Yes, there is a weed eater and three bicycles strapped to the top of the rollbar. He also brought a case of bottled beer.
For the heck of it, I have attached a few pictures and notes from an Idaho bear hunt that I attended in the Spring of 2009. If you're bored... read on.
My crazy brother-in-law (Sean), his buddy, and I trekked into the Eagle Creek area which is roughly 60 miles south of Lewiston on the Salmon River. Camp (elevation 1100ft) was only about 15-miles on snow covered road from spot where we dropped off the tow rigs (elevation 5000ft).
It took about 3 hours to travel the snowy section of the road as it was in rough shape -- deep semi-rotten snow that was being undercut by run-off. During the week, two game cops on big quads stopped by our camp. They couldn't believe that we were in there with a truck as they found the road nearly impassable. They were really stressing their return trip. The weather was crazy; we camped for 5 days and experienced rain, warm sunny days, and then more rain. We got lucky and had freezing temps on the last morning of our departure which really improved the road for the trip out.
By the end of the hunt, one little bear was shot another big bear was shot at.
Darrel took the shot. Sean covered Darrel while he went up the hill to check on the kill.
The little bear looked much bigger through the binoculars. The smile on Darrel’s face is one of embarrassment and humor.
At least that thing wasn't hard to pack out. Darrel threw it over his shoulder and strolled back to the road.
In the camp pictures, you can see Sean mowed the grass with the weed eater. He did this the upon our arrival to camp in the dark with the headlights of my truck. At first, I thought he was nuts, but doing so reduced the amount of wet/dewy grass that we had to walk through around camp and to the creek. It also helped us to see snakes before we may have stepped on them. On the warm days, we found a few rattle snakes, elk, and wild turkeys running around.
We rode/pushed the bicycles up the old road along China Creek. This road is partially over grown and closed to motorized vehicle traffic. The plan was to move up the drainage five miles and look for bears to shoot off the hill side. If we shot one, we would quarter it up and ride out with it on our backs.
After taking a midday nap, we found a bear to shoot/miss late in the day, and ended up hunting past sunset. There really is a big red bear on this hillside. We watched from the other side of the draw as Sean put a big sneak on it.
The bear is the dark spot below the large pine tree
He must have banged his scope while scaling a cliff because he missed five shots in a row from roughly 150 yards. It was crazy. The bear couldn't tell where the shots were coming from so it hung around for a bit. It even stood on a stump to get a better look of the area. Sean had to walk off that hillside in the dark, cross the creek and scale the other hillside to get back to the bikes.
Sean is the little speck on the middle of the slope
Riding out in the dark was tough. The dust kicked up by the bike in front of you caused a disco strobe-light effect when your bouncing LED head lamp illuminated the path. Mostly coasting and braking, I wrecked once, and my brother-in-law dumped his bike off the edge of the road once and wiped out once. I gave up on the whole bike thing after that night.
Darrel and Sean took the bikes back up China Creekl the following day to look for the bear that Sean missed the previous night. It rained all that day so I stayed in camp to repair the truck's winch. We had to winch down the road on the way in and I was sure that we would need it on the way out.
The return trip out of Eagle Creek was much easier than the trip in. We actually had to make two short trips to transport all of crap that we brought.
