Front Ridge Guide Service
It is not easy to make it through Aroostook County without seeing some form of wildlife. Wildlife is one factor that makes Aroostook County a popular destination, especially among hunters. For in-state and out-of-state hunters alike, Maine Guides can be a hunter’s key to success. For Shawn Graham, becoming a Maine Guide combined the love of hunting and the outdoors with a means of providing for his family. For seventeen years, Front Ridge Guide Service has focused its efforts on guided black bear hunts. With Aroostook County having a very high black bear population, it just made sense to make this the business’s primary focus. “It’s great for the economy. When you look at the different guides and outfitters all the way up through the County, the amount of revenue that it brings into the state would surprise people.”
So, how does a successful bear hunt happen? You can start baiting thirty days before the hunt, which usually occurs at the end of August or the beginning of September. Shawn typically starts baiting at the end of July to prepare for his hunters’ arrival. Typically, you begin baiting by only checking the site a couple of times a week until you get bear to start coming to your site, and then you start baiting much more frequently. The sites are well-taken care of, and there is no litter left behind. The bait typically consists of donuts, bread, sweets, sweeteners, and granola, which gets dropped down into a 55-gallon drum. The opening at the top of the barrel is smaller, forcing the bear to work to get the food out. This is mostly the reason why barrels are often cabled to trees. When bears continually return to the site, they may eventually drag the barrel away or roll it down a hill further and further as they work to get the food out. When Shawn does not cable the barrel to a tree, he allows the whole lid of the barrel to come off so that the bear does not have to work as hard to get the food and therefore will not drag away your barrel. When the bear is forced to work a little harder for the food, it will, later on during the hunt, provide the hunter with more time to get a clear shot off. Using trail cameras can be very beneficial up to the day of the hunt. Although it is difficult to derive a perfect time pattern for when the bear usually comes to the bait, trail cameras enable you to see what you have coming to the site. For example, if a sow and her cubs continually come to a site, the site will not be hunted on, or the hunter will be instructed not to shoot the sow, Shawn said. He furthered that if a sow gets killed, the cubs will not make it through the winter.
Front Ridge Guide Service has had around an 80% success rate with their site, with a near 100% sighting rate. Although not everyone ends their week with game, it is quite rare not to see anything. Many hunters have benefited from Shawn’s close partnership with the owner of Shakaree Red Deer Farm and Mountain Shadows Hunting, Mark Drew, enabling hunters to combo bear hunting with red stag hunting. This combo allows hunters to hunt red stag in the morning and hunt bear in the evening. Mark and Shawn went to the same guide school, and a few years later, Mark contacted Shawn in regards to baiting, which for Shawn was when Front Ridge Guide Service began. Both Mark and Shawn run 15-16 bait sites each year. As a safety cushion, they typically aim to have two bait sites per hunter to hedge the risk of a bait site going dead. Commonly, bait sites go dead when another hunter shoots a bear within a couple of miles of their site.
Since Shawn and Mark’s partnership began 17 years ago, 2020 was a milestone year with their most massive bear in all seventeen years, weighing 504 pounds. This year was the best regarding the weight of the bears shot, most weighing anywhere from 220-504 pounds. Shawn said he attributed this to the lack of natural food sources this year. “I think some of the bigger bears were coming into the baits a little bit earlier, and a lot of times those big bear get a little smarter, so they end up coming in after dark,” Shawn furthered that “they were kind of competing a little bit for food this year.” The majority of their bears have gone between 225 and 300 pounds, but the average bear shot in Maine typically weighs near 150 pounds.
Most of Shawn’s hunters come from all across the United States with hunters from California, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Virginia, and the Carolinas. “It is great revenue, not only for our guides business, but for motels, restaurants, and trading posts.” Shawn continued, “It’s a great booster for the economy of Aroostook County.”
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Address: 207 Wiley Road, Littleton, ME 04730
Phone: (207) 538-0182