My raison pour for writing this article is to provide a brief history of each of the lodges that once, and in some cases continue to operate in various incarnations on the big lake, including information regarding their outpost camps, available side trips/fly outs, and much more.

Guests and perishable food (pretty much the same thing to a bear) came up to Branson’s by plane, and everything else (boats, motors, fuel, canned goods, etc.) came up by ice road.

The idea for this particular “Bear Tale” comes courtesy of Dr. Art Ross, and although he originally referred to the story as the “Tale of 2 Tents”, when you do the actual count, there are actually 5 of them in play.