Bear 2004
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“Do bears eyes
glow in the Dark?”
Once back to
the house, I called my brother in law Brent to
see if he could help me track the bear. Light
was fading fast and he agreed to hurry up and
grab his gear and would be there in about half
an hour.
I told my wife
in an excited state (I think my voice had become
such a high enough pitch that it sounded like a
girl) that I had just shot a bear and Brent and
I had to go track it. |
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She was busy shopping
on-line and her response was that of “That’s nice dear”.
I fired up the Polaris Sportsmen 500 and headed back to
the last spot I had seen the bear. The blood trail was
easy to follow and I had gone about 50 yards when I saw
the bear take off down through the thickets. I fired
another shot through the brush which never connected.
I could hear my other
4- wheeler coming along the edge of the meadow and soon
Brent was part of the chase. I first had to retell the
whole story before getting back to tracking. It was now
dark and Brent pulled out his GPS handheld device to
start tracking and plotting our moves through the brush.
Brent had pulled out of his gear a flashlight that
mounted to his head with the way of an elastic band.
It was hard going
because it seemed that the bear had decided to stay in
the thickest brush which included prickly ash and thorn
apple trees. Most of the tracking was done on our hands
and knees pulling ourselves through the tickets. We
would both tack turns of being in front looking for the
next spot of blood. In the mean-time, Brent’s wife Kitty
had called my wife to ask if we had the bear back to the
house yet. My wife then asked Kitty if it was dangerous
to be tracking a black bear in total darkness. Kitty’s
response was only fools would, well we fit the bill
there.
At that point my wife
got on the phone and called all her relatives from NYC
to inform them that we were now tracking a dangerous
animal after dark. Brent and I were unaware of these
phone calls back in forth about our safety. We seemed
totally oblivious of the fact that it might be
dangerous. About two hours into the tracking, the bear’s
direction turned toward a beaver dam located at the edge
of an over grown swamp which was about 70 yards up. I
decided to cut cross lots and check for blood on the dam
figuring it would save time if he had already crossed
it.
Brent still on his
hands and knees poking his way through the thick brush
continued on. I could just barely make out his head lamp
from time to time through the think under growth. Now we
were close enough to each other that we were talking in
a normal voice and he went on to say that the bear had
stopped here and there was a bunch of blood where the
bear had laid down, was I sure there was no blood on the
dam?
That’s when I heard
the high pitched scream from Brent that made the hair on
my back stand up that the bear was still alive and right
in front of him…that’s when his gun roared and all I
could see was the blinding flash off the barrel of his
gun. The next words out of his mouth were…The bear is
headed your way! Here I stood with a pen light flash
light trying to hold it next to the barrel of my gun as
I could see the tag alters moving side to side as the
bear ran in my direction. My first instinct was to run
in the opposite direction… every man for himself. I
stood my ground like an idiot thinking this could be the
end.
I had read somewhere
that you never track a bear after dark. If they are
wounded and still alive, they have been know to attack
anything that comes there way. What were we thinking? My
thought went too had I said I loved my kids the last
time I talked with them and would my wife enjoy the
newfound freedom of me not being around.
The tag alters stopped
swaying about eight foot in front of me and the high
pitched voice of both of us saying back and forth…where
is he? I held the gun and flashlight till my arms
started to ach. We waited about 5 minuets and Brent
decided to continue on his blood trail toward me. The
bear had finally collapsed and Brent decided to shoot
him again because he had read somewhere that they
sometime play dead and then attack.
The next two hours
consisted on dragging the bear back to the four wheeler
trail. Once we arrived back at the house we were
barraged by remarks like “you idiots too have us worry
like that…you could have been killed”. We became folk
hero’s downstate with images of grizzly Adams coming to
mind. Brent recalled later that all he saw was part of
the ear and the bear’s nose when he realized he was face
to face with the bear at about 3 foot away. In my
attempt to get to the beaver dam I had walked right past
the bear in swing distance of about two foot. Why the
bear didn’t reach out and attack is still beyond me.
What we both realized
was that the bear’s eyes didn’t glow like a deer’s eyes
do in the dark!
Do you have a bear
story you would like to share? Send it to us with a
picture and we will post it for all to read.
The New York Hunter
