This happen to me!!

[Bluemoon]

I think that was the name of the page in Outdoor Life many years ago. Well here is my story from this past Saturday.

No time for a picture, but got to experience my first and hopefully last Grizzly charge this morning.  Out chasing birds with Laura, my nephew Jereme and his wife Trudie.  We watched a covey of Sharptail go into one of my favorite patches of choke cherries. I went down low around the bushes keeping everyone else up high. I hear this deep woof and out pops a grizzly. He barks again and jumps towards me landing just a mere 20 ft from me. I squared up to him and yelled BEAR many times as loud as I could so everyone else knew poop was about to hit the fan. Fortunately he turned and ran back into the bushes and out the backside went not one but 5 of them. 2 juveniles and a sow with triplets. It was definitely one of the most intense moments of my hunting career.


This was quite the experience.  We all stayed calm and dealt with the situation at hand.  It was not until the evening when we sat down relaxing when the reality of it all hit us.  The outcome could have been a total disaster.

[bhawley76]

What a rush I'm sure. That's one scenario I don't really ever want to be in. Glad everyone is safe!

[bracer40]

Wow! Talk about the last thing to expect on an upland hunt! Glad nobody got hurt!

[Sandberm]

Glad you came out ok. Sounds like it was a near fatal encounter for these two however. https://www.nbcrightnow.com/kalispell/bear-killed-after-attacking-hunters-north-of-whitefish/article_209d0863-48c2-54d4-ab4a-6068aa225b44.html

KALISPELL- Crews responded to a bear attack on timberland near Smith Lake north of Whitefish Lake.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks says the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Region 1 Wildlife Human Attack Response Team responded Saturday morning.

A report was received of a father and son from the Flathead Valley hunting along a gated road when a grizzly bear charged out of a thickly wooded area along the road at a very close range.

The two sustained significant injuries before they were able to shoot and kill the bear...

...“Based on the evidence gathered at the scene and interviews with the victims, we believe this was a surprise encounter involving an adult female grizzly bear defending a food source and her offspring,” FWP Regional Game Warden Captain Lee Anderson said...

[ELKBURGER]

Crazy encounter! Glad it ended without incident. How did your shorts fare?

[Sitka_Blacktail]

Hahaha.... It's a rush isn't it? 

When I lived on Kodiak I had a few bear encounters. One of the one's that stood out happened out at a setnet site I was running in the Uganik Passage area. My crew man and I had been spotting deer up the mt. behind the cabin while we were on the water tending the net. So one day off we decided to head up and see if we could get some fresh camp meat.  The area we were in was so thick with scrub alder (much like vine maples) that the easiest way to get up the mountain was to follow the creek that ran by our cabin.  We finally got up to where the alders were thinning out and found ourselves in some massive salmon berry patches.  We started seeing deer sign and saw a couple does, but we also started seeing huge berry filled piles of bear scat.  As we continued up I heard something up ahead and saw a brown flash. I pulled my rifle up thinking it was a deer when all of a sudden I see this monstrous brownie running straight at us down the mt. As he came to a stop on a knob about 25 yards from us I hollared "Bear!" at Barry and half turned to see Barry already had my .357 out and aimed at the bear.  Meanwhile the bear had his nose in the air sniffing in all directions having obviously scented us. When I yelled he looked down and saw us a spun around and took off into another alder patch.  We could hear him snapping branches as he ran off.  We got ourselves calmed back down and decided to continue our hunt as we weren't too far from the top which was much more open. We got up to the top and had a sit where we could see a couple hundred yards in all directions.  I mentioned to Barry that at that time, that was the closest encounter with a brownie I'd ever had and something about how hair raising it had been. (You can't believe how fast a 1,000 lb animal can be until you see it for yourself up close)  A while later, Barry says, "Rick, I can't make my legs quit shaking."  I look over and he's just trembling. When it first happened we were too in the moment to be totally scared, but after we sat there a while and we had enough time to think about it, he realized what a close call it had been and it really shook him up.  Especially thinking that we had to go back through that alder jungle to get back down to the cabin.  Well, the good news was, I saw a fairly open ridge that continued out to the point where my friend Toby had another setnet site. So we headed down to Toby's and hitched a ride in his skiff back to our cabin.

