Bear #2 Story
“The Chorus”
When the Washington draws came out, I decided not to wallow in the mire of self pity when I found out I had drawn nothing exciting. Without an elk tag, I would focus my efforts on bears and blacktails this summer and fall.
In late May I was sitting on the couch pouring over Google Earth and OnX in search of the hidden Mecca surely everyone else had overlooked. My incessant scrolling around the state kept coming back to the same place. My criteria was 1) huckleberries, 2) difficult to get to, 3) excellent misery characteristics, and 4) a glassing knob. This place had it all. The experience born from years of hunting all over told me that even 4-5 miles in if there were berries, there would be commercial pickers stomping all over. I needed dangerously steep and not near any roads.
My wonderful wife did an outstanding job of feigning interest when I proclaimed I had found the spot, a couple more ridges over from my customary bear honey hole. Comparing multiple mapping systems, I found one that showed a spire at the base of a T-shaped ridge, able to glass both sides and along the top. The top had a massive cliff band running along it creating a natural travel path. I pointed to two spots on both ends and said, I guarantee there will be bears right there.
A scouting trip in June confirmed ample misery and sufficient hellholeishness that I figured I’d be alone. No roads, no trails, unnamed ridges. It was a 2 hour hike up just to get to the bottom, and then the fun began. I found walls of vine maple 10 feet tall woven together like my daughter’s hair, dog hair pines with intermixed devils club and thimbleberries, and hills as steep as my last property tax increase, all conspiring to keep the meek out. Braving all those rewarded me with access to the spire, a jutting rock cliff at the base of a ridge with a 10x12 flat mossy top and a view for miles. This was the place.
Yesterday afternoon I arrived at what I now call Old Man’s Rock because of the face etched in the Andesite. He looks lonely and defeated, miserable even. In that moment I understood the feeling. Very carefully I climbed the edge, a ~70 vertical drop just a step away. Perched on top I took in the view, realizing that while the distances were what I had estimated at 5-800 yards away to the corners of the “T”, it was much higher above me than I supposed. I told myself, glass the huckleberry fields below, not the ones above. That lasted two minutes from me taking a seat. The moment I put my glass up high there was a large jet black bear silhouetted on the skyline on the right tip of the “T”, exactly where I put a waypoint down a few months prior. I watched the bear mowing berries and working downhill fairly quickly. He was 575 yards away, a shot I knew I could make, but there was another perch 300 yards and 500 feet in elevation straight up the ridge that would make for a slam dunk. It was a shooter bear. I worked my way down off the spire grabbed my things and slowly began huffing and puffing up the ridge. It was slow going, alternating rock and thick brush. When I got to the vantage he was gone.
45 minutes later I was back down on the spire, glassing the opposite end of the ridge top where my other bear prediction point was. Eyeing the terrain and what it would take to get something out of there gave me pause. I had about convinced myself I shouldn’t even look over there when I suddenly picked up movement at the far end. It was quite a jaunt away and it took a minute for the image to materialize. At first I thought it was a deer, and then a small chocolate bear stepped more into the clear. 752 yards, calm wind, and no way to get any closer and still have a visual. “That would have to be a really good bear for me to go all the way across to over there,” I thought. This bear was dainty, hesitantly moving through the brush in and out of view, eating and constantly looking around. He seemed on edge. After a few minutes I lost him. I glassed below me and off to the other end of the ridge for several minutes before thinking, “I wonder what that chocolate is up to?”
I glassed all along where he had been but couldn’t find him. I was swinging my binos along the ridge top on the tripod, back towards the middle of the ridge when I saw it. A third bear was on the very top of the ridge. He was noticeably larger than the chocolate. 3 bears in two hours was a good start.
I watched what parts I could see of the 3rd bear for a few minutes. He walked around like he owned the place, not a care in the world. I ranged up to where he was - 550 yards on the button.
“I really don’t want to shoot a bear all the way up there, but I probably should set the rifle up just in case,” I thought, knowing deep down what I was really inching towards doing. It couldn’t have been a better setup. Flat bedrock for the bipod, angled exactly as it needed to be for a level gun and a shot in that direction. With purposeful intent, I ignored the cliffs and walls of brush between where the bear was and the bottom of the ridge where I would need to pass through to pack him out. I may be 42, but when it comes to the hunt and ultimately the shot, I’m still 25.
The bear passed through an opening while I looked on through binos, “He would be a great bear under any other circumstances, but is he the big one I want for bear #2 this year, all the way up there?”
That question was answered when the bear turned towards me and moved a few yards down the hill. For some reason his forearms and the confident “what are you gonna do about it” slow swagger he took each step with caught my eye. He stopped, facing my direction head on, paws turned inward a bit, like a justifiably confident pit bull. Yup, it’s go time.
