Recently I was catching up with a friend when he said to me, “You know, true bear hunters…it’s almost like we have some sort of bug that we can’t get rid of. Some folks have it, and some folks don’t.” I could only laugh and nod my head in agreement because it was one of the most relatable statements I have ever heard. There is not a day that goes by that bears don’t consume my mind: I’m constantly daydreaming about them in between seasons, reading about them, watching videos, and so on. My experience hunting them, while relatively short, has been a colorful one. I’ve tagged seven of them in just three years: a couple were giants, all but two have been seven years or older, and one was 22 years old. My first three bears in a row were 11, 12, and 13 years old, and the second and third were taken just one day apart. All of them have been northwestern bears.  

But like many of us, my first bear is the one I remember the most. And I remember it vividly. 

It’s sort of a wild story, reminiscent of the tall tales heard around hunting camp. It started in 2019 when one evening, my wife and I were driving out of an area in eastern Washington and the fall bear season was underway. We were only a couple of miles from the highway, cruising in the dark along a gravel road and swerving around potholes while I’m going on about how “big bears are smart” and “they get big because they go nocturnal”, etc. Before I could finish, a huge bear ran across the road right in front of my truck. Both of us gasped in shock. I slammed on my brakes, almost running it over, and it dove off into the darkness.  

“I told you! They get big because they get smart, and the smart ones go nocturnal,” I said excitedly. Truth be told, I didn’t have much business speaking on the matter. I had only just started chasing bruins, and, as green as I was, I would not see that bear again for the rest of the season (though I did give it a valiant effort).  

Fast forward to August of 2020, and on opening day I had gone into a different area supposedly rich with bears. Being a gorgeous, hot summer day, the drive was full of people instead: gangs of kids wrecking their dirt bikes, groups of families blocking the road on their way to the lake, and the like. When I eventually got past the crowds and boonie-bashed my way to the top—thinking no one in their right mind would drive such a horrible road—there were Hondas and Subarus parked there. I hunted anyway and did not lay eyes on one bear. However, I had a fawn-in-distress call made by an older fellow named Rick Robbins and had been working on my predator calling after reading Douglas Boze’s book The Ultimate Guide To Black Bear Hunting. I did manage to call in my first animal ever that evening, a curious coyote. This was a small victory at least. 

I also learned from Doug’s book that bears will haunt the same areas for years if relatively undisturbed. Not wanting a repeat of the summer crowds, the next day I headed back into the area where we had seen that bear the year prior. I got to the drainage that the bear ran out of and there was a van parked right at the mouth where I planned to start. I wanted to hike the clear, open side of the drainage rather than the jungle-thick and particularly expansive creek bottom on the other side of the road that the bear had headed into. You could probably imagine my frustration. 

Irritated, I drove further down the road to park on the thick side. ‘Well, at least it’s flat,’ I thought to myself as I headed into the brush. While there were some taller ponderosa pines and fir trees, the understory was mostly made up of white oak, cottonwoods, and willows. Coupled with the thick brush, it was like walking into a living wall with a few slight openings in between the rosehips and thorns. I soon found myself practically crawling through tunnels carved out by the bear, and about 100 yards in I started seeing Coke can-sized scat that was full of seeds and tinted reddish-purple from a fall diet of choke cherries for the time of year. I eventually battled my way across the bottom, accumulating cuts, scrapes, and holes in my shirt along the way, and landed at the base of a ridge on a game trail with more of the same scat. I then climbed my way up a ridge and sat where I could overlook the entire bottom, which still provided only a few small open meadows for shot opportunities.

I figured that if I could call in a coyote the night before, then I should be able to call in a bear too, although I don’t know how much I believed it at the time. Around 6:30 PM, I began calling after getting settled in. As the once quiet and now piercing cries echoed across the creek bottom and up the canyon, it didn’t take long before my own self-doubt sank in. I became distracted. 

It could have been nothing but divine intervention that I happened to look back down into the bottom and saw a giant, jet-black, almost Volkswagen Beetle-sized creature running full stride through one of the meadows and into a rather large patch of thick brush. I was as startled as I was surprised. Was this really happening? Did I just call in a bear, the second animal I have ever called in, with the first only being last night?  