[Twispriver]

Wow, I'm glad it turned out good for both man and beast.
Doesn't two juveniles and a sow with triplets add up to six bears or did I read the story wrong?

[lokidog]

At least you had a gun. My close encounter Grizzly experience was at about 8 feet  with only a camera and a split rail fence between us. Fortunately, he was as surprised as I was and turned tail. Never did hit the shutter button on the camera.... 

[csaaphill]

yep a page from outdoor life, and still is.
Did you change em yet or what... 
Glad it ran off for you man... Just think you almost made a hot sause commercial
I put that * on everything lol...

[Goshawk]

I think that was the name of the page in Outdoor Life many years ago. Well here is my story from this past Saturday.

No time for a picture, but got to experience my first and hopefully last Grizzly charge this morning.  Out chasing birds with Laura, my nephew Jereme and his wife Trudie.  We watched a covey of Sharptail go into one of my favorite patches of choke cherries. I went down low around the bushes keeping everyone else up high. I hear this deep woof and out pops a grizzly. He barks again and jumps towards me landing just a mere 20 ft from me. I squared up to him and yelled BEAR many times as loud as I could so everyone else knew poop was about to hit the fan. Fortunately he turned and ran back into the bushes and out the backside went not one but 5 of them. 2 juveniles and a sow with triplets. It was definitely one of the most intense moments of my hunting career.


This was quite the experience.  We all stayed calm and dealt with the situation at hand.  It was not until the evening when we sat down relaxing when the reality of it all hit us.  The outcome could have been a total disaster.

You know me Bluemoon, so I just have to ask it: Enough of the excuses.  Did  you get a good flush on the Sharptails or not? 

[Pegasus]

While fishing on a river in Alaska my fishing buddy alerted me to the fact that we had two bears fishing and coming upstream toward us. In Alaska these big bears get the right of way. My partner left the river and walked off into the woods. I being the brilliant fly fisherman that I am chose to hide on a small island that was in the middle of the river. The island was only about ten feet wide and about twenty feet long and was covered in brush. I went into the bushes and crouched down and waited for the bears to pass. The bears slowly fished there way up until they were across from the island. Suddenly without warning one of the bears went immediately to the far end of the island while the other bear came to right where I was hiding. He poked his head through the bushes and looked me straight in the face. His massive head was less than an arms length from my head and I could feel his breath on my face. His breath stunk like rotten fish. After a few seconds of staring he turned suddenly and resumed his fishing. If I had been armed we would both would be dead since the other bear had blocked my only exit.
 
After cleaning my pants out I decide to fish back toward our plane. While going through some tall reeds along the river a ginormous bear stood up less than twenty feet from me and growled at me. I immediately went out into the river to avoid the bear. When I got to the center and was up to my armpits in the river another bear on the opposite shore stood up out the reeds and growled at me. I decided to stay in the center of the river for the next twenty minutes and fight the current instead of the bears. While there I got a good look at the first bear. She was a monster with two cubs! After a while I hoped the bears had cleared the area and I proceeded through the reeds shouting all the way back to the plane. Another plane had tied up close to ours and as I approached I could see that the bears had ripped up his pontoons and damaged the tail. In flyout fishing your fish normally end up going into the pontoons. Evidently the bears had smelled the fish and started to use their can openers on the plane.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

