Life is good and the weather is
fine. We decided to start a little later today. The four hour sleep nights
take their toll after a while, so we decided to sleep a little later and leave
at 7 am. Again the bay was glassy smooth.
Before I forget, I promised Shannon
Randall that I would tell you that spring was two months late in coming this
year. That helps to explain why part of the bear season had snow and very cold
windy weather. This is not the case usually. Of the nine days we have been
here only three were nasty. The last couple of days have been super.
Now, back to the story. Luke saw a
bear trotting along the shoreline and then heading into the woods. He thought
it was a nice one so we brought the boat to shore and jumped off. We tracked
the bear into the woods. A brown bear’s track is huge, maybe 8-9 inches wide
and 10 inches long. The rule of thumb in estimating a bear’s size is to take
the width in inches and add the number one to it. That is usually the size of
the bear. A nine inch track translates into a 10 foot bear.
We followed the tracks through the
woods eyeing every bush and tree to make sure we weren’t ambushed as we made our
stalk. Luke saw an eight foot circle where the moss had been torn up by a
bear. They do this to make beds and to cover up their kills. This area had the
carcass of a fresh baby seal in it. Now things were tense. It is not a good
idea to be near a brown’s kill, they are protective of them and don’t like to
share their kills with man or beast. Luke, Shelby and I were on high
alert.
We thought about waiting for the
bear to come back to the kill. Luke felt he might have gone to get a drink and
would be back soon. We sat up for an ambush but soon decided that we should see
if we could catch the bear further up the trail perhaps sunning himself on this
beautiful day. Luke led the way and we move up the hill. We saw blood and
entrails on a log and drag marks going up the hill.
Cautiously we moved ahead until we
heard a wolf-wolf noise, a bear’s warning sound. I started to put my release on
the string but before I could do anything the bear charged at us!
Believe me
that is a tense situation. The bear stopped 15 feet from Luke and 18 feet from
me. He looked as big as a house and not very friendly. Luke yelled at him and
thank God he ran off. If we could have had a few seconds to get ready, I might
have been able to shoot but that didn’t happen. It was still a moment I will
never forget and I am glad I got to experience it.
Shelby got most of it on
video, so I am very proud of her for not panicking. The funny thing is that it
happened so fast there was not any time to get excited or
nervous.
