So this is an older story and it ISN'T the short version,
Late September of 2010, I only have four days to hunt and it's during muzzle loader season for deer so I sight-in my .50 and buy my deer tag, with a bear tag as an after thought. My dad already has a camp set up when my wife and I get up to our spot in the NE corner Friday evening, the season opens the next day.
Even though it had been a full year since I'd been in the woods due to deployments, I was so excited to get out the next morning and put some miles on the boots.
Early wake up time on Saturday morning. Dark thirty and black coffee - the usual since I was ten at hunting camp. That morning my wife and I stand-hunted a saddle while my dad slowly hunted the other side of the hill. My dad called us after an hour, he'd seen a bear as it walked over a hillside about 90 yards in front of him.
"Why didn't you shoot it?" I asked him, with not a little frustration.
A pause and then, "I don't know..." from his end of the radio
I got excited and we decided to try and get a spot on this bear so we hoofed it for about 10 minutes to where he'd seen the bear. I was disappointed to learn how thick that area had grown. The last time I'd been there was five years earlier and quite a bit later in the year. We decided not to push the bear and that maybe we'd try to call it in a day or so later.
After glassing for bucks for about an hour, we decided to better equip ourselves with water and snacks back at camp and head to higher ground. As we drove to camp, I thought of a "special" stretch of thick woods that I'd hunted in the past and killed two deer from. It's only about 3/4 of a mile of thick hillside and mature pines that runs along the road toward our campsite but there always seems to be deer in there.
I hop out of the truck with my .50 and quickly slip into the brush. "Man is it HOT this year, it feels like 80 already today." I thought to myself. I was also amazed at how thick the logging road had become and I could barely move without kicking up mosquitoes and flies. I heard the diesel growl down the hill as my dad and wife headed off to prepare us for the upcoming all day hunt.
I kicked up a very small buck about 150 yards into my short hunt and he bounded down the road away from me but I decide against taking such a young buck early in the hunt. I was surprised to see him heading back toward me only a few seconds later. I was amused by this performance and laughed as he tried to find a path through the impossibly thick briers and thorn hedges that just kept funneling him my way. I could have shot him 10 times.
After he finally escaped I kept heading down the narrowing, thickening road. I started seeing bear piles. Piles everywhere that were fresh and never more than three feet apart. I looked up to notice that the trail disappeared into nothing more than a hole through burrs and a blowdown of multiple trees. Dark, cramped and bear piles everywhere. Deciding that I didn't want to try and find an alternate path because I figured if the deer couldn't then I couldn't, I got down on hand and knee to crawl through this trail.
I was covered in burrs and thistle blossoms after only a few feet and I could smell musk and rotten meat. My heart started pounding as I noticed multiple skeletons in the area beneath all these trees. I realized then that I was in a den. I began to sense that I was not alone.
The intense feeling was immediately confirmed when to my left, the downhill side, the brush exploded only a few feet away with what sounded like a moose grunting. That is, until a deep growl issued from the shaking brush. I didn't feel a single thorn or branch that whipped and tore my face as I shot from underneath and out of that place.
I circled back around into the only open area on the hillside that overlooked the spot I'd heard the bear. The world was still for a second until the bear stood up 30 feet from me and began to swipe the air and growl. I leveled my rifle and shouted disapprovingly at her, "Hey, don't you do it!" Incidentally, why do we say things to wild animals
I thought it was a wet sow and didn't want to shoot so I only kept the gun up in case she charged. She did. I yelled and pulled the trigger. I hear the, "PISHT!" sound of only the cap and my life flashed before my eyes. I opened my eyes and the snap of the cap scared her so that she veered off and ran downhill about 25 feet away from me. She stops again and growls and swipes the ground, all I can see is her left front leg and her face. She continues to circle me, growling and grumbling. I figure she had to have cubs so I try to back out and leave but she kept circling and following me.
I, in the meantime, have shakily loaded another cap. I really didn't care if she had cubs or not by now, I was trying to leave and she was following me! The impact of a 348 HP bullet in front of 120 grains of powder doesn't phase her but she runs off.
"Did I totally miss?" I ponder, there is no sign of a hit.
I search for five minutes, no sounds of a wounded bear, no hair, no blood anywhere.
I reload and head off down in the direction of the bear and find it about five minutes later and finish it off with a shot behind the ear.
She was a big sow and was pretty round, a warden later estimated her at 270 +/- a few pounds. My initial guess was 280 and I think she wasn't any more than that. Very healthy and between 6 and 8 years old. She was totally dry and I never heard or saw a cub the entire time dressing her out. I did however, find a fresh deer kill that she may have been guarding.
The afternoon was spoiled when two NPS Rangers tried to talk me into saying I shot it on private ground over bait and then dragged it three miles. Three miles! It was all worth it when one of them stepped in a chunk of bear fat and brought it into the cab of his pickup accidentally
Nothing against LEO’s but these two were jerks.
A long read, thanks for checking it out.
J