From my years in Alaska, I know at least 5 people who have been bitten by bears, one guy twice. This next guy almost twice.......  He had taken his family out for a trip in his plane. They flew into a remote strip between Cordova and Yakutat. They got out of the plane and almost immediately a bear rushed out of the brush along the strip and started mauling him. Tore up his head pretty good. Then the bear ran off as suddenly as it appeared. They had no radio reception where they were so he started flying them back towards Cordova as he was the only pilot. In the air they got hold of help and a coast guard helicopter agreed to meet them at a lodge about 60-70 miles from Cordova. He managed to land the plane, then passed out from loss of blood and shock. The helicopter got there in time and saved his life.  A couple years later, he and his wife were deer hunting on Hinchinbrook Island and had just drug a couple deer to the shore where their skiff was anchored when a Brownie came charging down their back trail. They just had time to shoot and dropped it about 10 yards from them. After that, we nicknamed him Bear Bait.

The last friend who got mauled was hiking on a popular trail that followed a salmon stream. This attracted a lot of bears but they normally stuck to the business of eating fish. On this hike, she brought her dog and a friend's dog which was a Kirolian Bear Dog. She got well up the trail when the bear dog went running off towards the creek. Then it came running back with a bear in hot pursuit. The dog ran past her so the bear knocked her down and grabbed her and started shaking her. Then it started walking away, so she went to get up and the bear looked back and saw her and attacked her again. Then started walking away. Again she tried to get up and the bear came back and again attacked her. This time she stayed down for a long time. Then she managed to get up and hike back to her car and drove herself to the emergency room. She was stabilized then flown to Anchorage for surgery where she recovered, but she spent some time in the hospital. She'd had a chunk bitten out of her derriere and another from a shoulder. Tough gal. She also runs her own commercial salmon boat.

[Goshawk]

"The last friend who got mauled..."
Nothing persona, but think I'd be looking for a different friend.  If  nothing else, have him stop wearing that honey/berry based aftershave!

[pygmy1985]

I think that was the name of the page in Outdoor Life many years ago. Well here is my story from this past Saturday.

No time for a picture, but got to experience my first and hopefully last Grizzly charge this morning. ...

Sounds frightening and exciting!  (The only time I’ve encountered grizzlies was in Alaska, and they were 600 yards away, or more.)
 Looks like you made the cover of Outdoor Life, after all.😬

[Lapua07]

I know the feeling you get when you come face to face at close distance all too well.  Humbling to say the very least.

August of 2018 I met my hunting partner at a fairly well used trail head in the cabinet mountain wilderness. Destination was some alpine lakes to fish for cutthroat and scout for big mule deer as I’d drawn a tag for Montana that year. 6 hours of hiking and glassing nearly lifeless country we reached camp for a 4 day weekend. 2 one man tents, couple collapsible fish poles, spotting scope, binos, Pistols, and a large bottle of scotch. Lakeside dinner of trout, wild onions, and huckleberries. Watched a great buck come down an avalanche chute to the lake at dark. We decided to clean up the mess and head to bed. At some point around 9:30 that night I come to out of a dead sleep to what I at first thought was actually another person walking down the trail which was probably a good 60 yards off. It got louder and louder. Finally I whispered to my buddy if he could hear it. Immediate response was “yea .. probably a moose” and almost right away the foot steps got quite as a mouse. . And VERY close. As I started to dig my 44 mag out of my sleeping bag I could hear the sniffing like a dog and knew right away that “moose” wasn’t there on accident. I no sooner slid my pistol up to the side of the tent he started the woofing and hopping up and down on his front feet. About that time my buddies 45 went off a couple times in the dirt through the side of his own tent. Bear ran off... or so we thought. Both of us rolled out of our tents with head lamps. After a few minutes of trying to get a grasp of what had just happened the alder brush beside the lake blew up. Out pops a 6-700 grizzly at no more than 20 feet on a bluff charge. I torched a round off at its feet and yelled. Whipped around and back into the brush. After building a small fire and a couple pulls of scotch. We decided to take a look around before going back in our tents. The bear was only 3 feet from my head when he was sniffing around. Until that night I would have told you nothing made me worry or even second guess my security in the woods. Since then I don’t hesitate when I’m in their country.