A few years back the wife and I were working as contractors to the USFS caretaking various public lands in Oregon. Hot springs and camp grounds and the like. I ended up meeting a dude who was also a bear hunting fanatic but being from the Ozarks I had never had the opportunity to spot and stalk bears - all of my guiding experience was over bait and/or involved problem critter removal. So, I was very much over my head in regard to bears out West.
One of our repeat campers and I became friends and he eventually gave me some GPS points near his place in central OR after him and his son tagged out opening weekend. I make the 90 min drive and get to the timber company gate an hour before first light. I know I've got a 90 min uphill hike along this very overgrown logging trail to get to a glassing point that he told me about. The trail was basically a linear briar patch on what used to be a skid trail. I was walking bear trails... eh, bear tunnels, just to get through the briars and even then, it was a real b!tch to fight one's way through. As a guy from the thickest forest and brush in the world -the Ozarks (argue about it in the comments if you want but if ya know then ya know), even I was impressed by how thick and difficult everything was.
At some point along the trail and before first light I maybe heard, maybe felt, but somehow knew, that I had bumped a bear and it was C-L-O-S-E. Close as in I took one more half step and suddenly SMELLED bear! I froze. Statue still. I could hear the bear sniffing as frantically as I was - both of us half asleep trying to figure out what disturbed us and if it was friend or foe or food.
I don't know if I should put an arrow on the string, as its archery season, or pull my revolver, because if this goes down at this distance my bow/arrow is just a pointy stick. I did both. Bow ready and load checked in the revolver. My thought was that I could just take a knee until near go time, which was minutes away from legal shooting light and just wait him out - hoping his curiosity would keep him close. I got more than I bargained for!
The bear had the same idea that I did - he kept just out of sight, by which I mean he was never more than 10 or 12 feet away but never visible either so outside of maybe 4 or 6 feet - but he kept doing bigger and bigger half circles in front of me. I suspect that he was trying to get my wind but in that early AM dead spot there wasn't any wind for him to get -just the flood of sweaty human that had preceded me by about 6 foot and woke him up in the form of my scent cone. He wanted to smell me as much as I wanted to see him.
I could tell that he was BIG. He would woof at me, pop his teeth, and I could hear him doing that weird posturing thing where they go up almost onto their back legs vertically and then smack their front paws down on the ground. The ground shook when he did that, or so it seemed in my over-adrenalized brain anyways. I understand that this behavior is to show dominance and intimidate other bears. Well, it worked on me! Keep in mind that all of this is happening in the pitch black and at less than 10 feet! (I had turned my headlamp off because I realized that while my red lens allowed me to see it also helped him figure out where I was!) I decided that the best thing I could do was back out, wait for daylight, and then try to find him again. It also seemed like a good idea to avoid tangling with a rather large bear via headlamp in a briar patch where I had zero movement. Well, that bear increased his half circle of movement, noise, and posturing until he was nearly doing a full circle around me - still thinking that I was another, smaller bear I expect. What saved my butt was that once he got fully behind me he got a nose full of sweaty and terrified human scent and lit out of there at warp speed. I was never more thankful to spook a bear off in my life - and I have spent a fair amount of time around bears between baiting em, guiding em, living with em, and doing problem bear work in a couple of states. This one scared me and I am unashamed to admit it!
The guy who gave me the GPS pin talked to me later and said that he had also been ran out of there by an aggressive bear and that a friend of his son finally got him, and he went north of 550# - which I understand is a MONSTER bear out West.
*raises glass of good brown liquor*
thanks for a great bear hunt story and I hope that you enjoy mine as much as I enjoyed yours!
