This story, “Face to Face,” appeared in the July 1968 issue of Outdoor Life.
EVEN IF ITS HAIR isn’t bristling the wrong way, a 300-pound bear standing on his hind feet is a spine-chilling thing to look in the eye at 10 feet — especially if he’s looking right back at you and your rifle is jammed.
I know, for that’s what confronted me on a hunt in the Baraga district on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula last October.
As with all our bear hunts, we had planned that one for action and sport, and we needed a couple of bears for eating. We hoped to put meat in the freezer. I had no inkling that the hunt would put me into the tightest spot I’ve ever been in during more than 20 years of hunting bears with dogs.
I helped to organize the Michigan Bear Hunters Association in 1946, and I was president of the group until I resigned in 1963. By that time it had a membership of 4,000. The association is militantly interested in adequate protection for trophy game.
By tradition, roast bear is served as the main dish at the association’s annual banquet. Unless you have tried bear properly prepared and cooked, don’t turn up your nose. Some 600 sportsmen attended the dinner at Lake City last January, for example, and I didn’t see anyone push his plate aside, and the plates didn’t need much washing afterward. Our Baraga hunt started out like many a bear hunt. We found the fresh track of a big heavy bear the first morning.
The tracks were printed deep in the wet sand of an old trail a couple of miles west of U.S. 41. We turned our six dogs loose, and they went over the nearest hill full tilt and were out of hearing in a matter of minutes.
That’s how the hunt began. How it wound up was another matter.
I have kept and hunted with a top flight pack of bear dogs since 1946, mostly in northern Michigan and a few times in northern Wisconsin. I de scribed my methods and told why I rate the black bear the greatest big-game animal in North America for a hound man in “Best Way To Hunt Bear” in OUTDOOR LIFE for September 1959.
Bear hunting and conservation are my two first loves, and I’d hardly know which one to put first. I’m 56 years old, and I earn my living at Grand Rapids as general agent for an insurance company. I was appointed to the Michigan Conservation Commission in 1963, and it was then that I resigned as president of the Bear Hunters Association. I was made chairman of the commission in 1967, and I’m still serving as a commissioner. It’s a nonsalaried post but one that carries major responsibility for the management of the state’s re sources. I enjoy the job thoroughly.
In 22 fall hunting seasons, my dogs have been in on the kills of well over 200 bears, and I have witnessed at least half of them. I have seen bears treed, bears wounded, and bear-dog fights galore. I have shot several bears and seen others shot at point-blank range, but this hunt I’m talking about brought me and a bear together under very different circumstances. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. There were no dogs around to keep the bear busy. I was on my own with a useless gun, and I don’t mind admitting that it shook me up.
Danny Porter from Boon, Michigan; Jack Mish of Manistee; Barney Bar bour from Southfield, a suburb of Detroit; and Carl Imhoff of Lakeview were with me. Danny has kenneled my dogs and helped me train them for years. Carl, Jack, and Barney have hunted bears with me many times. At Baraga we were joined by John McGinty, a local conservation officer who is familiar with the area we intended to hunt.
The six hounds we were using Rowdy, Lightning, Joker, Sparky, Preacher, and Skip — were all Walkers, and they were all tough and experienced bear dogs.
The dogs drove the bear west into a big chunk of roadless country, and an hour after they went out of hearing we reached the rim of the Sturgeon River Gorge. We had been told that it would be almost impossible to follow the dogs and kill a bear there, and our first glimpse confirmed the warnings.
The gorge is an unusual place for northern Michigan. Lying some 15 miles inland from Lake Superior, it is four or five miles long and has no roads or crossing places. The east wall, the side from which we approached, is a sheer rock cliff 200 to 300 feet high. There are very few places where a man can climb up or down, and doing it means hanging onto trees growing out of an almost vertical wall.
I had heard of deer hunters who shot bucks down in the gorge and then spent the better part of a day winching them up the cliff with the help of a jeep. When I looked down from the rim, the stories were easy to believe. Later that day, it was to take me close to half an hour of the hardest kind of work to scale that cliff.
The gorge looked a mile or two wide, and on the west side beyond the Sturgeon I saw rugged but less steep hills. In that direction, however, the nearest road was miles away.
IT TOOK US three hours to locate the dogs. We followed the rim of the gorge until we found a place where we could climb down at some risk to our necks. Then we pushed west in the direction We thought the chase had taken. Finally we heard our hounds on the far side of the river. They had the bear at bay and were fighting him on the ground.
