Well, while Holly was waxing rhapsodic about the rain this weekend, I was standing in a Mendocino County forest, drenched through in a set of rain gear that suddenly just quit shedding water. With another whole day of rain in the forecast, and two more days of hunting, it wasn’t looking good.
But dangit, this weather should get the deer moving, and my opportunities to hunt blacktail deer this year have been fleeting at best (two outings prior to the one I’m writing about now). I was stoked… shivering and sodden… but stoked.
This is my buck from a couple of years back.
My Friday evening hunt, all two hours of it, was primarily planned just to regain the lay of the land there at the Bar-Z Ranch, a Golden Ram lease that I’d had great success on a couple years back (on a similarly rainy weekend, no less). That’s him in the picture to the left.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to remember how to get to “my” spot, but after only a couple of false starts, I suddenly recognized the features and landmarks. I had time to slip into the trees and check some trails before dark, hastened by the thick cloud cover, forced me back to the truck. On the trail I found some light deer sign, but a lot of bear scat.
This is the first year I’ve ever picked up a bear tag in CA. Many years ago, as a teen, I helped a few bear hunters manage their kills, and after skinning a couple of bruins, I came to the conclusion that it seemed an awful lot like skinning a big ol’ Labrador Retriever. I know, it’s not rational, but it’s me. I lost my heart for shooting bears, although I’ve always enjoyed eating them.
Lately, though, I’ve had a little change of heart. For one thing, I really want a bear hide to make into a blanket. I made my elk skins into blankets, putting one in my camper, and giving the other to my daughter, and it really tickles me to see her bundled up in it. How cool would a big, snuggly, warm bear skin blanket be? (I’ve been really taken by collecting hides lately, by the way… they seem a much more useful trophy than a set of horns or teeth.) Besides, I really enjoy eating bear meat.
So I decided to get a tag this year, and have a go at it. There’s no rule that says I have to shoot a bear if I decide I really don’t want to… and the tag really isn’t all that expensive.
Of course, the success ratio for CA bear hunters isn’t all that great. It’s even worse for folks, like me, who aren’t hunting behind hounds. The majority of successful bear hunters (not counting houndsmen) are simply deer hunters who stumbled onto an opportunity. I figured for sure that this yellow tag in my pack would act as the finest bear repellent on the market today, so the decision to shoot or not was probably a moot point.
Which brings us back to the bear scat in the woods. Lots of it.
Saturday morning at dawn found me slinking back down the trail. As I geared up, I noticed the stars were twinkling overhead. I was relieved to see that, because my rain gear was still saturated from Friday’s downpour. I slipped on some BDUs, a light shirt, and my old Liberty hunting coat. No, my camo patterns did NOT match, so sorry to the fashion police.
A half-hour from the truck, a breeze blew a chilly drizzle under the brim of my Stetson. I looked up, and saw that the stars had disappeared completely. I thought it over, and decided to keep going. The damp ground was dead silent… perfect for stalking through the huge pines, oaks, and spruce. The wind would sigh through the tree tops periodically, creating a small cascade of water that plopped and smacked the leaves. I was able to time my movements with these little symphonies, so that when I walked up on my first deer in the gloom, I’m not sure who was more surprised… her, shocked at my silent arrival… or me, shocked at how close I’d managed to get.
Deep in the timber, I didn’t notice that the rain had started to increase until my trail led out into a big meadow, hedged by manzanita bushes and oak trees. It was an ideal feeding ground for both deer and bears, and I slowed my snail’s pace even more as my eyes picked the landscape apart. The insistent plop-plop on my hat brim sounded like gunshots in my straining ears, and I looked around for a big tree or overhanging rock. Then, to my right, I saw the bear.
He was a healthy, young-ish black fellow… long-leggity and tall, with a coat that looked full and beautiful, despite being soaking wet. He was much larger than the biggest pig I’ve ever taken, although I must admit that I’m a total novice at judging bears. I know a true boss bruin would appear to have shorter legs and a fuller body, but I wasn’t trophy hunting anyway. This was definitely not an 80-pound baby, but it wasn’t likely to top 300 pounds either. A quick, but thorough scan of the area told me this bear was solo and not a sow with cubs. In short, for me, it was a shooter.
