get much of at the camp. Wade and Jake set tree stands at closer ranges on bait sights just for us. A bait sight is a spot in the forest that the outfitter sets up with a barrel with goodies the bears like to eat in hopes of attracting a shootable bear. Our guide, Steve, loaded up the truck with buckets of bait (trail mix, basically) and the three of us hopped in for the ride to our hunting grounds.
The North woods of upper Maine is logging country. The area we were headed into was a mere 3.2 million acres of densely wooded forest and clear-cuts owned by logging companies. The outfitters lease small areas to hunt. To access the property, you’re required to check in at a gate. Once on the logging roads, you are advised that logging trucks own the road and have no regard for other vehicles, so you’d best get out of their way. The roads themselves are as rough as you could imagine. If your vehicle is not made for the harsh environment, then you don’t belong there. In our truck, there were six of us jammed in for the hour and a quarter-long ride over that rough road. It was not a comfortable, leisurely ride in the country.
Once Steve got us to a sight, one of us would walk in with him. He carried buckets of trail mix in for the barrel. Steve would walk us to the stand and hold our gear as we ascended. Then he placed the barrel where we directed him to, poured the bait into it, wished us good luck, and left us there for the critters of the forest. Our instruction was to stay in the stand until he returned if we weren’t comfortable getting down and finding our way back. If we had arrowed a bear, we were to absolutely stay in the stand as an injured bear is very dangerous, and getting lost in 3.2 million acres is more so. Of course, we all got down and met him at the trail he drove in on.
The hunt itself is a page all of its own. I think I could write for days about my time both in and out of my stand. I’ll save it for another post. I know it’s been a long and somewhat boring story, but I wanted to get it down, for posterity’s sake.
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