That gorge, once we got down into it, was as fine a bear territory as I have seen in all my years of hunting. It was rough country to get through — thick brush, high hills alternating with wet bogs and beaver ponds, small creeks, and many springs — but it was a black bear paradise. There were oak ridges thick with acorns, an abundance of berries and wild cherries, stumps and logs to supply ants, and even hornet nests to knock down. A bear could stay there the year round, find every thing he required, and go unmolested. The gorge is little used by hunters or fishermen.
It was evident that many bears were living there permanently. Their well worn trails ran everywhere around the beaver ponds and along the river, and bear dung was all over the place. We crossed one beaver da1n that the bears had packed down as hard as a side walk. The tracks on those trails ranged from cub-size up to real busters. Be fore we had been in the gorge long, I realized that you could walk the trails and pick the bear you wanted to run, from the size of his track. I had never seen a place like it.
The Sturgeon was hard to cross. The water was deep and fast, but Barney Barbour and I finally found a stretch of rapids we could wade and then headed for the bear fight.
THE DOGS HAD cornered the black in a spot that was tough to reach — thick swamp with one beaver pond after an other. They had held him there for at least two hours, but just how big he was and what he looked like I still don’t know, because the bear got his second wind when we were almost there, broke bay, and took off down the Sturgeon.
He ran north the length of the gorge. We followed for a while, but couldn’t hear the dogs for the noise the river made. At last we gave up, hiked back to the cliff, and found where we could pull ourselves to the top. We picked up our dogs at dark, 10 miles away. For all our fast start, the first day of the hunt left us skunked.
Conditions were ideal the next morning. It was a cool, cloudy day with no wind, damp enough for the dogs, and still enough so that with any luck we could keep them in hearing. We headed straight for the gorge.
On a sand trail running along the rim, we found a big track and turned loose. The hounds made their way down the cliff on a bear trail and were at the bottom in minutes. The dogs were running a hot track with all stops out.
The climb down took us longer, but Danny Porter, Jack Mish, and I weren’t too far behind the pack. The dogs caught the bear in less than half an hour. When we got close to the fight, we found a big beaver flooding in our way, and I suggested we split up and come in from three sides.
There was a lot of shintangle under foot — a miserable place to get through. I was still a few hundred yards from the dogs when the bear broke bay and ran for the river. He crossed it, and I lost contact with the hounds.
I knew the way the dogs had gone, however, so I waded the river and kept after them. Jack and Danny had not heard the dogs cross the Sturgeon and had no notion which way the bear had gone, so they did not attempt the cross ing. If the dogs could overtake the black again and I located them, I’d be alone with the dogs and the bear.
I didn’t hear the hounds for the better part of an hour. I got into a rough area of spruce, hemlock, and hardwood timber that was laced with gullies, springs, waterholes, and bear trails. For a while I ran along one trail; then I stopped to catch my breath and listen for the dogs. I caught their distant baying once more, faint and far off. The sound told me that the bear was still running, and I started in that direction at a trot.
What happened next surprised me so much that I could hardly believe my eyes. No more than 50 or 60 feet ahead of me, three small bears in single file bounced suddenly through the brush and across the bear trail I was follow ing. I put on my brakes, expecting a fully grown bear to follow right behind. The cover was so thick that I didn’t get a good look at the three youngsters. They might have weighed 60 pounds each or 100. Anyhow, they would have made good eating, but Michigan law gives cubs full protection. Long before that regulation was put into effect, the Michigan Bear Hunters Association adopted a firm rule against killing cubs. In fact hunters in my parties have never shot cubs, and we often let yearlings of 75 to 100 pounds go. In
our book the black bear is a trophy animal, and a small one does not make a good trophy. We urge hunters not to take bears unless they are fully grown. Nor do we shoot sows accompanied by cubs. A law protecting sows has been talked of in Michigan, and other states have tried it.
Also, tests have proven that by the time hunting seasons open in the fall even cubs born that year are able to get by without their mother. By then they are feeding on acorns and beechnuts, and the she bear has taught them all the tricks they need to know. Michigan game men have demonstrated this self-sufficiency of cubs by placing them on islands by themselves. They come out of hibernation the following spring in good shape. Nevertheless, killing a sow that has a cub along goes against my grain.
I stood there trying to figure out what had spooked the three youngsters and wondering what was going to happen next. Then, over a ridge 75 yards away, can1e a full-grown bear that weighed about 300 pounds.
