The close mountain lion encounter thread got me to remembering my run in with a black bear way back in 1987. I was hunting elk in the Washakie Wilderness of northwest Wyoming with a friend, but we were hunting solo and would meet in camp in the evening. For those who aren't familiar with the area, it is very steep, rugged, and at the time was loaded with elk. We always saw lots of bear sign, but up to this time I had never seen a bear while hunting elk in this particular area.
It was mid September, and I was bugling from a high spot down into a steep draw where I had seen elk a lot in the past. The day was very pleasant; 50 degrees or so, sunny, just a perfect early fall day. I would skulk along, using whatever cover was there, and bugle every so often, hoping for a response from a bull.
I was in an area that was not black timber, but was still brushy enough that vision was limited to maybe 50 yards, and had topped out and was starting downhill. I had bugled a couple of minutes before I heard huffing and growling, and as I was trying to determine where the sounds were coming from, a bear that looked to me at the time about the size of a Volkswagen appeared directly to my front, from some brush about 30 yards away. He was growling and walking with a very determined gait, directly towards me.
As he approached, I made the quick and obvious decision that I should do something before he chomped on me. I was shooting a recurve at the time, and an arrow was already on the string. As he got louder and nearer, it became very apparent that I was either going to stop him with a pointy stick, or things might get ugly for me.
He kept coming, still talking his bear talk, and at about 15 yards or less I brought the bow up and came to draw. He still came, but luckily my movement must have done something, and instead of heading directly toward me, he turned to his right and gave me a broadside shot at 7 paces.
The arrow was gone before I realized it, and I watched it enter him in a really good spot, but when it did, he roared and looked at me, and I thought that I was in for a mauling for sure. But no, he ran the other way, and fell over 15 paces from my shaking body. He kicked and thrashed a few times, and then lay still.
I was pretty well amped up by then, but somehow I managed to put another arrow on the string and send another insurance shot into him. He didn't move in reaction to the shot, so I gingerly approached him to find one large, dead, and very black Ursus Americanus laying before me.
I used the bugle to signal my hunting buddy as we had agreed to earlier in the hunt, and after a while he found me and the bear. We skinned the bear out and brought the hide down to camp that night in the dark, tripping over deadfall and the steep slope, and went up the following day to get the meat, which was untouched by other predators.
To this day, I don't know what would have happened if my shot had not been perfect, but I'm not so sure it would have turned out well for me.
Incidentally, the following year in close proximity to where I killed my bear, my hunting buddy had the same thing happen, and he shot another big black bear that came to his bugle. Unfortunately, his shot was not as good and we never found his bear.
Nowadays, this same area is loaded with grizzlies, so if I was going to be bugling there, I would want to be really careful about what was responding to an elk call.
Topic: An old story retold (Read 139 times)
