A good example of how fast it can happen even when I was ready and had the rifle in both hands (cartridge in chamber), on full alert. I still did not have time to raise the rifle and shot from the hip.
1970' HOPE ROAD CHARGING Bear recount.
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Some of you must know Lance T. former head of Habitat at Alaska F&G. In late May 1970' three of us were engaged in unofficial Porcupine control. Back then there were thousands of porcupines, I don't know why.
So we were shooting porky-pines between Los Anchorage and lovely Hope, Alaska. It was about 10:45 night and the last, or nearly last light. We were on the rough "Dirt" road that was the Hope Road. Roughly mile 9'ish. We saw a large'ish Black Bear cross the road, and we pulled up and stopped at the spot.
Now Lance and the other guy both had .22 LR pistols only, for executing Porky-pines. I had a Winchester model 100 in .308 Win. w/ a tip-off scope. (Those tip-off mounts were popular back fifty years ago)
So we are all on the passenger's side of the truck, and we are listening to this God awful crying and thrashing just fifteen or twenty feet away. It went on and on, and we figured that it was a sow spanking and driving cubs up a tree.
It was almost "full" dark, then suddenly we could hear the crashing coming towards us, In one heart beat a bear busted out of the dark woods/alders/willows from about six or eight feet, coming straight a Lance T. With out a split second for thinking, from the hip I shot the bear as it was with-in a foot or two of Lance T.
The muzzle of the rifle was an inch or two from the bears chest. The bear turned and went 180* the way it had come, back into the dark woods.
Now all Hell broke-out 15 feet away, crying and thrashing, and crashing, and it is now dark-dark. The story is getting long, so I'll wrap it up. I tipped off the scope, went in after the wounded bear (Which was hit center behind the shoulder). I skillfully missed the badly wounded bear three times form 12 feet with iron sights. The bear was just thrashing around NOT coming at me. I eventually flipped the scope back up, and could clearly see the bear through the scope and finished it.
OK, This is what is educational. There were NO bear cubs. The first thing I encountered on entering the woods was a day old moose calf that had a bite in the small of the back and still very alive but paralyzed. Next at about 10 feet was the wounded bear thrashing around, and a P!zzed'off cow that was about 12 feet away and lurching at the bear. The calf was crying, the cow was exhaling hard, and the bear was flopping around and crying also.
We figured that what happened is that we had not seen the cow and calf cross the road, only the bear right behind. And after the bear bit the calf in the small of the back, the cow charged the bear, and the bear retreating from the cow ran straight at Lance T. The bear was trapped between the truck and the cow.