The bear ,vas just lumbering along leisurely downhill toward me. I could still hear my dogs, and I decided instantly that they were running the approaching bear. Somehow the black had gained a long lead, and being tired from the chase and the fight earlier, the bear was taking its time.
My assumption was all wrong. This bear and the one the dogs were after were two different animals. I had blundered into this one by sheer accident, but I had no way of knowing that until the whole thing was over.
I’ve shot enough bears so that I no longer care much about it, and if possible I try to pass the opportunity along to some other hunter in my party. That way he can take home a trophy of his own, a bearskin rug that really belongs to him. We needed bear meat, however, and here was 300 pounds of it.
The bear crossed the trail. At about 40 or 50 feet, the animal heard me or caught my scent. The bear stopped in a thicket of brush and shintangle where I could barely make out its outline. Then the black stood there looking in my direction.
I didn’t see the three cubs again, and I’ll never know for sure whether the big bear was their mother. That would seem to be the most logical explanation for the way the bear behaved, but I don’t think that was the case. The old bear was traveling fully 200 yards be hind the young ones and was plenty big enough to be a male. I believe I was dealing with a boar.
My expectation was that the dogs would come barreling along on the track. But that didn’t happen, and I decided I had waited long enough. I’d collect my bear meat while I could.
I held on the shoulder and touched off a shot. He didn’t go down and didn’t even flinch, so far as I could tell, but I didn’t think I could have missed at that range. I figured that the bear was so hard hit that he was stunned. I know now that my 200-grain softpoint was deflected by the brush. It certainly didn’t hit the bear.
I was carrying a .401 Winchester self-loading rifle, no longer made, and that had a lot to do with what was coming.
I don’t mind in the least paying $1,000 for a good bear dog, but I’ve always been conservative when it comes to buying firearms. I guess that’s because it’s more fun in my book to run a bear than to shoot one. My first rifle was an old .303 British that I bought for $12 when I was 18 for my first deer hunt. I carried it until I started bear hunting, and then my wife decided I ought to have an autoloader for security’s sake. I guess she thought that a life-insurance man should carry life insurance himself, so she surprised me with the .401 for Christmas.
It’s upsetting to take an easy stand ing shot at an animal and get no reaction. I’ve known deer hunters who got a hard case of buck fever for no better reason. I watched the bear for a few seconds, completely baffled. Then I started to move toward him as quietly as I could.
I was 30 feet from the bear when he reared up to his full height on his hind legs, took a quick look at me over the brush, dropped dOvn once again, and started for me. He was so heavy he waddled, and he didn’t come more than halfway before he stopped and reared up again.
I didn’t feel any concern, still hear my dogs and was sure they’d come tearing through the brush any second, grab the bear by the seat of the pants, and take his attention off me. I remember thinking, “What a fool bear!”
THEN I HAD a perfect shot into chest below the white patch on throat at 15 feet with nothing in way. Through the open sights of the .401, the animal looked as big as a barn. I squeezed the trigger and heard a distinct click.
It was no fault of the rifle. Any firearm used on a bear hunt has to take hard use, and that forenoon I had some how gotten sand into the clip. The spring would no longer push a shell up so that the self-loading mechanism would move it into the chamber, but I didn’t find all that out until later.
I worked the action by hand and thought I heard a shell go home. pulled the trigger again and heard an other click.
The bear did not move or growl, but he was giving me a very hard look. I’d been told that a bear will not charge a 1nan who is bigger than the animal is. I know better, and anyway, at five feet seven and 140 pounds, I was a long way from being bigger than that bear. I’ve never felt more helpless. I stood there wondering whether to run or hit him over the head if he came for me, and yet I knew that running would do no good. I glanced down at the rifle. The clip and action looked all right, and I had no idea what was wrong. I don’t suppose the whole thing took more than 30 seconds, but it seemed many minutes to me. Then the bear dropped down on all fours and moved off into the ferns and brush.
I rapped on the clip, worked the action, and again thought that I heard a shell seat home in the chamber. Then I followed the bear. He got out of sight, and I started to run after him. I still wanted that bear meat. He suddenly stood up above the brush again, so close that I almost collided with him. Then he dropped down, took two or three businesslike steps toward me, and reared up again.
We were only 10 feet apart, closer than we had been at any time. I put the front bead on the white crescent on his throat and pulled the trigger for the third time. For the third time, I heard a sharp click.
Very few hunters have ever looked a bear in the eye at 10 feet under such circumstances, and it’s hard to tell those who haven’t what the sensation is like.
