During my permit pickup at the Atikokan office last week, the ranger informed me that the only bear reports that they had received so far was for a bear that was stealing food packs off the Bottle Portage into Iron.

They hadn't heard anything for the northern areas of the park but perhaps that was because the weather had been somewhat cold and rainy; the bears were still coming out of their winter hibernation; and many paddlers hadn't really been accessing the northern part of the park yet.

Just an FYI.

Just got out after a week in the Q. No bear sightings or prints. But holy cow, are there a lot of moose sign. Every portage is well used by some big moose. Saw one swimming also.

I’ve met a wolf twice on portages, but I’ve never met a moose, thankfully.

Tom

HighnDry: "During my permit pickup at the Atikokan office last week, the ranger informed me that the only bear reports that they had received so far was for a bear that was stealing food packs off the Bottle Portage into Iron."

I concur with this. We got the same information from the ranger.

And no bears, tracks or other signs anywhere we traveled in the north.

tumblehome: "Just got out after a week in the Q. No bear sightings or prints. But holy cow, are there a lot of moose sign. Every portage is well used by some big moose. Saw one swimming also.

I’ve met a wolf twice on portages, but I’ve never met a moose, thankfully.

Tom"

Same. We saw a nice bull moose on McEwen Creek a couple miles or so before reaching Glacier Lake. I also saw moose prints all along the portages between Glacier and Louisa. I don’t recall ever having seen that many moose prints on portages before.

We saw a cow near Yum Yum and another with calf on Reid.

Seem likely that for every one I see, ten are just out of view at some point, alerted to me before I pick up on their presence.

I'm glad that so far noone has come across any bears wandering the trails. Hope it'll be a good berry season for them with all this rain.

We had a bear visit our campsite on McAree. We were camped on one of the island sites about mid lake. We spoke with people on one of the other sites and they had a bear visit them also. Probably the same one. He was just making the rounds and easy to run off

saltdog: "We had a bear visit our campsite on McAree. We were camped on one of the island sites about mid lake. We spoke with people on one of the other sites and they had a bear visit them also. Probably the same one. He was just making the rounds and easy to run off"

We just left on 6/16 after having spent a week on the middle island of the mid-lake islands and had no bear encounters. When did you have your visitor?

Our bear visited our site on June 12. We were camped on the south site that faces north

saltdog: "Our bear visited our site on June 12. We were camped on the south site that faces north"

If you had the yellow tarp, we passed by you a number of times while out fishing. Hope your trip was as enjoyable as ours was (except for the mosquitoes)

AdamX

Yes -- we were the camp with the yellow tarp and I thought all the mosquitos were on our site. We had a good trip and enough fish to keep us interested. How did you get the rope over that high tree limb to hang your food? You had to have had a rocket launcher. That was great system.

Pulley system thrown over that high branch. My paddle partner was a star athlete back in the day; I think he could still paint the corner of a strike zone today :-)
Walleyes were plentiful, that’s for sure. But smallies were scarce for us, which was really surprising. Did manage to land a 42” pike on McAree though. Good times. I’ll be up there again in a few weeks. Hopefully, the mosquitos will be a distant memory

AdamX

...and the bear(s) will be gone! I'd like to get back into McAree again maybe in late August.