After 20 years, local resident Bill Gould gets his bear

Bill Gould, local Grand Rapids resident who grew up in Hill City, had a successful bear hunt last Wednesday after multiple unsuccessful lottery attempts. He’s been hunting for bears for over twenty years and after failing to get one, stopped for a few years. But two years ago he got back into it and the work paid off with a successful hunt this fall.

The hunt took place near Swan River Crossing on family hunting land. The bear was an average sized bear, just under two hundred pounds. Gould plans on getting a mount made of the bear.

“At nights we couldn’t be there, the bear showed up early. And nights that we were there he didn’t show up until after we left,” Gould said, commenting on the bear’s elusive behavior. A change to their tactics, Gould and his partner, nephew Dalton Carlson, left less bait to make the bear hungrier to come earlier and align with when they were waiting for him.

Gould used a special-made rifle rest called the HQ100 by Be Adaptive Equipment due to spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). SMA is a disorder affecting the motor neurons- nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement. The special rest has a chin control that moves the gun up, down, left and right. There’s a straw that he suctions to fire the rifle.

When he started hunting, they had to come up with work arounds in order for Gould to shoot a gun. With the equipment available now, Gould is able to be more successful and at ease hunting.

He goes deer hunting every year and he goes fishing as well.

Very thankful for his nephew, Gould wanted to say that he would not have been able to finally check this off his bucket list without Carlson. They have been hunting together since, “Dalton was about six years old,” Gould said. He continued his thanks, “He put in all the work,” built the road so that Gould could get back to his deer blind, the brushing for the bait site and set out bait every day for the bear.

Gould was happy to use his HQ100 to finally finish a hunt that started more than twenty years ago.