I still had my rifle in my hands, and I suppose it is instinctive for a hunter to feel secure so long as he has his weapon, but I do know that this was the most blood-thinning minute I have ever lived through. If the bear’s hair wasn’t standing up, I’m sure mine was.
I can’t say he acted vicious, but he certainly gave no sign of being afraid. He didn’t growl or snarl, and he looked more quizzical than enraged. He tilted his head to one side for a better look, and I saw his nose twitch as he tried for scent of me. To this day, I can’t help wondering whether I was the first man he had ever run into and whether my shot was the first he had ever heard at close range. I was in a very remote area.
Whatever his intentions were, I’d had enough dealings with bears to know that I was in an extremely tight corner. For example, on a hunt in 1957, I killed a 200-pounder when she broke away from my dogs, came raging at me, went down after my first shot at five feet, and then pulled the muzzle of my rifle away with the claws of a fore foot and hung on. I managed to shove the gun against her chest and finish her. I told the story in, “Black Anger,” OUTDOOR LIFE, May 1962.
On my strange hunt last year, as I stood there while the bear tried to scent me at 10 feet, I suddenly remembered the spare clip loaded with four shells I was carrying in my pocket. The thought flashed through my mind, and instantly my confidence flowed back. I yanked the jammed clip out, replaced it with the other, and chambered a shell. I made sure that cartridge was where it belonged, and looked back at the bear. He was gone.
In the two or three seconds I had taken my eyes off him, he had melted into the brush.
I TRIED TO follow, but the river noise covered his retreat. Although I imagined I could see him watching me from behind every tree, I didn’t catch another glimpse of him. I gave up finally, and stopped and thought the whole thing over.
“I guess the Good Lord wanted both of us to live,” I said aloud to myself. “We’ll have to get another bear for our banquet.”
That should have been the end of the story, but there was one more big chunk of excitement to come.
I walked out of those swamp thickets along an old brush-grown logging trail, and at the end of an hour I heard my dogs once more, a mile away. When I got close enough I could tell they were fighting their bear on the ground.
I broke over a knoll into a dry creek bed and found myself at ring side of the most wicked bear-dog fight I have ever witnessed.
The bear was bigger than the one I had already met, and it was mad to the roots of its tail. The dogs were swarm ing all over it, grabbing fur wherever they could, and the bear was snarling and cuffing and swatting them off. It’s almost impossible under those conditions to get in a shot without hitting a dog, and I moved in to about 15 feet before I tried.
A BEAR AT bay may have no fear of dogs, but he dreads man. Usually he’ll try to get away if he can. This one didn’t do that, but he did swing around to face me, and I whacked a shot into his chest, point-blank.
I have killed a good many bears in their tracks with such shots, but I only infuriated that one. The crack of the rifle made the dogs wilder than ever. As they tore into him, the bear fought back as though he welcomed them.
I had started out that morning with nine shells, one in the chamber, four in each clip. I had fired one in my first encounter. On the way to the second ruckus, I had unloaded the jammed clip, cleaned out the sand, and reloaded it, so I arrived on the scene with eight rounds. I hammered three more into the bear without knocking him off his feet. I guess he was pumping up so much adrenalin that he didn’t realize he was being hit.
With all the hounds goaded to recklessness, my dog Joker made the mis take of grabbing the bear by the side of the head and hanging on. For a sec ond or two the hound swung like a flail, but then the bear slammed Joker onto the ground and got him by the throat. I was never more than 10 or 15 feet away from the bear, circling, dodging in and out, staying out of the bear’s reach, and placing a shot whenever I could. Then, with the bear’s attention riveted on the luckless dog, I jumped in close and emptied my last clip.
It’s hard to believe, but it took a total of eight cartridges, all I had, to put that bear down. I fired the last one into his head at the butt of an ear, with the muzzle of the Winchester almost touching him, and he finally folded. The bear was stone dead when he hit the ground.
Rowdy and Lightning were bleeding from bites and claw cuts, all of the dogs were worn to a frazzle, and Joker was badly hurt. We got him out of the gorge and rushed him to an animal hospital at Houghton. He was in shock when we arrived there, but he’s a tough bear hound and came out of it all right.
Read Next: I Was Attacked by a Grizzly. That Bear Cost Me 101 Stitches
We killed four bears before the week long hunt was over, more than enough for the banquet. We earned all four of them, but the bear I’ll remember the rest of my life is the one that got away, the one that looked me in the eye at 10 feet.
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