Watch Your Six!

[IronNoggin]

Timely Hunting Season Reminder.

This picture was recently sent to me by a lifelong buddy:

In his words:

My son shot a moose in a spot with shoulder high brush and thick alders. We felt because of the number of bears, an hour until dark, we needed a dedicated bear watch. We made the trip back home, got the pre-loaded MRU2 ( moose recovery unit 2 ) and collected the other LEH group hunt member. I got my slug gun, and a box of Brenneke slugs. We grabbed some very bright spot lights and headed back out.

An hour of chainsaw work in the dark got us to within 75 yards. Then with my son shining a bright light over my shoulder I advanced through the brush towards the moose with a round in and the safety off, shotgun up and ready. We could literally only see 6 feet ahead in most places. We had tied a thin rope with a reflective strand in it to the antler and tossed it up into the alders above the downed animal. This was a great marker as we could locate it from 50 yards back in the pitch black as the relective rope was tangled in the alders branches several feet above the top of the brush. With no bear found at the site we chainsawed our way the last 75 yards and dragged it out to a place where we had at least some hope of spotting a prowling bear.

It is quick business when you are set up for moose recovery so we weren’t in the little clearing long. 45 minutes perhaps at the most. I scanned about when I could, the bear watch scanned most of the time, and just before we were ready to start loading the moose my son took a picture of me working on cutting the critter in half and our bear watch in the background. Look straight off his left shoulder at the pair of eyes caught by the camera flash. We never even knew it was there. And for reference that brush it’s in is almost to your elbows.

My thoughts:

Spooky as hell. That bear was big. He was less than 15 yards from the crew.
He was analyzing the situation to determine if the risk was worth the prize.
In this case, with 3 men involved, he thankfully chose to not gamble.

If he had been alone, or perhaps even with just two of you, he may well have made a different choice.

ALWAYS watch your six!

Cheers

 

[Marbles]

Nice photo, glad it was only post hoc you learned about the company.

 

[Shadow14]

Geeeeeezzzz

 

[OldGrayWolf]

Getting more dangerous all the time to be out there alone. In the last month, two men have been killed by black bears in Arkansas while camping. The last one a couple weeks ago was from Springfield, Mo, 60 years old. He was camping near Fayetteville, Ar, and texted his family pics of a large young bear walking by his camp. Two days later he stopped responding to texts, so family sent the sheriff out to check. He had been dragged from his camp into the woods and killed. A couple weeks before that it was a 72 year old man that was killed.

I am in SW MO, an hour NE of Springfield, and we have seen bear and mountain lion both on our property, the cat was in our yard in daylight. Bears have been photographed in town in daylight here. I used to carry a 9mm in case of feral humans, now I carry a .357(town or woods) or the SBH .44(hunting or hiking) to cover the possible threats. Wife carries bear spray and her 9mm when walking with the dog now. Really a slim chance, but that is small comfort when its you getting clawed and bit.

 

[Mr. October]

Eh. . Smokey just wanted to photo bomb.

 

[willtim]

Chills.

 

[Maverick1]

Guy on the left looks like a supervisor at work. Just standing there, eating a pickle.

Shouldn’t he (and the other lookout / supervisor) have been facing the other way, with his firearm in the ready position?

 

[ozyclint]

It's not a bear, just a poltergeist

 

[jayhawk]

I think I’d get a new bear watcher guy

 

[MontyMontana]

Ah heck no!!

 

[sierracharlie338]

Someone is always watching. Bears, mountain lions, big brother…………………….

 

[doc holiday13]

Bear was just lookign to Photo Bomb.. Super glad it turned out safely

 

[mod700]

Glad it worked out, after getting between a sow and her cubs while bow hunting ( no sidearm) some years back, got a whole new respect for those.
Mike

 

[rustneversleeps]

Getting more dangerous all the time to be out there alone. In the last month, two men have been killed by black bears in Arkansas while camping. The last one a couple weeks ago was from Springfield, Mo, 60 years old. He was camping near Fayetteville, Ar, and texted his family pics of a large young bear walking by his camp. Two days later he stopped responding to texts, so family sent the sheriff out to check. He had been dragged from his camp into the woods and killed. A couple weeks before that it was a 72 year old man that was killed.

I am in SW MO, an hour NE of Springfield, and we have seen bear and mountain lion both on our property, the cat was in our yard in daylight. Bears have been photographed in town in daylight here. I used to carry a 9mm in case of feral humans, now I carry a .357(town or woods) or the SBH .44(hunting or hiking) to cover the possible threats. Wife carries bear spray and her 9mm when walking with the dog now. Really a slim chance, but that is small comfort when its you getting clawed and bit.

I’m pretty sure the majority of guys aren’t afraid of the midwestern black bears…we are talking about the brown variety…

 

[pacoalcracker]

far more people get killed by black bears than the brown varieties. only 2 reasons a blackie attacks you....a sow protecting the cubs and she is likely only going to bluff charge you and maybe rough you up a bit, and the one that is going to try and kill and eat you.

 

[RMM]

far more people get killed by black bears than the brown varieties. only 2 reasons a blackie attacks you....a sow protecting the cubs and she is likely only going to bluff charge you and maybe rough you up a bit, and the one that is going to try and kill and eat you.

According to wikipedia, since 2010 there have been 28 fatal grizzly attacks in the US compared to 22 fatal black bear attacks...

 

[Marbles]

far more people get killed by black bears than the brown varieties. only 2 reasons a blackie attacks you....a sow protecting the cubs and she is likely only going to bluff charge you and maybe rough you up a bit, and the one that is going to try and kill and eat you.

Browns kill and attack more people. But, most black bear attacks are predatory, while browns are just pissed you exist were you are.

There are 20x as many black bears than browns in North America, yest browns still account for more attacks and fatalities in absolute numbers.

 

[wind gypsy]

Getting more dangerous all the time to be out there alone. In the last month, two men have been killed by black bears in Arkansas while camping. The last one a couple weeks ago was from Springfield, Mo, 60 years old. He was camping near Fayetteville, Ar, and texted his family pics of a large young bear walking by his camp. Two days later he stopped responding to texts, so family sent the sheriff out to check. He had been dragged from his camp into the woods and killed. A couple weeks before that it was a 72 year old man that was killed.

That is wild that there were 2 black bear fatalities in a month in the same area. There was that cocaine bear movie, maybe AR meth bears is the sequel?

 

[grfox92]

450,000 black bears in the lower 48.

2,000 grizzly bears in the lower 48.

22 fatal black bear attacks and 28 fatal Grizzly attacks since 2010.

Im not any kind of math wizzard, but I can say statistically speaking, black bears dont attack people, and grizzly bears do.

Sent from my SM-G990U using Tapatalk

 

[Mr. October]

450,000 black bears in the lower 48.

2,000 grizzly bears in the lower 48.

22 fatal black bear attacks and 28 fatal Grizzly attacks since 2010.

Im not any kind of math wizzard, but I can say statistically speaking, black bears dont attack people, and grizzly bears do.

Sent from my SM-G990U using Tapatalk

The big difference seems to be that when there is a bad encounter with a black bear the bear seems intent on making a meal out of a person. The grizz/bown bear attacks usually are food or space related but not (generally) about making the human a meal.