I moved from the binos to the rifle, settling in. I double and triple checked the range at 550 and dialed up 9.25 MOA and checked my level. It was spot on. The natural point of aim was conveniently on a very small opening about 10 yards in front of the partially obscured bear and so I waited. “If he walks into those crosshairs, I’m taking him.”
About a minute later, walk in he did, pausing directly in the opening to eat the berries on the edge. The reticle just sat, hovering directly over his vitals, as my finger slowly slid its way into the trigger guard and gently pressed. The 300wsm roared, but the rest was so solid I was back on him just in time to see him jump in the air and bite at his armpit. A second later, the loud “thhhwwooock!” met my ears, resembling the impact sound of a watermelon dropped from a skyscraper. He ran directly to the side where his elevation met the top of the ridge in front of him.
Crap. Smoked him! But, crap. This is going to be a night. I’d brought overnight gear and the sun being cut in half by the top of the ridge told me I was going to need it.
I took some video and lots of pictures of where he was standing to make sure I could hopefully identify that one spot in a sea of huckleberry bushes before grabbing my gear. I had a hell of a climb in front of me up the spine to the top of the ridge, then along the ridge top. When I finally got there the sun was setting on the horizon, glowing orange behind the distant mountains and sending streaks of shadows through the trees as the starkly brisk breeze starting picking up.
“He was right here!” Except there was nothing. I pulled up the pictures I took noticing the layout of the trees in the background. Mentally putting together the angles I realized I was about 20-30 yards short. A few more steps and I found it. The divot in the ground where he peeled out and a spray of blood painting the huckleberry bushes and beargrass crimson confirmed this was the spot, 30 yards below the ridge top.
Whoever said bears don’t bleed much didn’t know about this one. A blind person could have followed this blood trail. Both sides, top to bottom, the bushes were dripping. I was convinced he would make it 75 yards or less at a dead run at absolute most. I was right. Except 30 of those yards were to the top of ridge.
“You better not. Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare do it!!!” I waded the huck brush as a sinking feeling started hitting me. I knew what he was doing.
My fears were realized as I followed the garden hose spray over and looked down the backside. It was ridiculously cliffy and steep. Instead of the chutes, the blood trail showed he went right down the vertebrae of a small finger and dove off the cliff. As sunlight faded, I pulled out my headlamp. I had no idea how I was going to get down that. Over and over I reminded myself go slow, you have a fall here and no one will find you.
The route he fell was occasionally marked by large blood patches on rock. He was tumbling hard. I was rappelling down via random tree limbs and bushes, hugging the ground. The sound of falling rocks echoing endlessly off the cliff walls below me reminded me of the consequences of a single careless step. It took me 30 minutes to figure out a route to get down 50 feet. I couldn’t imagine a person navigating a slope any steeper without ropes. I hit the second smaller vertical cliff band, and starting losing hope. It was becoming more than perilous.
Peering over the cliff I could see another large blood stain reflecting off the rocks below. He had bounced off of it. I sidehilled before going down and around the cliffs where below me I could see a sea of vine maples. Between me and that spot was a perfect trail of upturned leaves in a thimbleberry patch. If he got into that big brush below I wouldn’t find him. I was hundreds of feet in elevation down the backside, navigating cliffs and brush with a headlamp as the last distant remnants of light faded. I determined I would wade through the 3 foot thimbleberry brush to the wall of vine maples, but no further that night. Just getting back up to the ridge would be a monumental task, especially in the dark. If he was falling, he would hit that wall and stop, if he was still running he would be gone. That cliff covered hillside ran 1,800 feet further down and the rest of it was impenetrable.
I parted the brush with my hands as I scooted on my butt down the hill, frantically digging my heels in. Just when I got to the vine maples and was about to give up, there he was piled up, tangled in the trees on the edge of another cliff.
My friend Joel was on a podcast and said, “bears never die in the most convenient of places.” That’s the understatement of the century. I tried to take my pack off but it wanted to roll down the hill, no matter how I set it. I finally got it stable against a small random fir tree that stubbornly refused to give up on growing roots.
When I moved to the bear that was buried in brush and held up by saplings, I realized I could not take a single step past it. When I did, my foot went down into green foliage and black nothingness that I couldn’t see. One wrong move and the bear’s fall would continue.
It took hours. I kicked out a little spot just up the hill from the bear, then inch by inch heave rowed from my butt and deadlifted to get the bear away from the cliff. It wasn’t at all flat, but it was sort of doable. I’ve hunted 30+ years and never tried to work up quartering anything on that steep of terrain. Every time I touched the knife I told myself that a single slip could spell disaster. I took my time because the angles forced me to, but also because I was dreading the climb back up to the ridge.