The bear was moving parallel to my path, heading right into the open and less than 75 yards away. My 30-06 was suddenly at my shoulder, braced against the trunk of a pine tree. The crosshairs landed just at the point of his shoulder as he stopped in the open, broadside and oblivious. A 180gr ETip waited in the chamber, needing only that slight squeeze on the trigger to send it on its deadly way. This was one dead bear, and he didn’t even know it.
A second passed, followed as seconds are, by another and still another. Grains and the hour glass and all that… but a good bit of time went by.
The bear raised his head and sniffed. The wind was solidly in my face, but he wasn’t looking in my direction anyway. There was something in the meadow he didn’t like. A group of cattle huddled under an oak tree just up the trail. He took a few cautious steps, wagging that big head back and forth to test the wind. The crosshairs danced, then steadied. My fingertip could sense the ridges on the trigger-face as the muscles in my hand and forearm tensed.
Whatever he smelled was too much for him, and the bear spun back into the woods, then turned dead away from me and began to walk quickly away. There’s something comical and cute about that rolling gait. If you’ve ever seen it, you’ll know what I mean. It’s fast and powerful, but it’s just so danged odd to see such a big animal move that way.
He stopped again, about 100 yards away now, and turned broadside once more to look out into the meadow. The crosshairs caught up to him, and leveled again.
I lowered the rifle.
Now believe me… constantly, over the remainder of the weekend and most of the drive home, I puzzled over that decision. Why didn’t I shoot that bear? My first bear tag. My first bear hunt. And there he was practically in bow range.
Part of me, the practical and logical part, remembers thinking what a killer that recovery would be if I shot him. He was standing at the edge of the meadow, but the only semblance of a road was impassable to my truck (Petunia is having an engine transplant right now). If I had dropped him on the spot, he’d have been on a pretty good, open piece of flat ground. Even from there, it would have been a heck of a hump to carry him back to the main road. But if he didn’t go right down, there was a deep gorge just behind him, and a steep, densely wooded hillside just to the east. He’d end up going down one of those, and since I was hunting solo, I had some real concerns about getting him all packed out.
But, the honest part of me questions that rationale. There’s no doubt in my mind that, had that been a 300 pound boar hog, or a big-bodied buck, I’d have popped a cap in him without a second thought. The recovery is never as bad as you think it’s going to be, and I’ve definitely had harder hauls. He was big, but not monstrous. I could have probably packed him out in two trips, skin, head, and all. Hell, if I boned him out, I could probably have taken everything in one trip.
If I think back in detail to the first moments after I saw the bear, I remember a peculiar sensation just as the crosshairs found the sweet spot. It was a tightening of my chest, and a kind of lump closing up my throat. I’m not going to say my eyes teared up, but that’s sort of what the feeling was like. I always get an odd kind of elated remorse right before I pull the trigger on a big game animal, but this was different. There didn’t seem to be the elation… just the remorse.
Whatever my reasons, I let him walk. It wasn’t that bear’s day to die.
I’d like to say I redeemed myself later by shooting a nice buck, but despite coming real close to several deer over the rainy course of the day, I couldn’t find a legal set of antlers on any of them. The rain continued, ranging from downpour to mist, for the rest of Saturday. I rolled back into the campground sodden and whipped. A hot chocolate with tequila (it’s better than it sounds) and a hot shower restored my spirits somewhat, but even as I dropped off to sleep, I kept seeing that bear through the scope and wondering what happened.
The rain pretty much stopped on Sunday, but despite high expectations of deer coming out of the woodwork, it didn’t really happen. I found a likely spot that I’d really like to get back to this season, but that’s all up in the air.
I’m not sure that the next bear that steps out like that will walk away like this one did. I sure found myself wishing I’d taken the shot… after the fact, of course. I guess only time will tell. But for now, the memories of this one will definitely last a long time. And I guess that’s about as good a “trophy” as any I’ll ever take.
