Buckshot's Camp

   A Michigan Bear Tale  
 

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A friend of mine named Craig talked me into applying for a bear permit one year.  You see, in Michigan you have to apply for a bear hunting permit. This is a lottery and if you are lucky enough to be chosen, then you can go hunt the exclusive black bear. We both applied in June, and you have to wait until August to find out if you were picked on the lottery.  August 1st Craig's permit came back stating he wasn't chosen. By August 15th I still hadn't heard on my permit. I called the local Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to find out what happened. I had been drawn for a permit and it was mailed August 1, but some PETA person working for the post office must have stolen it. The local DNR issued me my permit and the fun began.

We had decided to hunt bears with bait. There is a huge controversy over using bait. Here is my view: If you know much about black bears, you know they cover huge amounts of territory in their quest for food. One day they will be in wild black berries, the next day 20 miles away in a wild apple orchard and so on. So just like trapping, we pre-baited using 2 five-gallon buckets of fish heads, twice a week.  Through our travels of chasing fur we knew where some bears were.  To be safe we made 3 bait stations. Checked the bait when we re-baited. Let me explain how you make a bait station.

You haul 10 gallons of fish heads out in to the brush. The black bear prefers the thick swampy areas.  After you pick a spot off the beaten trail, look for something next to a swamp or beaver pond. Thick brush so you can only see no more then 40 yards. You dump the fish heads out into a pile. Over the pile you place large logs 6 to 10 inches in diameter 10 to 15 feet long. Use something large that is heavy. This to keep the raccoons and scavenger birds out of the pile. Plus, only a bear will have the strength to move the logs.  We chose three muddy low spots in different swamps. This way you can see tracks in the mud. I was looking for a bear with a 6 1/2-inch span across the front paw. This means the bear will weigh over 350 pounds.

The first two bait stations had nothing after a week.  The last one paid off with the logs torn apart and thrown several feet.  To understand the power of the bear, Craig and I could barely drag and lift up the logs to cover the bait. We were dragging the log a foot at a time, then resting, but the bear tossed it aside like it was a stick. There was 5 different bears feeding at this station in two weeks time. One bear at 5 1/2 inches across the paw and one at almost 7 inches, two cubs and a mother's tracks were also seen. When baiting you have to be careful when you approach the bait. Get out of the truck and bang buckets, talk loud, and let the bears know you are there. Some bears have been known to chase you off your bait buckets when you are approaching the pile.

With all this in mind, you carefully approach the bait station. We dropped the other two bait stations and stuck with the last one. I can’t do justice to the feeling of approaching a bait pile for bears. Your adrenaline is approaching record level and when you see the bait destroyed like a tank drove through it, your heart skips a beat. Needless to say, you don't waste a lot of time. All we would do is dump the new bait drag the logs back on top, look at the tracks and haul butt back to the truck.

You are not allowed to carry a firearm during this baiting time. No firearms until the season opens. Hey, that just helps you get the job done faster. You know, that one large log we could barely move at first became lighter and just before opening day we could throw it back on top of the pile in record time. We weren't getting stronger. You see, the log was an old water log, so every time the bears tore the pile up, more and more chunks of the log was missing.

 The most interesting day was when we approached the pile after the large 7-inch track showed up. The pile was really destroyed and the tree we used as a backing was clawed from the 8-foot mark down to about the 4-foot mark. Definitely a keeper bear. For some odd reason, Craig was nervous and keeps looking around. His eyes were the size of half-dollars and he kept saying something about big bear, big bear, big bear. I suppose it didn't help when I snuck off in the woods out of sight and started yelling, “He's coming, run for your life.”  I have never seen Craig run so fast in my life. Poor Craig ran all the way to the truck and jumped in locking all the doors. GOOD thing I had the keys or the poor fellow would still be driving away from there. Me being the kind, sensitive, warm caring person, that I am, crawled all the way to the truck and snuck around to the back of the truck. My truck has 33-inch tires, so I crawled over to the back bumper. Then I placed both feet on the bumper and started rocking the truck all over and growling at the same time. Poor Craig freaked and started laying on the horn, screaming to me, “Don't come to the truck, the bears are waiting to get you.”

I started to feel pretty guilty about it, so I stopped. I crawled back into the woods, then jumped up, starting running to the truck screaming, “Open the door he's right behind me!!!” Poor Craig, there he is shaking so bad he can't UN-lock the door. It took a supreme effort on my part not to laugh. Finally, the door was unlocked, and I jumped in, starting up the truck and hauled out of there like the devil himself was after us. I started laughing and asked Craig if he saw how big the bear was, must been 500 pounds I said. Craig said that the way he was shaking the truck, I thought he was at least 650 pounds. (One person has filmed a black bear in Michigan with the estimate live weight of 800 pounds and every year a couple of 500 pounders are shot.)  I never told Craig it was me shaking the truck, so don't tell him if you ever meet him.

We built a blind for two, and Craig was going to video tape the hunt for me. Opening day finally came and we are sitting in the blind from 4 in the afternoon until around 8:30. Nothing comes in the first night. Opening day was on a workday, so I could only hunt after work. The next afternoon would prove to be the most-hair raising day of both of our lives.

For those of you that are hunters you know most deer are shot within an hour of sundown. So thinking like a deer hunter, we expected the bears to be the same way. We piled in the blind around 4 p.m. and planned on reading hunting magazines while we were waiting for the bear to show up. Craig is armed with the video camera and I was armed with a 300 Savage, using 180-grain core lokts. I have my gun resting against a tree inside the blind, about a foot a way. Around a quarter to 5, we hear a stick snap behind us. I thought squirrel. Craig whips his head around to look (must be still nervous about the truck, I thought I will have to remind him to move his head slowly). Craig slowly turns back to me and whispers that there is a bear right behind us. Damn he figured out it was me shaking the truck and now he's trying to pay me back, I'm not falling for that old’ trick, so I whisper back, “Yea sure.” Craig grabs my arm in a death grip, his eyes are as big as silver dollars and says, “I'm not kidding, get your #*&^*&^%! gun and kill him quick -- he is only 10 feet away.”

