Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Major Bear Spray Failure: Carry A Gun !!!

They didn't come by chance, that's for sure.

I religiously carried a 35mm Canon camera, a couple lenses and a tripod every day. That's what was in that daypack on my back or slung over my saddle horn.

I used slide film and shot them by the hundreds so there are thousands of slides squirreled away in my archives.

It was a tax write off, I had to have fresh images every year for advertising my hunting and fishing trips.
When it came time to hit the road for a trip around the country to various sportsman shows I'd filter through a few hundred new slides and pull out the ones of our most recent kills and have them printed.

If it was as easy as it is today my archives would be phenomenal.
It's the images that were never captured that would be amazing.

When things got intense and the real schit was going down, I wasn't about to pull out the 35mm gear and setup a tripod.

But to slip a cell phone outta your pocket and start shooting high quality video, maybe, some times.

Twice I found myself between sow Grizzlys and their cubs.
A lot of intense moments passed by while waiting them out to make their moves.
Setting there holding my ground and my breath with a gun in one hand, might as well had a cell phone in the other.

Curious little cubs will walk right up to ya and the sows seem to wait for the last possible moment to cut them off and wisk them away after she figures your not going to do nothing stupid.

That tagged park bear had came within 4 feet of me before he met his demise. We'd hunted him hard for a few days and he wouldn't let us get so much as a glimpse of him.
Finally had to bury up in the brush in some thick schit with the right wind and made him hunt us. He got in close and knew we were there but couldn't see us or smell us so he stood up about 10 yards away to look about, that's the first time he gave us a shot, he took a round in the brisket from 300 mag.

That entire event could have been videoed.

I sat on a narrow bench one day with two hunters I was guiding for elk. We'd stopped for lunch at a scenic overlook.
We were on the edge of a 200ft or so cliff, the bench was steep, there was another cliff face about 30 yards above us, the game trail we were following was right on the edge of the lower cliff.

It was about a mile either direction to get off the bench, we were heading for a little pocket at the far end of the bench that often held game.

I looked up from my lunch and spotted a fair sized Grizzly about 200 yards away coming our direction on the game trail where we sat.

We quickly gathered our gear and made our way to the base of the rock face above us and found a small amount of cover.
There was no wind and being mid day our scent was going up.

We waited seemingly forever, when the bear got to the spot we'd been having lunch at it was as if he'd hit a brick wall.
He stood up, he looked around he woofed then dropped down and pawed at the ground and woofed again.
He was on his way pretty quickly and he sure picked up his pace.

That's one bear that would have found a false charge to have been fatal, we had three rifles pointing right at him the entire time, I'd of rolled his azz right off that cliff.

That's another event that could have made some interesting video.

I had two Black Bears attack my mules once.
It was early summer and I loaded them with food and grain I was going to drop off at a camp where we had some guests fishing at a small mountain lake.

I was just getting ready to cross the Middle Fork of the Flathead river when a couple guys came frantically running up the river screaming they needed help. They'd wrapped their raft around a large rock in the middle of the river and their guests were stranded on the rock with the raft about a mile away. I broke up my string and tied them tight and headed off to help.

It took an hour or so to get these idiot's out of their delema before I headed back to get my string.

When I got to where I could see them there was these two bears pawing at the loads of grain I had packed on them.

I didn't have a gun.

But I did have this kid from New York with me that I'd brought in to help around camp. I jumped off my horse and stared gathering rocks, told the kid to do the same.
Plan was we'd charge the bears screaming and chucking rocks to run them off.

The plan worked, except the kid never budged. As the bears departed I turned and looked and he was still standing by his horse.

I was like WTF, he said he wasn't about to attack two bears with rocks..city kids..he might as well been taking pictures, he didn't do nothing else.
Poor mules were all frazzled over that one.

Had another rodeo with a bear involved late one night.

We'd hunted all day and were making our way back to camp.
I was riding a green broke Tennessee Walker that had never been in the mountains before.
It was a favor for a friend that had bought him and found him to be more horse than he could ride. He wanted me to put some miles on him in the mountains and that I did.

We were in a tight drainage at the head of Pentagon creek and needed to climb a snow slide to get back to our camp that was setup in a high basin close to the top of Dolly Varden creek.

There wasn't a maintained saddle horse trail, you just had to make your way. I was swtichbacking up the beargrass covered slide and had made it about half way up when this Walking horse started getting wrestles. When I'd turn him to cut back the opposite way he'd try and go straight up this steep azzed slide.

He finally got the upper hand on me on a turn and he made three or four lunges straight up then just blew a cork and went up on his hind legs and rolled over backwards. I was able to step outta the saddle and skin my rifle out of the scabbard in one fail sweep and just let him go.
We lost sight of him as he rolled back down the mountain, I figured him for dead or at least a busted leg or two.

We headed down to find him, I wanted to atleast skin what might be left of my saddle off him.

When we got back down to the creek bottom he was no where in sight but it was black dark and you couldn't see anything beyond the beam of the flashlights we had so we kept looking around.

Didn't take long and this bear started woofing at us, he was a little ways away but every few minutes he'd let out a deep woof and it sounded as if he was getting closer.

