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BIG BEAR, BIGGER GUN
Part 2 Story of hunting black bears in Pacific NW
Pistol Hunting article by Mark Swalley (c) 2000
The next evening I could hear something breaking leaves in the distance. So often, after sitting motionless for hours, your mind changes the sounds of chickadees and squirrels scurrying across dry leaves into record book bears. Unlike the sounds made by these smaller animals, which feed in a confined area, the noises seemed to be moving toward me. My hand suddenly tightened around the grip when I heard a stick snap maybe fifty yards out, or was it a branch just falling from a dead alder? Fifteen minutes went by and some more rustling leaves. Then another fifteen and the rustling sounded closer. It was an hour before dark and there was plenty of time for the bear (or squirrel) to make his may into the bait. I strained my ears and eyes for the next hour searching the cover for movement, a noise, or a shadow just a little blacker than it was before. This is how you get stuck in the stand after dark. A bear could just be out of sight watching the bait, but if he sees you climbing out of the tree, you can kiss the stand goodbye. The bear just will not come in when you’re there. By now, I could not even see my feet and I had given up on the sounds being a bear. I could just make out the white of one of the plastic bait buckets and decided to make a little noise before exiting the tree. I felt around at my feet and found a couple of nectarine pits. I tossed one and smacked the bucket like a drum. The dead night air exploded with the sound of a huge animal smashing down brush to get at the interloper who was rattling his porridge bowl. Two great huffs sounded no more than fifty feet away as my hair tried to jump right out of skin. A few eternal minutes went by and all was quiet again. I threw the second pit, the bucket clunked bullseye and the bear gave a huff that slid up my spine like a wet eel. The bear started moving away from the stand and then turned to circle around it at a distance of about forty yards, probably trying to wind whatever was at HIS dinner table. I figured it was time to get out of the stand now or wait until dawn. I knew at that instant he was on the opposite side of my escape route. There is no way to pass through salal without making more noise than a bear so all I could do was go a little ways, stop, and listen to make sure he wasn’t charging. I pointed the flashlight ahead and pistol behind and moved, stopped, listened, moved, stopped, listened until I covered the fifty yards to the old road, then I just MOVED the half mile back to the truck.
After Dan's experience and my own, spooking bears off the bait and trailing blood trails at night, I decided I needed to trade in the .44. Maybe Clint can blow the head off a bank robber laying wounded on the sidewalk with one, but I had heard two first hand stories of .44 bullets coming to a complete stop against black bears skulls and leg bones. With as much stopping power as factory 45-70-300 loads out of a rifle, I felt the 454 Casull could even up the odds.
On
the way to the stand, I opened the loading gate and spun the cylinder one more
time to see that all five chambers contained one of the new 300 grain Speer soft
points loaded to my own specifications. My
own specification being the “bloody maximum”.
I re-holstered the 7-1/2” barreled Freedom Arm but left the strap
unsnapped and pushed to the side, picked up the two five gallon buckets of
bread, and headed to the stand. It
was about four-thirty when I settled into my lawn chair ten feet over and thirty
feet away from the small clearing containing the bait.
It had been a few days since I had even heard a bear and I was afraid I
had scared him off the night of my hasty retreat.
I pulled the hammer all the way back and then lowered it to the half-cock
position. Why?, I have seen bears
bolt at thirty-five yards from the sound of a cocking pistol.
When the hammer is lowered to the half-cock position the cylinder is
already locked in place. You can silently re-cock the weapon by pressing the trigger
while pulling the hammer all the way back, letting up on the trigger, and gently
lowering the hammer down to the full cock position. Practice with an unloaded revolver, the wrong order will
discharge the cartridge and recoil the hammer spur into your hand.
This is a ready position when sitting in a stand; it is not safe to
carry a pistol like this.
Try as I might to keep my eyes open, I dozed off. It was not surprising that I was sleepy since the recent nightmares were doing a pretty good job of pumping enough adrenaline into my system - that from 3 a.m. on I was wide awake. It is surprising when you consider the subject matter of those nightmares, you would think this would be the last place I would fall asleep. I only knew I was asleep when my eyes blinked open to the sound of huckleberry plants gently moving, close by, very close by!! I did not dare move my head; I searched by only moving my eyes. What a monster! maybe this was just another nightmare. Over 400 pounds of lean, tall, bear with a head like a caldron. He was 50 feet in front of me and moving to my left - straight for the bait. I prepared my muscles for movement, for he was just entering a short tunnel in front of me and when he emerged I would take the shot. I had been hunting this same bear for two seasons and soon he would be within an easy 25 feet, unless he bolted…please don’t let him bolt… I guess there was still a lot that could go wrong. He entered the tunnel; I silently pulled the hammer back the rest of the way and leaned forward putting the barrel through an opening in the surplus camo. His head started to appear from the far opening, then his shoulders. He stopped one step from exposing his heart. Do I take the neck shot, no wait...wait. He took the final step and I thought to myself “good-bye bear”, BOOM! The bear charged the shot, twenty miles an hour straight through heavy brush, right for my stand. I don’t even remember the recoil, standing up, or re-cocking the pistol, but I was aiming the barrel straight down and six feet off the muzzle was solid black. BOOM, the black was washed in the orange muzzle flash. I turned and prepared for the next shot, but nothing emerged from the brush on the backside of my stand. Great roars of pain let loose at the base of my stand. All I could see was the six-foot high brush thrashing at the base of the ladder, BOOM!, another roar and there was silence. CONTINUED....