I hope I don't break the rules by telling this story.
It was a Friday afternoon Pete and Junior were preparing to go bear hunting.
They both owned hound dogs and hunted bear. Junior’s hounds were called Trig and Buster. Pete’s hounds were called Butch, Smoky, and Rocky. Pete drove to Junior’s house and they loaded up their dogs into Jr,’s truck which had a dog box.
They drove North for three hours and stopped to gas up before heading into the hills where they would hunt. After driving for another hour and a half into the mountains, they approached the area they would hunt.
They stopped their truck and Jr put trig, his strike dog, up on his dog box and they slowly drove along the road. After driving for 15 minutes, Trig struck a track and let out a loud howl to let them know that he had the scent of a bear. They stopped and unleashed Trig so he could work the track on the ground. He went off into the darkness and into the bushes with his nose
to the ground and his tail winding around. A few minutes later Pete and Jr. could hear Trig in the distant darkness. He howled once to let them know he was on the track. They could tell that the track was old and cold to the dog’s nose because he was not opening much. Again they heard him open; Boooo. This time a little more pronounced and the intervals of his howls were
beginning to get closer together.
Finally they could hear Trig working the track pretty good so they started to feed the other dogs into the race one at a time. A short time later, they could hear all the dogs howling together as a pack and moving slowly as they made their way into the depths of the dark canyon. The dog’s howls were fading as they went deeper and deeper into the canyon. Suddenly the dogs became extremely excited. They were howling more pronounced and moving at a rapid pace. Junior yelled out! “They jumpedhim. Hot damn the race is on!” The dogs were hot on that bear's ass as they headed down into the canyon. Junior and Pete got out their coffee thermos, and sat on the edge of the road to listen to the dogs. They could just barely see the outline of the
ridge on the opposite side of the canyon, and through the darkness, as they drank coffee and enjoyed listening to the race.
Hearing the dog’s individual howls was like music to their ears. Each dog had a
slightly different sound and each person knew what his dog was doing by listening to the pitch and tone of his howl. Pete said, “there is Butch, he’s hot on that bears ass.” Junior came back and said, “Theirs old, Trig, he’s a chewin on his ass.” They continued to listen to the race for more than 15 minutes when Junior yelled “We better get down their; that bears fightin them dogs on the ground.” They could hear one dog let out a yelping cry! Pete said, “One of those dogs just got hit. They gathered their guns, flashlights, and leashes to start down toward where they could hear the dogs.
They knew that this canyon was 3 miles deep, but they had no idea how rough and nasty the canyon was going to be. As they descended into the canyon, they could still hear the dogs. As they went deeper into the canyon, the dogs howling began to fade until they could no longer hear them. They stopped and listened to no avail. They decided that they were committed to getting to the dogs so they continuedon down to where they last heard them. They came to a steep rocky drop off to their left and decided it was too dangerous. They tried going to the right but soon came to an area where the mountain had washed away from a mudslide. The side of the washed out area was of soft, sandy soil. It was the only way down and they slowly edged their way out and began digging the edges of their boot soles into the mountainside to keep them from sliding down the mountain. They were both halfway across the slide area when Pete slipped and fell to the bottom and landed on a ledge. Pete was all bruised and sore from the fall but not hurt badly. Junior hollered down to Pete, “Are you alright?” Pete yelled back, “Yes, go on to the dogs.” Junior continued across the washout and they became separated. Junior and Pete both separately continued on to the bottom.
Three hours had pasted since they first started and now Pete could make out the faint sound of rushing water. Pete knew he was nearing the river and that meant the bottom of the canyon. As he came closer to the river the roaring sound of the water became so loud that it was impossible to hear anything else. Pete finally came to the rivers edge. It was about 30 feet across to the other side. He could faintly hear the muffling sound of the dogs. It almost sounded like they were across the river from him. Pete jumped from boulder to boulder to make it across the river, but slipped on the last boulder, and fell into the cold waters. He managed to make his way to the safety of the other side. He turned on his light to see the area. He was looking at a huge log in front of him, about 8 feet in diameter. It was laying horizontally from left to right about 60 feet long. There were huge boulders as high as a house, and they were on both sides of the log and behind it. Pete could hear the dogs loud and clear now. They were on the other side of the log. He worked his way to the left of the log and started to climb up the boulders to get onto the log. He looked down and saw that there was a flat sandy area between the
log and the boulders. He could see the dogs running in and out of a recessed opening in the boulders. They had the bear trapped inside a large opening in the boulders. Pete climbed up onto the log and went out on it until he could see the bear.
