Gut Shot
Well-known member
It's the winter solstice, four days until Christmas. My fingers are cracked and calloused, my eyes are fried and I'm running on caffeine and hate. This is the life of a bench jeweler in December and I need a break. So, here's the story of my West Virginia bear hunt.
It all started at a funeral about a decade ago. A good friend of my mother's died and I reconnected with people I hadn't seen in a couple of decades. Those folks lived in West Virginia and invited me to go bear hunting with them. I'd been invited before, it just never came together. Maybe it was because we were at the funeral, but I realized that there is no sense putting off dreams that are within easy reach. The next year I was chasing hounds up and down mountains looking for bears.
I had a couple of opportunities that first hunt but the bears were small and I was having a lot of fun just chasing them. A few bears were shot by others and I got to help get them out of the woods. I even put a finishing shot in one that had been shot when it bayed up in the rocks. In the end I enjoyed myself and had no regrets about not taking home a bear.
The next two trips I took my kids and both of them shot good bears. My wife went with once and got to see her first wild bear. I helped pack a couple of big ones out from the bottom of deep ravines on public land. In the end we had some of the best game meat you could ask for but I still hadn't punched a tag. There were no hard feelings on my part though, kids and first timers always get to shoot first, and that's the way it should be.
This year I returned for another try. The view from camp couldn't be beat.
I got five days in October to hunt. The first day saw lots of other hunters and only one bear treed. We had a boy who had never seen a bear and was eager to bag one. Him and his grandpa jumped in my truck and we beat it down an old logging road trying to get to the tree before the bear ran off. I smacked my differential on the rocks a few times and gave my truck a hell of a pinstripe job getting there. Unfortunately, as soon as we started into the woods, heading towards the sound of baying hounds, the call came on the radio that it was a collared bear.
Now, it's perfectly legal to shoot a collared bear but the guys I hunt with don't. Some of the guys have been involved with bear studies in the past, some still are, and one was the WV DNR bear specialist until he retired. A collared bear is a sow. If she doesn't have cubs with her it means she is pregnant with next year's cubs. The kid didn't get his bear this trip.
The next day we got permission to hunt an area with some problem bears.
The rigs are ready to go.
The only caveat for this hunt was that we had to kill every legal bear that we treed. This area was crawling with bears. First day I was the first one at the tree for this one.
It was two cubs. Mom chased them up the tree and led some of the dogs away from them. By the time the dogs were tied off and I got my camera out one of them dropped and ran off. The chase was called off and we went looking for another.
Later in the day I was riding with my friend Dan. We were slowly cruising the gravel hoping a dog would hit on some scent when, there in front of us at the edge of the road, was a bear. There was an instant of stunned confusion before we both jumped out of the rig to turn loose dogs. Seeing Dan had the hounds taken care of I jumped back in the truck and grabbed the radio "BEAR, BEAR, BEAR! We're a quarter mile out from the rock face on Exline Rd!" We only had two dogs and needed a couple of more to get this bear in a tree. A gal in our group showed up a few minutes later and dumped some more dogs on it.
She treed in a half mile or so and one of the girls was up to shoot. She hit it and pissed it off. The bear started around the tree and began to come down. Now, they want the bear to fall out of the tree dead. It doesn't always work out that way. The man closest to the bear took aim with his handgun and pulled the trigger...nothing. He didn't have one in the pipe and quickly racked the slide. Things got western for a moment as half a dozen shots rang out. The bear had a clear path through the dogs and took it, this meant that the backup on the ground had clear shooting lanes (important stuff to plan for in cases like this). Her bear piled up seventy or eighty yards away. I helped wrangle dogs back to the rigs rather than pack bear.
It all started at a funeral about a decade ago. A good friend of my mother's died and I reconnected with people I hadn't seen in a couple of decades. Those folks lived in West Virginia and invited me to go bear hunting with them. I'd been invited before, it just never came together. Maybe it was because we were at the funeral, but I realized that there is no sense putting off dreams that are within easy reach. The next year I was chasing hounds up and down mountains looking for bears.
I had a couple of opportunities that first hunt but the bears were small and I was having a lot of fun just chasing them. A few bears were shot by others and I got to help get them out of the woods. I even put a finishing shot in one that had been shot when it bayed up in the rocks. In the end I enjoyed myself and had no regrets about not taking home a bear.
The next two trips I took my kids and both of them shot good bears. My wife went with once and got to see her first wild bear. I helped pack a couple of big ones out from the bottom of deep ravines on public land. In the end we had some of the best game meat you could ask for but I still hadn't punched a tag. There were no hard feelings on my part though, kids and first timers always get to shoot first, and that's the way it should be.
This year I returned for another try. The view from camp couldn't be beat.
I got five days in October to hunt. The first day saw lots of other hunters and only one bear treed. We had a boy who had never seen a bear and was eager to bag one. Him and his grandpa jumped in my truck and we beat it down an old logging road trying to get to the tree before the bear ran off. I smacked my differential on the rocks a few times and gave my truck a hell of a pinstripe job getting there. Unfortunately, as soon as we started into the woods, heading towards the sound of baying hounds, the call came on the radio that it was a collared bear.
Now, it's perfectly legal to shoot a collared bear but the guys I hunt with don't. Some of the guys have been involved with bear studies in the past, some still are, and one was the WV DNR bear specialist until he retired. A collared bear is a sow. If she doesn't have cubs with her it means she is pregnant with next year's cubs. The kid didn't get his bear this trip.
The next day we got permission to hunt an area with some problem bears.
The rigs are ready to go.
The only caveat for this hunt was that we had to kill every legal bear that we treed. This area was crawling with bears. First day I was the first one at the tree for this one.
It was two cubs. Mom chased them up the tree and led some of the dogs away from them. By the time the dogs were tied off and I got my camera out one of them dropped and ran off. The chase was called off and we went looking for another.
Later in the day I was riding with my friend Dan. We were slowly cruising the gravel hoping a dog would hit on some scent when, there in front of us at the edge of the road, was a bear. There was an instant of stunned confusion before we both jumped out of the rig to turn loose dogs. Seeing Dan had the hounds taken care of I jumped back in the truck and grabbed the radio "BEAR, BEAR, BEAR! We're a quarter mile out from the rock face on Exline Rd!" We only had two dogs and needed a couple of more to get this bear in a tree. A gal in our group showed up a few minutes later and dumped some more dogs on it.
She treed in a half mile or so and one of the girls was up to shoot. She hit it and pissed it off. The bear started around the tree and began to come down. Now, they want the bear to fall out of the tree dead. It doesn't always work out that way. The man closest to the bear took aim with his handgun and pulled the trigger...nothing. He didn't have one in the pipe and quickly racked the slide. Things got western for a moment as half a dozen shots rang out. The bear had a clear path through the dogs and took it, this meant that the backup on the ground had clear shooting lanes (important stuff to plan for in cases like this). Her bear piled up seventy or eighty yards away. I helped wrangle dogs back to the rigs rather than pack bear.
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