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my experience
Posted by twodux on Dec 12 2005
I've experienced false charges, and had accidental (on both my part and the bear's) close encounters (25 yards or less)and never had to shoot a bear. But two stand out in my mind for spooking me the most. One was here in Cordova in the 70's. I took a friend's kid out in the spring to try to catch a trout. We hiked in a bit over a couple feet of snow and were standing out on a gravel bar casting when my three huskies took off upstream. I looked to see what they were interested in and saw a brownie standing in the creek staring at us. The dogs wanted to have a piece of him, but stopped about halfway to the bear. It just stared us down and finally walked into the brush on the side of the stream we were on. We made a few more casts, but couldn't get comfortable again so we decided to leave. When we climbed back up the bank, there were the bears tracks just far enough into the brush we couldn't see it walk by. It had stopped and pawed around when it was even with us, and I always had the feeling if we hadn't had it pretty well outnumbered he might have tried something.
The second one was on Afognak in the mid 80's. A couple buddies and I flew out in late Nov. to the East side of Izhuit Bay. I got a buck the first day, then two the second. That night it snowed about a foot and I decided since I already had some meat, I'd try to get a deer with my bow. The plan was for me to get up on the ridge across the lagoon from where we were staying and hunt out towards the point then take a stand while my buddies hunted out towards the point about halfway up the ridge. Then we'd meet up someplace on the ridge. We walked around the lagoon and I headed up the ridge. About 2/3 of the way up, I spotted footprints and figured one of my buddy broke from our plans, but when I got up to them, I saw it was a set of bear tracks and he was headed out the point the same way we were hunting. We had no radios, so I couldn't warn them of the bear. I got up in position and settled in to wait for them to send a deer up my way. Saw one deer walk by, but too far for a shot. I heard them shoot a couple times after about a half hour, but then nothing. When they hadn't showed up after about an hour and a half, I decided I was getting cold and needed a walk, so I made a big circle on top of the ridge, about 300 yards one way, then around and back. When I got back I saw my buddies' tracks coming up to the top of the ridge. Or so I thought. It was the bear again. He walked right over where I had been sitting and appeared to be following my tracks. I admit I was a little spooked. I started following my trail around in the circle and sure enough, his tracks were in my tracks. I didn't know which way to go. I was watching the trail in front of me, and watching my back trail the whole way around! When I got back to my original stand to see he'd gone around again, I bailed over the hill where he had come from and didn't stop til I hit the beach. I hurried back to camp to find that my buddies had shot a deer and then cut the bear's tracks and decided it would be better to get their deer to camp. I couldn't fault them on that, but was a little miffed to be left without a gun in the area.
I guarantee that bear wasn't spooked at all by humans in the area. He seemed to be stalking me and I'll always believe that. But he never came down into our camp or bothered our deer.
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