“I’d already hiked about three miles so I sat down to take a break before I tried to push some (game) back to (my son). I took my backpack off and sat my bow down and as I was sitting there I started looking around and … I saw a black head which I thought was a bear.” As a matter of fact, while bowhunting in Washington state, Jerry Hause realized was right. That was a bear cub. Ruh roh. “Knowing…it’s unwise to come between a cub and its mother, he looked for a way to leave the area.” And that’s when a very protective Mrs. Bear charged him . . .
Hause said he knew he wouldn’t be able to pick and aim his bow, and he wasn’t confident he could drop the 250- to 300-pound animal. His only choice, he said, was to climb the tree he had been resting against.
“I knew the tree was right there, so I headed up that to get far enough up the tree that the bear couldn’t get me,” Hause said.
Hause climbed several feet up into the tree. The bear followed, but Hause said he thought he was out of the bear’s reach until he looked down just as the bear bit into his left leg.
Fortunately for Hause, the bear eventually lost interest and wandered off after it had been kicked in the snout a few times. Washington Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Weaver advises that,
“Typically bears are very afraid of people. If they know people are around, they tend to run the other way.”
Unless they don’t. As Sgt. Weaver notes, there are 25-30,000 black bears in Washington. So if you’re out wandering in the woods looking to bring home Bambi with something like a PSE DNA, it makes a lot of sense to also pack something with a little more power on your hip (where local law allows). Maybe something like Super Redhawk Alaskan for Yogi and his more aggressive pals who don’t turn tail when you stumble upon them or their cubs.
[h/t Ralph]