Bear hunting season opens next month

The author’s first bear with a bow. Sometimes, this is all one sees of a bear.

Me and black bears go back a very long time. There have been a large number of close encounters with bruins over 45 years, and some potentially dangerous confrontations have taken place and I’m still respectfully writing about them.

Bears are very curious but can be very dangerous animals and are among my favorite wildlife species to hunt. Granted, they can do great bodily harm and can kill a guy if they choose, and if the opportunity presents itself, but mostly they want to be left alone. They can be downright curious, just like people, but after more than  four decades of making a full-time living as an outdoor writer, it's been my pleasure to have crossed paths with bruins on many occasions.

My hunts began in the late 1960s. No permit application was needed back then. A hunter walked into a store, bought a bear license, and went hunting.

Now, with new and different rules, there are more bears moving into new areas.

Those early hunts were fun because I sat on the ground, usually within 20 feet of an active bear bait, and hunting from tree stands were not legal for bear or deer hunters at the time. The first bruin I killed was with a bow at six feet. It wheeled, ran off into tall marsh grass, and I was right behind it, clueless and stupid in the middle of a dense Upper Peninsula swamp.

The animal went down on its back, and as I came running through the tall marsh grass behind it, my right foot came down two inches from its open mouth as it let out a death moan. My next step, I swear, was a 20-foot jump. It really wasn't that far but that animal scared me silly under those circumstances. Circling back, the bear was approached from behind, but it was dead.

Another time I saw nine different bears on opening day of the fall bear season. A big bruin frequented the area but wasn't seen the first day although nine smaller bears showed up to feed at various times from dawn to dusk. The larger bear came to visit the second day, and offered an easy shot.

There have been several close calls with bruins of various sizes.

There have been some close scrapes with bruins including a stand-off with a sow with three cubs in Saskatchewan 10 years ago. Another close encounter came in the Northwest Territories as a foraging bruin was spotted and photographed from a distance of 20 feet. The bear approached to within three feet of me, circled all around as I stood my ground and kept turning to face the animal, and it never did anything except turn and walk away. Its ears didn’t go back, its neck hairs didn’t go up and there was none of that teeth-gnashing business.


Another close call came when a grizzly was encountered in Glacier National Park during an early snow storm as I hurried down the mountain ahead of this violent storm that threatened to close the mountain passes. We eyed each other at 20 feet for what seemed like long minutes but the standoff probably didn't last over 10 seconds, and the big bear ran off.

A few years later grizzlies went on the rampage one year and killed partially ate parts of some of the tourists. It was a nasty piece of business, and those big bears were hunted down and killed.

Another time, while hunting on British Columbia's Vancouver Island with Jim Shockey, my guide and I saw over 30 black bears on one mountainside at one time. We probably saw 60 different bears in one day, including one with a 22-inch skull that would have placed high in the Boone & Crockett record books.

I passed on that big bear for purely personal reasons.

That bear was not shot by me. I passed on it because the only thing that would have made the animal appealing to anyone was its huge skull. It had rub spots on both front legs like it had been wearing manacles, two huge bald patches were on its hips, and assorted other problems made that animal truly ugly. It was an old boar, probably in its last year of life, and I let him live.

I knew if I shot that bear the only reason for its death would have been the big skull. I left that bruin to feed after stalking to within 60 yards with my Knight .50 muzzleloader. I didn't need a record-book black bear that bad.

Outdoor writer/photographer Judd Cooney and I hiked into one of his bear baits in northern Saskatchewan several years ago, sat down 20 yards from a bear bait, and took photos. A sow with a pair of young cubs came to visit, and he asked if I wanted the sow to turn our way. I nodded affirmatively.

"Hey, bear, over here!" Cooney hollered. The bear backed up a step or two, turned to look our way, and I started shooting photos. Cooney repeated this exercise three times, and then the cubs came over for a visit. They sniffed my boots, crawled over our legs, and walked back to their mother.

Had any cub squalled we would have had an irate sow black bear all over us. The cubs behaved themselves, as did we, and they soon wandered off, making it a thrilling  adventure.

Hunting and being around bears all these years has been fun. There have been a few anxious moments when I’ve hunted down and killed bears that had been wounded by other people who were too frightened to go after the animal. I didn’t want a wounded bear in the woods that could cause serious injury or death to someone unfortunate enough to get too close to it.

There has never been a problem during my encounters or when hunting down those injured animals, but anytime a person gets within 50 yards of a wild bear, there always is an element of danger.

So far, I’ve been lucky. Now, with bad vision dogging ny trail, my memories of those times when bears got too close, are still vivid. Each time provided an adrenaline surge that exceeds even that of when a big whitetail buck walks within bow range.

There is a special kind of magic to bear hunting. One only has to remember that this animal you hunt is fully capable of putting you in a casket or a hospital bed. That, my friends, adds some adventure and spice to the hunt.

Face a real or false charge  from a tooth-clacking, foot-pounding, enraged black bear, and you’ll experience something that may wake you from a sound sleep for many years to come as you relive that hunt. Bears have the capability of putting the fear of God into a person, and it’s always wise to remember that.