I could not even begin to describe the flood of emotion that flashed through my body. There is my gun sitting a foot away. What if the bear thinks I'm some kind of dinner and attacks when he sees me moves?? What if the bear grabs Craig, how in the heck can I even think about shooting without endangering Craig? What the heck am I suppose to tell his wife?  My heart was racing at 200 miles a minute, all of sudden my month was bone dry, my shaking hand slowly reached out to the gun, silent prayers were coming from both of us, sweat was dripping down my eyes, my ears tried to go into supersonic mode. Move a little, listen for the growl, listen for a snap at the back of the blind, all I could hear was Craig and my own quick short breaths, my hand wrapped around the barrel and I slowly lifted the gun up turning around to the left, Craig whispers, “No, turn the other way,” but I ignore him. (The reason I ignored him was, I'm right handed, so I could jump up and swing the gun on the bear if I had to without the gun barrel crossing the place where Craig was sitting.)

Slowly, I turned until just barely out of the corner of my eye, I could see black. The bear was standing 5 feet behind Craig's head. My God, his head is even with Craig's head -- he must be 600 pounds.  I could barely see all this, and I was straining as hard as I could. I have to turn back all the way around, point the gun up and swing by Craig and pray the beast doesn't attack. Slowly, I start turning back, thinking I should have listened to Craig to begin with. My nerves were settling down and I decided that I was going to shoot the bear point blank, dead center in the throat, breaking his spine and dropping him in his tracks. Craig, my best friend in the world, sat there patiently not moving, a lesser man would have panicked and ran, but not Craig. I finally was able to get the rifle pointed at the back and slowly finished turning around.

I can not tell you for sure what the feeling of coming face to face with a black bear, 5 feet away is like, especially when it turns out to be a cub sitting on a stump. The stump had tricked us both into thinking the bear was huge because we could only see it out of the corner of our eyes. My thoughts went from “Oh my God, a bear,” to “Thank God, it is only a cub,” and then to “Oh my God, where is the mommy bear?”

Just then, about 50 yards behind us a growl came up, short quick almost a grr-woof. The next thing we hear was two cubs running past the blind to the fish pile. Of course, the mommy bear was on the other side so I had to slowly turn back around to look for her.

When I was even with Craig's ear I whispered, “We are in deep trouble if those cubs come back when mommy bear hits our scent between her cubs and us”. The wind was a light breeze crossing over the sides and the mommy bear was 50 yards from smelling it. I turned all the way around and lifted the gun up. Just then, another grrr-woof and mommy bear stood up to claw a pine tree. She looked huge in the scope. I estimated her standing height at well over 6 feet and weight around 300 pounds. No small bear. It is illegal to shoot sow bears that have cubs, not that I would unless I had to.  I had the bear in the scope as she clawed the tree up and whispered to Craig, “Look for mommy bear this one is way to big to be a female.”

Just then the bear stopped clawing the tree and looked straight at me. OH NO, she hears me. We are directly between her and her cubs. I thought, “This is it, she's gonna charge.  I hope I can put her down in time.” She got back down on all fours and took a couple steps toward us sniffing the air. The hair on her back was raised and she stood back up. My God, that bear filled the scope and looked like she had grown 2 feet taller. I was sweating in the chilled air.  I was feeling detached from my body.  I could hear my heart pounding, and hear my breathing, but it was as if it was coming from someone else. My whole mind and everything in me was focused on the bear. Time stood still, and I remembered thinking, “I hope I don't have to kill her. She is just trying to protect her cubs.” Then I thought, “maybe a warning shot.” I remembered my uncle saying that years ago he saw a bear running along the road, so they timed the bear to see how fast it was running, 40-mph. At that speed she could be on top of us, if the warning shot scared her into an attack. What to do? I decided to wait, and if she came any closer, then I would fire one warning shot.

The cubs unaware of the danger, were having a ball crawling under the logs, pulling fish heads out. (By the way, Craig told me later, he was so scared of mommy bear none of this was taped for fear that any movement would cause an attack.)  Mommy took two more steps toward us and then it happened, the wind shifted, so our scent was going right to her. Oh my God, I felt the breeze change and thought our luck just ran out. My mind closed off to everything else except waiting for the charge, I thought at best I could get two shots off with the old lever action before  she was on us.

It is hard to describe the feeling you have when your best friend is sitting next to you UN-armed and waiting for the attack. I blamed myself for not letting him take a gun (have to follow the law, for having him come out and take video, what a stupid idea.) Mommy bear caught our scent and through the scope I watched first fear, then flight, then my cubs, then fight all flashed across her face in a millisecond. She stood up and clawed a tree and woofed twice. The next thing I heard was the cubs running past me to her. Just for good measure she clawed the tree and growled at us and ran off with the cubs close behind her.

We laughed with relief.  The whole drama took place in less then 7 minutes, but it seemed like we had just watched a two-hour bear attack movie. The evening excitement was not over because two lunatics (us) with any brains would have left and called it a night. Oh no, not us, we couldn't learn from our close call, we stayed for more excitement.

You know, as I sit typing my different articles and remember all that I have been through, I think “Maybe I take too many chances.”  But then that crazy thought passes, because I know next fall I will be back for another adventure in the great outdoors.