It was downright treacherous. One moment in particular stands out. On my first trip up with all my gear and two quarters, I was picking my way up one careful step at a time. My Achilles felt on the verge of tearing and my hamstrings were quivering in revolt. I needed a breather, so I dug my feet in with kick steps and leaned slightly forward and rested my forearm on the ground while standing, the headlight beam blinding me as it reflected off the rocks just a couple feet in front of my face. At other times I was literally rock climbing, finding hand holds to pull up to tiny foothold from. If you didn’t see it, you wouldnt believe how steep it was and I don’t know how else to possibly describe it. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Just before 1am, I had everything back to the top of the ridge. I widened out a deer bed in one of the openings on the flatter sections of the ridgeline and set up a tarp. This would have to do.
Pulling off my sweaty boots and sipping off the celebratory flask, I sat on the hillside and flipped off the headlight and took it all in. There was no moon and the stars were otherworldly. The breeze was cool and crisp, ruffling the grasses and huckleberry bushes creating a soothing chorus. The briskness hinted strongly of the onset of fall, carrying the smell of juniper and pine. There were no artificial lights, no sounds other than the breeze and the owl nearby. Sometimes the soul needs the wild and I did this night.
I went to bed sometime thereafter and slept maybe an hour in 15 minute increments. I heard a visitor a couple different times, presumably one of the other bears on the ridge. At 5am, I sat up in the sleeping bag and peaked under and around the tarp edge to watch the sun rise. I had a half a bottle of water left so no breakfast today.
Climbing out of my improvised shelter led to curiosity. I meandered over to take a video and look down at what I had climbed out of the night before. I hate how video and pictures never do places like that justice. In person I was thinking that might have been one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. On my phone, the video looked like a big hill with some rocks.
Returning to my makeshift campsite I set to some important decisions. How was I going to get this bear down? A realistic self reflection resulted in the realization I wouldn’t be able to climb all the way back up here today and the weather called for an incoming warm spell. 42 seemed a good age to set a new all time personal record, my previous best being two bull elk hindquarters on a couple different occasions and the other being half of a cow elk. I’d skinned the head and paws from the bear the night before to save every ounce of weight when climbing up the cliffs, knowing I couldn’t get the cape out. If it was possible, I would do it in a single trip. All four quarters, plus two bags of backstraps, neck, scraps, head & paws, plus all my overnight and hunting gear. I could debone to save more weight, but I worried how it would carry without the structure.
With an assortment of extra straps and 550 cord, I managed to secure everything to my pack. I have put that Stone Glacier pack through the gauntlet over and over again with insane weights and it always holds. Getting underneath it is another story. This time called for a new tactic, not just sitting it upright, sitting down, and backing in. This time I had to lay it on its side on the uphill side, lay on my side, wiggled in, roll onto my stomach, and then slowly arch into a position I could stand from. It was brutally heavy.
I picked my way slowly down the ridge, distracting myself from my bellowing lower back and the swords being forged in fire behind my knee caps. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, maybe the lack of sleep, but the first hour was entirely surreal. I wanted to enjoy this pain. Bumblebees were hard at work all around me, the air itself seemed to almost vibrate with their unified symphony. I would swear a chipmunk looked down at me from its limb with incredulity as if to say, “What in the world are you doing up here?” During the whole trip there wasn’t a bootprint, not a candy wrapper, not an old rusted Pepsi can, no cut stumps or old ribbons fluttering from a limb, not a single sign anyone had ever been up there. I’m sure someone has, but I’m glad it was kept as pristine as it was. I needed it.
The huckleberry fields steepened before the intermittent cliffs began. I knew this section from my scouting trip. Chest high thimbleberry bushes and salal would obscure the ridiculously steep hillside before giving way to a straight down brush rappel through a bear tunnel in the vine maple and devils club. There was no other way that didn’t involve a helicopter, which made the choice easy.
Several hours later I set the pack down at the truck with a groan and a loud “get some!”
It wasn’t the giant bear I thought when he was facing me, but definitely a good one. He had a great frame up front, but needed a lot of meals to bulk back up. The size isn’t the important part though really. The experience of yesterday and today will go down seared into my memory of another opportunity taken to see places most people won’t go, grit through hard things that make me feel alive, and experiencing the transformation of absolute misery becoming an incredible sense of accomplishment.
Second bear down so I’m done for the year, but if you’re reading this I hope you to will find the things that make you feel most alive. But don’t forget to stop and notice the quiet chorus around you.
