Bear Hunting

As I lay on the ground behind a small pile of branches, trying to be invisible, the adrenalin was surging. A big black bear should come out anytime.

This was some years ago, up here, in the Peace River District of Northern Alberta.

Something about bears had always excited me, ever since the day when my grandparents pulled an old worn toy bear out of a closet for us kids to play with. It had casters under the paws and we could ride on it. When we pulled the cord coming out of its back, it growled. Since those days I had shot a good number of bears.

We had found the remains of a moose and a large dead bear beside it. Friends told us that there had been two bears feeding on the moose; one large and the other "EXTRA large." And somebody had shot the large bear.

Since the large black bear had been shot, I planned to ambush the smaller one so toward late afternoon I positioned myself behind the small pile of branches to wait for the bear to come up the trail toward me and the moose carcass.

Suddenly there was movement down the trail. Bear ears. Then, a bear's head followed by shoulders, then legs as the bear came up a small rise in the trail and into better view. Soon he was fully visible, some 100 yards away, coming straight toward me. He looked very large. My 7mm Remington Magnum rifle seemed inadequate. His great head moved from side to side as he warily approached. He kept coming and growing. I trembled with excitement. The view through the Bushnell 4x scope was most impressive, if not scary. If anything went wrong.... The trees were small poplar, too flimsy to climb. There was not another soul for miles. It was up to the Remington and me alone. I was committed.

Then he was about 50 yards off and turned to his right to leave the trail and approach the moose. As he turned broadside I put the crosshairs on his chest and fired. For an instant the rifle's recoil made me lose sight of him. But, he had dropped without moving a muscle. Like a ton of bricks had dropped on him. It was over. With rubbery knees I approached and touched an eye with the rifle's muzzle. He was dead. I was the "hero" again. Then I realized that I had not shot the smaller of the two bears. This one was far larger than the other!! He looked as big as the moose.

By the time I had gotten some help, it was dark so the pictures I took were pretty bad. It took six of us to haul him into the back of a truck. Skinning him took awhile too. The hide measured about 8 feet and the skull, officially measured after three months' drying, measured 20 2/16. That means the width plus length totaled 20 2/16 inches. I entered him in the Rod and Gun Club a few years later and won a gold medal. The local newspaper did a write-up on it also.

The bear you see here had torn a hole in a granary, and was feeding there.

Then, one day on a bear hunting trip, things changed. I stalked a 200 pound black bear until it was well within range, put the crosshairs on him and fired. It dropped. As I approached the dead bear it breathed its last, and trembled a little, and the thought crossed my mind, how would I like a piece of jagged, hot shrapnel rammed with tremendous force through my body? How would I like the feeling of blood pumping out of my chest and filling my lungs, pouring out of my nose and mouth? The thought went deep. Did I really need these bears? We were no longer eating them as we had earlier.

In the following years, I shot a good number of other bears, one of which also measured 20 2/16. Some were small, one or two were brown, some had fantastic hides, some not. I even got my son, Dave, to come bear hunting and let him shoot one out of a tree with a revolver when he was only eight.

The thought stayed with me and as time went by, I became more and more sure that I would not like to have a bullet tear through my body. Would a bear be any different? Just because the bear did not look like me or speak our language, did that mean it had no feelings? To assume that bears did not suffer from my hunting would seem like extreme ignorance on my part.

Does it take a lot of skill or bravado to kill a bear with a rifle or bow/arrow? I think not. Hunting them with camcorder takes a lot more skill and perhaps more bravado, since you cannot protect yourself very well with a camcorder. Camcorders don't shoot 7mm bullets very well. Now I can shoot the same bear year after year and it doesn't hurt the bear very much. The videos can be enjoyed year after year and shared with others. The "hunt" is still very much there; the excitement is better; the stalk is there; the right to say "Bear, I gotcha!" If you have never tried it, take my word for it; it gives you a terrific feeling once you have stalked a bear and got within 30 yards of it, to watch it and then stand up and shout "GOTCHA!" at the bear, allowing him/her to run off.

What you see here is the second-largest bear I ever shot; it was about 600 pounds. Two of us had great difficulty rolling him over to skin him

That final bear did it for me. I never killed another one "for sport." That is not to say that I do not kill one if it is causing problems. BUT, I found a far better way to hunt bears. I will never stop hunting them, but now I hunt them with the camera.

This is my first really big one; his skull was officially measured at 20 2/16 inches.

And I no longer need to wait for hunting seasons, buy licenses or worry about bag limits.

Some of my tapes show as many as nine moose in one field, feeding; cows, bulls and calves. Others show deer so close that all you can see is hair." Even coyotes make good video. Elk are a treat, as are Grizzly bears.

Occasionally, hunting with the camcorder has fringe benefits. They say that each of us is entitled to our "15 minutes of fame." Well, my camcorder has assured that for me. In the fall of 1991 John and I went out and found a young bull moose tangled in a fence. We video taped ourselves releasing it and NBC's show "I Witness Video" was so impressed that they sent a 3-man crew up from Los Angeles to interview us. This clip was seen all over North America and in Europe. Since then it has been picked up by other TV shows as well, including Fred Trost's show, "The Practical Sportsman" and, early in 1999, Fox's Family Channel showed it on "Life, Camera, Action."

One fall I shot, at close range, near my cabin, a large black mother bear (with camera, of course) with two cubs; one brown and one yellow. The cubs, at one point, stood on their hind legs, side by side, giving me some of my best footage to date. In the background were nine muledeer. If I'd used a rifle, they would have been destroyed; wasted.

If I had not shot so many bears in past years, there would be more of them for me to photograph now. If I'd only smartened up sooner.... Keep watching, you may see me on TV if you have not done so already.

Some years after all the above, a GRIZZLY BEAR came by my land. He spent a few days sleeping 150 yards from my brother's house and at night he would raid the granaries. The Fish & Wildlife experts came and live-trapped him and he was released elsewhere. Here he is:

You can see a lot more of his pictures at http://www.sticksite.com/grizzly/

NOW.......... if you know any bear hunters, why not tell them about this site?

ken@sticksite.com