There was a big pile of logs that had come down the slide with a old avalanch and sorta became tangled with a logjam beside the creek, I decided to climb on top of it to get better view point.

Low and behold, the damn horse was down in the pile of logs.
He was still breathing and his eyes were open but he wasn't moving.
Apparently he'd gotten his legs back under him on the way down the slide and just ran full tilt up into those logs.

He actually looked pretty good and so did my saddle.
We were gonna have to cut three big logs out of there to even come close to getting him out.

We started cutting, the bear kept woofing and getting closer every time.

It was flat nerve wracking, one of us would axe away while the other held a gun and a light looking for the incoming bear.

It took a while, the horse had still never moved.
Eventually we cleared a path enough to give getting the horse outta there a try, by then this bear was really close.

The audio from that event alone would have been interesting.

We kicked that Walking horse in the azz and he jumped right up outta there, walked him around for a bit and he seemed just fine.

He sure paid attention to my instruction on the way back up that slide. He was a changed animal, it took all the pizz and vinegar out of him. When I returned him to his owner he found him to be quite manageable and a pleasant ride. I know that fcker had to be one giant bruise. Poor thing had just been too high strung.

We could hear that bear as we rode all the way up that slide.

But anyway, we were talking about 35mm slides. lol.

All those woulda, coulda, shoulda pictures sure would have been grand.

I think it was 1999 or 2000 I got my first digital camera and a laptop.
It was a Kodak 1 mega pixel camera, I think the laptop was 3 gigs.

I realized I needed to do something with all those slides.
I bought a digital slide scanner and spent two weeks sitting in the Mojave Desert in my RV cleaning and scanning slides.

It's a good thing they were high quality to start with because the scanner sure wasn't and the allowable size with the limited storage options of the day took a lot away from them.

So, anyway that's how it comes to be that I have all those images in digital format.

Not sure how those slides age but there could still be a lot of good images I've over looked mixed in with them.

After I sold the outfitting business I found my way to coastal Alaska and got better digital camera gear. That's where I spent the last 23 summers and those photos are a bit better quality.



Sorry bout getting so side tracked..

Reading JeffA's post is just like reading Elmer Keith in the book Hell I Was There! Good stuff!

Glad you enjoyed the read.

JeffA needs to write a book. He reminds me of my Grandfather, a master outdoorsman.

Enjoyed it greatly Jeff. Thanks for the very interesting post.

JeffA;
Top of the morning to you sir, thanks so much for the stories and more photos.

I for one very much enjoyed the read and doubt I'm alone for sure.

Indeed if you ever write a book, I'm on the list as one who'll please purchase a copy.

By chance did you ever run into the chap I spoke of earlier, Ed Nixon? He was a packer in the Bob Marshall and wrote a handful of stories in Peterson's Hunting back in the day after he'd retired.

Like you, he painted vivid word pictures.

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

It's been interesting, thanks to all that have contributed.

Great stuff, Jeff. Thanks for posting.

Good morning, gents, and I concur with you Dwayne.

JeffA, great stories and photos. As you say, the pics never taken are the regrettable fact. I was never much of a photographer, so I have very, very few pics of my years in the back country. The ones I do have that have made it onto a digital drive are even fewer. And I do not have a single photo of any of the bears I encountered in those years. As you say, the most “interesting” bears/situations seem to be busy enough that a camera isn’t the first thing you would reach for.

You think of yourself as an outdoorsman, then you read JeffA's posts and adjust your perspective.

thanks again Jeff.



mike r

Exactly.

JeffA: The outfitter I was hanging around with in Manson Creek BC was Larry Erickson. He told me they quartered their moose kills with a chain saw.
Were y'all hunting any moose and did y'all quarter with a chain saw?

We definitely hunted Moose.
In Montana it's the Shiras which run a good bit smaller than the Moose we hunt in Alaska.
I was forchanet enough to assist this gentlemen in harvesting this Shiras Moose on the upper Middle Fork of the Flathead river.
It scored 156 0/8 placing it #5 Pope and Young for Montana.



That was in 1981 and has since been bumped down a few notches but it still places in the Montana F&G records.
There is less than one inch of deduction, it's a all but perfectly balanced bull, that's why he scored out like he did.

We'd scouted out that bull weeks ahead of season and knew he'd score well. We took him the day Archery season opened.

Years later this lucky stiff drew yet another Montana Moose tag.
Getting a tag in Montana is the hard part, finding a good bull, not so much.

We hooked up once again and I guided him to his second bull up by Red Meadow lake in the upper North Fork region of the Flathead.

That'd be the bull on the left in this image taken in his den, the P&Y bull is on the right.



They make for a handsome pair and enhance his fireplace well.

The Alaskan Moose are another thing and there I did use a small chainsaw at one time. I bought a really small saw for the task and ran olive oil in it for bar lube.

Those Moose are just so damn big..



I got away from that sort of field butchering and took to just lifting out the shoulders and hams, stripped out the loins and neck roasts and boning out the rest.

There is just too much heavy bone and you're often carrying Alaskan Moose out on your back.

Nice looking den.