I just love to bear hunt! I consider it the ultimate: form of hound hunting and the most demanding on both man and hound. I also enjoy coon, cat, and lion hunting, but as a general rule a coon or cat dog has to have everything a bear dog has, except guts and speed. For coon and cats, the name of the game is locating and treeing. For bear hunting, however, if the dog doesn't have extreme desire, guts and speed, it doesn't really matter how well they can tree, because they won't often get the opportunity ..  

This particular hunt happened in 1983. I loaded five Plotts and headed into Fernwood where I was met by my brother Alan, Reuben Rich and Dave Frost, who we call Fuzzy. Everybody was ready so we rolled on out of town. I should note here that Fuzzy had a bunch of in-laws visiting from Wisconsin, so he had promised his wife the night before that we'd just catch a quick one and be back early.  

Once we got to our hunting area, we let the dogs empty and put the tracking collars on them. Then we put Jack on the hood, Millie on the top and Patty, Polly and Wicked in the rig.  

The strike is always neat. One second you are driving along looking at Idaho in the morning and the south end of the dog on the hood, and then, without warning, the dogs blow up. First Jack and then everything else in the rig.  

I unclipped Jack and tried to shut up the other four so I could listen. He opened cold and I let Millie and then Patty go to him. They worked the track uphill for a few minutes and jumped just before they went over the top. I turned in Wicked and Polly and then we jumped back in the rigs and raced around the road to try and hear the race. We couldn't hear anything, so we turned around and went back to where we had turned loose.  

The bear had apparently come right back through the dogs because when we got back to where we had turned loose from, all five dogs were together, below the road and fading fast. Over the next 2- 3 hours the bear and dogs crossed five drainages with us always a drainage behind. Without the tracking unit we would have unquestionably lost track of the dogs. They ended up in a big roadless area that we call "The Hole."  

"The Hole" is usually bad news. I've caught a lot of game out of it, but I've lost  

dogs a lot too. It's about 20 square miles with no roads and a half dozen different creeks running through it. Most of the creeks come together near the road, so with the tracking unit I can usually tell which drainage they are in. But once you walk in, the tracking unit becomes less helpful because there is such a problem with echoes. You get readings on the dogs in opposite directions and can't tell which is the dogs and which is just bouncing. Well, we spent the rest of the day trying to get close to the dogs. We would take a reading and head in, but the readings would fade, so we would hike back out to the rigs where we could get the best readings and see which drainage they had crossed into. Night came and we slept in the rigs expecting the dogs to come out in the morning.  

"Nell, the next morning the readings said that all five dogs were still together  

but deep, so we put on our packs and headed back in.  We had been hiking about an hour whenever we heard the dogs running.  We were on an old skid tril and I figured that the dogs would cross it if they continued in the same direction so we hurried to get in front of them.  It almost worked because I did catch a glimpse of the bear but didn’t get a shot. 

Now, I don’t like to catch the dogs off a track, but any novice bear hunter who’s caught his first 100 bear can tell you that 95% of bear that tree, do it within the first two hours.  It had been 24 hours and we all had other obligations so I decided to end it here.  I didn’t like it. 

My dogs handle good, but nobody is going to call them off track, so I ran to where the bear had crossed and got ready.  When Jack got there I hollered his name and jumped on him.  Reuben got Wicked, but Millie, Patty, and Polly slipped around us and went on.  I tried calling, but just wasted my breath. 

The rest of the day was a repeat of the day before, except Alan and Reuben made a much-appreciated food run.  Plus, that afternoon, Fuzzy’s wife showed up with her two visiting sisters and brother-in-law wanting to know when he’d be home. 

Previous to this hunt I’d had the dogs stay for about 36 hours on a walking bear that we didn’t get, plus on several occasions I’d lost them one day and found them treed the next.  But, by that afternoon I felt certain that they would have bunched it and would come out.  But they didn’t so we slept in the rig a second night. 

Well, the next morning I had a plan so we headed in a different spot.  I left my rifle and just took the tracking unit.  Fortunately, Alan decided to take his rifle.  My plan was to climb the one mountain so we could get above the dogs. and hopefully we wouldn't be confused by echoes like in the bottom of the canyons. Well, we did get good readings on the three bitches, still together, but we were all about done in. It was the third day and we'd kept our feet wet and hadn't had a change of socks, so we all had our pads run through. Reuben's feet were bleeding.  

The dogs were still moving, according to the readings I was getting, so we stayed on the ridge tops and tried to get closer. At one point we got pretty good readings, but then they faded. This went on for about three hours until finally we came over a knob and all of a sudden the readings were up to thirty. On my tracking unit, a. reading of 30 or better means you should hear the dogs, if they are barking.  

When the dogs have been on a bear for a long time, they get to where they don't bark much. They are tired. Anyway, my dogs are trained to answer when I whoop, just for such an eventuality. My dogs always bark at feeding time as soon as they hear the dog food getting poured in the bucket, so I just whoop at feeding time and it gets the dogs to thinking a whoop means to bark. Real easy and it has come in handy a couple of times a year for the last several years.  

Well, with readings of thirty I started to whoop. I expected the dogs to come to me because I didn't believe that they were still on the bear. The second whoop, however, all three dogs opened up barking every breath. Quite obviously caught.  

At this point I looked at Alan and realized that it wasn't fair to make him .carry that heavy old rifle all by himself, so I grabbed it and gave him the tracking unit and headed for the dogs. Fortunately, it was downhill, so I was able to dig deep and put on a little burst of speed.  

All three females were straight chop mouth, so the difference between treed or bayed is whether their mouths are pointed up or not. I naturally assumed they were bayed, so I was surprised to get to them and see the bear hanging off the side of a big white fir about 15 feet up. The bear didn't hesitate but just let go. I dead centered it the first shot. It was a 125 pound sow.  

I don't get any pleasure out of a critter dying, but this was an exception. We were all laughing and shaking hands, slapping each other on the back and loving the dogs. The first question on all our minds was "How many hours?" Well, we started the track at 6:30 a.m. Saturday and the bear died 10:30 a.m. Monday morning. That's 52 hours. Fuzzy said "You know nobody's gonna believe it!" Well, right then I didn't care although I knew that he was right.  

Well, that was 2½ years ago and I still don't think most people will believe it, but the dogs weren't quitters, so I don't think I should be timid about giving them the credit they deserve. They elevated themselves above any 'training' me or anybody else could have put into them. They were bred to be bear dogs.  

Millie weighed 42 pounds and was Steve Hurd's breeding. Patty weighed 42 pounds and was Tony Brown's breeding. Polly weighs 40 pounds and is Oliver Smith's breeding.  

The very best bear dogs I have hunted with have all been the product of these three men's breeding programs. So I say "Thank you" to them and to the family that culled the quitters for 200 years.  

Patty was killed by a bear in 1984 and Millie took a mauling that ended her hunting career the same year. Polly is still here and just one sweet little bitch.  

Fuzzy got home in time to see his in­laws leaving. He's still married, so I don't think things were as rough around his house as he claimed they were.