Pete drew his handgun and shined the light at the bear. The bear was standing on his hind legs and swatting dogs every time they got close to him. The bear was a monster. The bear grabbed Butch in his grasp and was trying to bite down on him. Fortunately the other dogs came to his aid and they all started attacking the bear. The bear let go of Butch and he fell back to the ground. Pete aimed his cheap ass, no sites, Taurus 44 Magnum, at the bear and started firing. It appeared that he wasn’t hitting the bear. He fired his last bullet and hit the bear in the leg. The bullet must have broken his leg because he started coming after Pete. Pete could see the bear’s left hind leg was dangling as he came toward him. The bear was out in
the open, sandy, area between the boulders and the log. He was almost on top of Pete when the dogs attacked the bear with such ferocity that they somehow managed to stretch the bear out on the ground. The dogs had a hold of its paws and were pulling outward to stretch him out on the sandy soil, just below Pete. Suddenly Pete could hear to the left of him, POW, POW,
POW, POW. It was Junior firing his 30 caliber military Carbine. Jr. had climbed up on the end of the log just in time. The bear was still struggling to get back up as Junior fired two more times and killing the bear. The dogs were milling around and resting. Smoky was the only dog still hovering over the bears head and watching intently when suddenly the bear raised its head and
bit at Smoky and barely missing him by a hair. Junior shot the bear in the head and the bear was finally dead. The bear stretched out on the ground and measured 9 feet long and could have reached 600 pounds. The bear was missing its right front paw. They took a closer look at the bear and found that most of the bullets had just glanced off, to one side and taking
nothing but hair with it.
They built a fire so Pete could dry his clothes and get warm. Pete put himself between the bear and the fire to keep warm. They all slept on the sandy soil, around the bear until daylight. They awoke to see the dawn peaking over the ridges of the canyon. They decided there was no way of getting that bear out of the canyon, because there were no roads close to it and
they were 3 miles from the top where their truck was.
They gathered the dogs and slowly started back out of the canyon in a single file. Butch was hurt and couldn’t walk out by himself. Pete couldn’t carry him out, so he left him behind to heal up and come out on his own. Instead of going back up the way they came down and through the brush, they followed the river up and hoped like hell it would take them to a lower road.
This turned out to be a big mistake, because Pete soon found that the hardest thing about hunting is trying to walk over boulders,rocks, and logs. It totally took every bit of energy out of both men and it made their legs sore. They had to stop and restfrequently.
They finally came across a well traveled game trail heading up the mountain. They took it and it lead them out of the canyon. They made it back to their trucks and cooked something to eat while they talked about the hunt. This was truly an adventure they both would never forget. Pete got a call 3 days later from an engineer that lived in the area and said he had a dog with
Pete’s name and phone number on the collar. Pete said, “That’s my dog.” Pete went to get the dog the next weekend. Butch must have had a cracked rib and it heeled enough for him to come out on his own after several weeks.
I appologize if this story is too long.
About 8-10 years ago we had a chase going on when we got to the TREE the hounds were just blasting away . Turns out the tree was slightly leaning from probably a wind ice storm that spring . At the base of the tree was about an 18 inch diameter hole we could see several yote tracks going into it and 1 set of bear tracks fairly respectable in size . My son Gathered up the hounds and got down on his hands and knees with a flashlight the hole went in about 4 ft and made a hard left turn he just could NOT see past it . We loaded up and went back to the camp . Next day he decides he wants to go back to same spot and take another look As we are approaching the tree which was just off a skidder road the hounds blew up again . He walks down to the tree and sees 1 set of tracks coming back out from the hole in the ground . We decided to to let the hounds loose , I think the chase was maybe 1/4 mile and it bayed up . We got to the bay-up and my son decided to take him ,turned out to be a 285 pound boar with some pretty impressive scars on its face and you could tell it was pretty BULKY going into the winter . What impressed us both was that the size of the bear was able to get into an 18 inch hole to begin with