In a quiet panic, I grabbed my rifle and started on the call again. It was about 7:00 PM and, although the sun was retiring, I knew I still had roughly an hour to lay eyes on the bear. I had only caught a glimpse of it, but I could hear it aggressively thrashing brush about 100 yards below me. My wind was good, ripping down the canyon across my face. I continued calling softly, eventually stopping altogether as I sat motionless with my eyes peeled and praying for any movement or sound. I was only answered with the sound of the wind.  

8:15 rolled around and I realized that not only was I quickly losing light, but I would now have to crawl back through the dark bear tunnels I had previously traveled, only this time the bear was back in his bedroom, hungry and agitated. While creeping down the ridge, I constantly reassured myself of the fact that at least I had a rifle. I got to the bottom, which had an open buffer of about eight feet before the wall of brush, and I slipped into the brush line. As I made my way down into a small meadow and looked around, I could not find the way I had come in. To my horror, I soon realized I had gone too far to the right and entered the wrong path.  

I spun around and crept back up the slight incline towards the brush line. Thankfully I hadn’t burst onto the trail in haste, because as I approached I saw movement about 10 yards down the narrow game trail to my right.  

There he was, barreling down the trail. He was huge. It was no sooner than I saw him that I had managed to freeze, slightly concealed by brush, when he noticed my movement too. It felt like a western showdown at sunset. At about seven yards from me he stopped, looked dead at me with his creepy, beady eyes, and started huffing at me. But as if someone had taken control of my body, I lifted my rifle, slid the safety forward, and pulled the trigger. I couldn’t even look through my scope.  

It was then that the adrenaline hit me, and hard. I busted out of the brush and scrambled to get above him to make a second shot. I didn’t know where I hit him and he was down, but definitely not out for the count. He was growling and thrashing and almost rocking himself to get back up, and while nearly tripping over myself I made a second shot. Then there was stillness.  

I won’t say here the slew of curse words that loudly exploded out of my mouth, but I will tell you they were plentiful. After I collected myself, I stood there in disbelief while making sure the bear was expired. Then I very cautiously walked up to him. I will never forget the tidal wave of emotion I felt in that very moment; I had never felt gratitude or victory in the way I did that day. And I was certainly thankful. I marveled over him, knowing he was a big boar but not recognizing just how big. After all, it was my first bear and only the second one I had seen dead. 

I had one bar of service and texted my wife, “Bear down!”. After struggling due to his size, I eventually got him to a position to start skinning him. Bears are greasy critters as we know, and I was using a surgical-like knife with a replaceable blade at the time. In the first quarter, I was slicing up towards his paw when the ultra-thin blade slipped and I felt pain shoot all the way up my arm. Blood began pouring out of the top of my wrist. I didn’t know how bad it was, but I did know I had quite a bit of work ahead of me, so I wrapped my wrist as best as I could and kept at it.  

It was my first time working on a bear, but I must have been taking longer than expected because my wife texted me asking if I needed help. It was almost 11:00 PM, so I told her yes while omitting the fact that I had enough of my own blood on the ground to rival the bear’s. An hour later, I had managed to break down another quarter when I made my way back to the truck to meet her. To see those headlights pull up in her tiny little Volvo sedan was a sight for sore eyes! I showed her my wrist, which I immediately regretted due to the stress it caused her, and it was made worse when I suddenly remembered we only had one pack. I had sold one the day before and was waiting on another to arrive in the mail. Nonetheless, we got the bear broken down and out of there, alternating using the pack and throwing quarters over our shoulders. We weren’t married at the time, but if I had a ring I would have asked her right there, covered in blood while we were crawling through those bear tunnels together, headlamps bright under an even brighter full moon.  

That first bear ended up being 6’4” nose to tail, 6’6” paw to paw, Boone & Crockett at 20 & 3/16 inches on the skull, and 11 years old via tooth aging. I myself ended up having reconstructive surgery on my wrist. That knife slip severed my tendon about 60%, according to the surgeons. That bear also completely changed something about who I was in a deep, almost spiritual way. From having been obsessed with them as a child, to moving out west and setting out to learn everything I could about them, to having successfully harvested one, I was only more curious and filled with wonder about every aspect of bears. These elusive, mysterious, beautiful, and simultaneously brutal creatures have a very special place in my heart. I guess you could say I really do have “the bug”.