My very first meeting with a grizzly bear occurred when I shot a caribou in Alaska in 1985. I had backpacked by myself approximately six miles from the Denali highway east of Denali National Park. On the third day I was making my last trip in to pack out the remaining meat and the horns. I arrived at the head and horns first as I had drug it approximately 300 yards away from the meat in the hopes of keeping a bear from packing it off. I had seen a lot of Griz scat on my trail for the past couple of days and knew they had been in the area within the past week. I used my pack saw to remove the horns and as I was sawing away, I heard a noise and looked up to see a Griz sow and cub standing about 50 yards away.
I happened to be by the only large rock in the area, about eight feet square and eight feet high. The sow didn't show any aggression, just stood there looking at me, trying to figure out what I was. I felt comfortable enough that I reached over, grabbed my coat and climbed up the backside of the boulder.
I was seriously regretting that I had left my rifle back at the truck and only had my .44 mag revolver. I left the rifle because the weight of the remaining meat and the size of the horns strapped to my pack were going to make it difficult to get through the brush on the way down. I thought being on the top of the rock gave me some protection, in that it was high enough that I didn't think she could jump right up on it and the sides were all vertical with only small indentations that I used to get up. I figured if she came after me, I'd have a pretty good chance on the high ground.
I yelled at her and waved my arms, letting her know I was a human and not some tasty pastrami on rye. She stood up, sniffed the air and then started bouncing herself up and down with her front legs. Like I said, this was my first Griz encounter, but, that didn't look good. I only had 12 rounds for my 44 and really did not want to waste any rounds in case I needed them, but fired a shot into the air. She just stood there, so I fired off another. At this, she looked at me like "That all you got?"
She started walking away and had gone about 100 yards, but the cub had not moved. After all, I was probably his first experience with a human. He was curious and mom didn't seem too scared. I yelled and waved my arms some more, which probably bored him to the point that he decided to catch up to the sow. The two of them started walking off when I realized they were headed down to the trail that I was using to get back down. I didn't like the idea of walking down that brushy trail with 50 lbs of raw meat strapped to my back so I fired a round about 10 feet in front of them. It took four more shots, but she finally turned and headed up the mountain slope and I stayed where I was and watched as they climbed up and over the top about three quarters of a mile away.
"Luck" plays a huge part in bear encounters or non-encounters. I walked up to where I had left the rest of my meat and the carcass. When I arrived, it was obvious they had been feeding on all of it. My meat was gone and the carcass was partially buried. 70% of bear attacks are committed by females in defense of their cubs. The other 30% are committed by bears, (boars and sows) when they are either surprised at close range or protecting their food. There's a very, very small percentage of attacks that are committed by bears that went after humans for no apparent reason or for reasons, mistakes or stupidity of the humans. IF, I had left those horns with the meat, I would have come up over that slight rise, with the wind in my face and walked into that sow and cub at approximately 40 yards, which would have put me at about 98% of that "attacks for: protecting their cubs, surprise at close range and protecting their food." (This would have also put me into the catagory of stupidity by human, so we can change that 98% to 100%)
Tip Number One: ALWAYS get a look at a carcass or food source from as far away as possible to look for bears and when you approach be on the look out for bear sign like tracks or scat to see if they've been near it. Just because you don't see them, doesn't mean they aren't near by.
Luck played a large portion in my second "non-encounter" in 1986. I was hunting Dall Sheep a bit north of the above hunt with a friend. We had hunted from first light, had traveled about 10 miles in a big loop around camp and saw quite a few caribou and some nice Dall's, but nothing with the legal full curl. Six hours later, we were tired and headed back to camp. As we walked off of one mountain we came to a small stream, about 20 feet wide, a foot to two feet deep and lined with brush for about 30 feet on both sides. It had a good trail going down the middle of it, which we were going to use to get back to camp, until I spotted a bunch of sheep on another mountain about two miles away. We talked some, my partner was beat and did not want to make the trek to determine if there were any legal rams, but I was determined to check them out. He finally decided to go with me rather than returning alone to camp because of bears.
We crossed the creek, clambered up the steep bank and rested. As we were getting our breath back, I looked back at the creek and noticed some movement about a hundred yards below where we crossed. I chucked a rock in that direction and yelled. A Grizzly stood up and looked over the brush in our direction. The brush was about six feet high and her chin just cleared the tops so I estimated her at close to seven feet tall. I yelled again and she dropped down out of sight. She then came out of the brush about 150 yards away on the far side of the creek from us. What we thought was one bear turned out to be five. I still don't know if this is normal, but she had two cubs that were just tall enough that when she stood up, they stood up and wrapped their arms around her legs and their heads were at about her knees. There were also two other young bears that appeared to be about a year and a half old. I yelled again and the sow dropped down and ran like hell up and over the hill.
Tip Number Two: When you are in bear country, if you have an alternate route that might be a bit more difficult, but provides you with better visibility and standoff..take it. Don and I could have used almost any other route to get back to camp. We were just tired and knew the trail would be the easiest. Sometimes "easy" is not "best."
More "GrizzTails" tomorrow
Till then, live well, hunt hard.
Ron
No comments:
Post a Comment