Blake Smith of Cherryfield is a man of multiple trades. Among them was a lobster bait business, which he sold. Now he owns a dump truck and does construction work.
He also is a registered Maine guide and runs his own service called PLR Outfitters.
He recently guided a hunt he will never forget. The hunter landed a 506-pound bear with one eye that he had been pursuing for more than four years.
Smith had known about this bear for a while. It had visited his parents’ bait sites near their house about 12 years ago, then no one heard any more about it for a while, he said.
About six years ago, Smith began hunting with friends who used hounds to hunt bears. One of his friends, Dan Curtis, kept track of who was seeing “One Eye” and where. Hunters tried to kill it multiple times, but the bear constantly evaded them. It would be in one place, then 10 miles away the next day, or would slip the hounds.
It was becoming a quest.
The one-eyed bear seemed to have been following him, Smith said. It kept showing up at his bait sites, no matter where they were. It was elusive, appearing on game cameras in the wee hours of morning or between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Other bears would visit those same sites after the big boar did, causing the scent to confuse Smith’s hounds.
Two years ago, Smith put some bait out behind his shop in Cherryfield. The big bear visited there and Smith put his hounds on it, but it slipped away again. The same thing happened last year. The boar was seen another 10 miles north on trail cameras that were monitoring deer activity.
This year, Smith had to relocate a couple of his bait sites, which he placed farther north. Not far from this area was a bait site belonging to his friend, Jaxson Marston of Addison. One Eye appeared at Marston’s bait site, and maybe two days later, was three miles north at Smith’s bait.
Smith had clients he put on the bear, but they were unsuccessful.
Other duties called and each of the three days that Smith was working to put in a bridge for the Downeast Salmon Federation, he saw the bear on the game camera at the bait at 5 a.m. Before that, the bear would show on the camera at 2 or 3 a.m.
Maybe the bear was tired and wanted its old rival to take it down. Or maybe it was just hungry. Whatever the reason, on the fourth day, the bear showed up at 5:38 a.m. on the bait site.
By this time, Smith saw the bear in a different light. The bruin seemed more like a spirit animal rather than a rival after all of the times he had pursued it and it had slipped away. He wouldn’t kill it.
So Smith called Marston. The two men put their combined kennels of hounds — totaling six trained bear dogs — on One Eye. The hounds pursued it for a while and finally the bear crossed a woods road in front of Marston, who killed it.
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“I don’t know if the bear was spirited, but I told Jackson to take the guts and everything you don’t eat and bury it,” Smith said.
He said he found out a lot of people were seeing this bear. The boar had a cloudy eye, whether from an injury or a cataract, Smith didn’t know. Both of its ears had slices in them. One ear was almost gone. He thought the bear might be 16-18 years old.
Sometimes bears will claw out ear tags put in them by state biologists, he said. He hadn’t looked in One Eye’s mouth for a tattoo, but said he would ask the butcher.
This was the biggest bear that Smith has ever been involved in harvesting, he said. His next largest weighed 356 pounds.
Marston will eat the meat and have a three-quarter mount made of One Eye. It will cost him about $5,000.
Smith said he has seen only one other one-eyed bear in his life. It was a smaller bear and he only saw it once.
Maybe the quest begins again.
