THE YEAR OF THE BEARS

August 26, 2002.  It was our 40th wedding anniversary.   My wife had placed a lovely card next to the coffee pot for me.  I, being preoccupied with the coming hunting season, hadn’t been so thoughtful.  Before you judge me to harshly, bear in mind, I live in a small Southeast Alaska bush community.  I would have had to order something a couple of weeks in advance.  Now, I ask you, what husband can think that far ahead?  Fortunately, my son, who lives nearby with his family, came over and announced that we had reservations for dinner at a local lodge.  It was a gift from all our children.  That got me off the hook.

That evening, as we were walking out the door heading for the lodge, the phone rang.  An excited voice said, “There’s a bear in my garage ransacking it.  When I attempted to chase it away it charged me and tried to break in the front door.  Can you come quick and help us?”  Well, I told him to just shoot the bear.  “I don’t own a gun,” he said.  I agreed to come over.

This neighbor lives about a quarter mile away.  He’s a summer resident only from California and I didn’t know him very well.  I knew that if I had to shoot the bear out of season I’d have some explaining to do.  Never the less he was a neighbor asking for help.

 I gathered up my trusted .375 H&H along with some 260 grain Nosler bullets.  This rifle would later serve me well in Africa as a Professional Hunter and Game Ranger.  I then explained the situation to my wife and asked her to call the lodge and tell them we would be a little late.  Then I ran over to my son’s house and recruited him as backup.  He grabbed his Remington 870, a hand full of slugs and we jumped in his pickup.  Help was on the way!

We had been having an unusually large number of bear encounters this summer.  I figured that sooner or later something like this was bound to happen.  Because they were becoming less and less afraid of people we had had to chase several off our property recently.  My grandchildren had already been restricted to the house unless accompanied by an armed adult.  A couple of days prior to this another neighbor, that lives here year round, was confined to her house for several hours by a bear.  No amount of shouting would chase it off.  I suspected it was the same bear we were after.

We live in an area that has more black bear than brown.  The bears I am talking about are black bears.  Most of them don’t cause any trouble.  It’s easy to tell when one is just passing through, I don’t bother them.  But the other type, now that’s different.  They stay just inside the tree line watching you and the house.  When they don’t see any activity they start nosing around causing mischief.  I’ve opened my door and found them on the back steps. I’ve had them look in the window at us and even found them asleep in the carport.  Many times we’ve watched them look around the house trying to find something to eat.

My son and I drove down a long driveway that had dense woods on either side.  We parked in front of our California neighbor’s house.  No sign of a bear.  The man and his 10 year old daughter were looking down on us from his upstairs bedroom window.  Loudly whispering he said, “The bear is right over there inside the tree line.”

The house sits in the middle of a small clearing and the tree line is like a wall around it.  By now, it was after 7:00pm and had started to rain.  Visibility was very limited in the wooded area surrounding his house.  We cautiously walked the 30 feet to the tree line and peered in.  Nothing.  However, we could hear the bear growling and biting something.  Both of us squatted down and duck walked about 20 feet into the woods.  Looking under the heavier brush, we spotted him about 40 feet away.  He was tearing up a 5 gallon plastic bucket.  We were afraid to yell and attempt to frighten it away.  If it charged, there was no possibility for a shot.  The brush was just too thick.

Suddenly, we heard growling and limbs breaking to our right.  “It’s a sow and two cubs”, my son whispered.  I glanced over and, sure enough, there she was.  Her ears were back and she was into heavy, aggressive posturing as she looked from us to the boar.  Of all the luck!  She had crossed the driveway behind us and blundered into our situation.

Fortunately, she decided the boar was the more serious threat and went for him.  Normally, that old boar would have backed down and left the area, but for some reason, he wasn’t about to leave his precious bucket.  While they growled, snarled and swatted at each other, my son says, “This is just too dangerous Dad, let’s get outta here.”  Those bears were only about 40 feet away.  This wasn’t a case of “discretion being the better part of valor”, we were plain scared!

As we started backing out, our movement caught their attention.  During the momentary lull in fighting, the sow retreated with her cubs as I did with mine.  We backed out to the relative safety of the open yard and discussed what to do next.

We decided to walk back up the driveway to the road and circle the wooded area where the bears where.  There was a clearing on the other side.  Maybe we would have better visibility from that vantage point.  As we walked down the road, the sow and cubs came running out and took off.  We were glad to see them go.

When we entered the clearing, we could see the bucket that the bear had been biting lying in the grass several feet from the tree line.  Apparently, he had headed out this side of the woods and dropped his bucket.  We walked toward the bucket and squatted down about 20 feet from the trees.We were scanning the woods and trying to figure out where the bear had gone when he decided to join our conference.  Suddenly, from right in front of us, he popped out of the tree line heading for us.  I remember thinking “Sight picture!” as I snapped off a shot that hit him where his neck meets his chest and he rolled back on his rear, spun around and in one lunge disappeared into the woods.  My son fired while the bear was in mid spin.

We sat there for a few minutes listening.  Not a sound!  We flanked the spot where he had re-entered the woods and quietly approached where we hoped he would be.  Sure enough, there he was down but not dead.  I made jelly out of his brains with a head shot and that settled the affair.

Back at the man’s house, I told him I was late for dinner and would take care of the remains the next day.  My wife, in the meantime, had driven up and watched the little drama unfold.  When I hopped in the car, she just smiled and said, “Happy Anniversary!  Are you about ready to go eat?

We had a wonderful dinner and were entertained by watching a bear harass a friend’s horse that was tethered in a meadow behind the lodge where we were eating.   When my son got home, he had had to chase a bear out of his yard before he could go in the house.

The year of the bears was caused by the failure of the berry crop and the salmon run was late and very small.  They started raiding houses looking for food.  Some people had freezers on their porches or in the carport and several were broken into.  The neighbor had left a 5 gallon bucket of food scraps in his carport and this had cost the bear his life.

Kim Warren