The Scary Bear

It was to be a day of hunting and chasing elk in my favorite elk hole. My best hunting partner, my wife was along to keep me company and to help old four eyes see the game before the game seen him.

It started out with sign being prevalent everywhere we went. The woods had been drier than any year I could remember and the water that was available was drying up quickly. Leaving the animals to move a lot to get water. So we were keeping an eye on a couple of the remaining water sources left on the mountain.

Traveling through the forest amounted to moving along an old forest service pack trail. There wasn't any wind so it was pin drop quite and hard to move quickly without sounding like a freight train.

Then my wife blurted out of nowhere with, what's that big black thing that looks like a horse? But before I could look and answer her question. She again said, oh my god it's a bear. That did get my attention and I looked in the direction she was pointing. There about a hundred yards away was a bear searching the forest floor for bits of anything edible. When I again looked back at my wife she was searching the skies for something. I asked her what are you doing and she said looking for a tree to climb. I had to laugh because all the trees on this mountain were old growth and were about four foot though at the butts of each of the trunks. The first branches are about fifty foot off the ground and besides the bear would be able to climb any of these faster than you could.

About this time we both looked back to see where the bear had gone. My wife's voice said it all when she again blurted out, oh my god he's coming this way. Just like we had tied a string to him he was headed directly at us and there wasn't anything between us but air. When I again turned to say something to my wife her head was moving from side to side scanning the surrounding forest for an escape route. I told her to hold still because if she made any fast motions the bear would see her and eat her. Like a statue she was frozen on the spot, not even blinking. What she didn't know was that I intended to shot this bear if it got close enough with my bow.

When I looked again the bear had closed the gap between us to about twenty yards. Now there was only one thing between our position and the bears, a single old growth tree. I was on one side and my wife held the other side hostage with her stone statuette pose. I again told her to not move for fear of the revenge of the hungry bear if she did. In my mind I thought if the bear moves to her side of the tree it will be distracted by her and I will get a shot. If it comes to my side of the tree I will be within five foot of it and can't miss. By this time the bear had moved to just the other side of the tree and was deciding which way do I go. When I looked over to my wife she looked like a hoot owl because her eyes were bugging out of her head, but she wasn't moving an inch.

The bear made his decision and came to my side of the tree and stopped for a look around. I quickly took the opportunity and drew my bow and fired in one fluid motion. The arrow headed straight and true for the bear's vitals and then as if a force field had been turned on it skipped out though the forest missing his nose by microscopic inches. The bear stood in place for a few seconds and stared directly at me as if to say, that could of hurt me buddy. As the bear ran off into memory as another one that got away, I heard behind me my wife's breath release out of her in a big gust.

My wife's first words to me were, you were going to shot that bear and it might have killed me before it died. I calmly said to her, no way bears are more afraid of us and he would have run off before anything happened like that. She said you don't know but I was praying to God you would miss that shot and the bear would run away.

Now I realized why the odds were against me from the start. I had been ganged up on, three to one God, my wife and the bear had stacked the odds against me to lose this encounter.