Bear With Me
The woods of the Ocala National Forest are getting to be full of bears. These are Florida black bears, and I've read that our wildlife biologists say there's about 300 bears in its 382,408 acres. My experience and that of my fellow hunters indicates that there are very many more than this. I've hunted this forest for 17 years, and have lived across the road from it for almost 2 years. Following are a few experiences I've had with bears in the past few years. I'm omitting the experiences of friends for the sake of brevity.
There was the approximately 65-pound cub that climbed a pine tree in the yard one July and stayed up there for two days. Apparently he got close to the our wire fence, got spotted by my 2 dogs, and dashed up the tree, which was about 2 feet outside the fence. Then he was too scared to come down with the dogs right close by. I exiled the dogs to a side yard, but the bear could still see them. Calls to the Game & Fish Commission (GFC), as they were known at the time, proved nearly fruitless; they simply recommended waiting him out. So, wait I did. He finally came down about 46 hours after he climbed up, and ran like mad toward the river. I wondered where his mama was, but the GFC's bear man told me he might be weaned, and apparently he was.
During this past archery season, around the beginning of October, I was up a tree in my climbing stand with my bow, waiting for a deer to show itself. I had been there a couple of hours when I heard something moving through the brush, headed my way. I got ready for a deer to stroll up, but as it got closer and I still couldn't see it, I knew it wasn't a deer, since the brush was fairly low.
I spotted a flash of something black moving towards me, and I knew it was a bear. It was a fairly small one, I'd guess 50-60 pounds. He got about 30 feet away, and he spotted me. He stood up on his hind legs for a second or two, then turned and barreled through the woods in the direction from which he had come. For sheer noise, bears and humans are the loudest things in the woods, when it comes to crashing through brush.
A couple of weeks before Christmas, I was driving along a graded road in the forest, and as I topped a rise at an intersection with another road, my wondering eyes beheld a big ol' bear, standing on its hind legs, facing me in the road! It stood at least 5 feet tall, which makes it the biggest I've personally seen, though I regularly see tracks and spoor of much bigger bears. It stood there for a few seconds, then lumbered away down the road a bit. It then looked back over its shoulder at me. I drove a bit closer, and it ran to the edge of the woods, stopped and gave me the look again. I slowly drove on up, and it finally ran into the woods. I pulled up opposite, and there it was, about 20 feet into the trees. After a few seconds, it decided to go ahead and leave.
What concerns me about that bear is its apparent lack of fear; these critters haven't been hunted around here in many years, and they seem to be losing their fear of man, which is a bad thing.
Then, just this afternoon, a bear decided he wanted to share my stand with me. I'd been freezing in the 15-20 mph breeze for a little over an hour, sitting on a ladder stand about 16-18 feet high. I heard something moving through the woods behind the stand, so I stood up and turned around, hoping to see a buck approaching. The wind kept me from determining the direction of the noise very well, but by the time it got within 30 yards, I had decided it was a bear, since it was so noisy. They just plow anything and everything out of their way. Soon I was seeing flashes of black through the green of the brush, and he was heading right towards me. I soon saw it was a good-sized bear, probably a little over 100 pounds, and he walked by my tree at a range of about 12 feet.
I figured I'd experiment a little, so I said, "Hello," to him. He stopped and looked and listened for a few seconds, then took another step or two. I said, "Hello," again, and again he stopped. He looked in my direction, but I'm not sure if he looked up high enough to see me. I was standing still, at any rate. He then proceeded out to the trail I'd walked on, and picked up the scent of the doe urine I'd placed on the soles of my boots. He followed it to the base of the ladder I was on, sniffed the rungs, and then raised up and put his front paws on the rungs.
I decided it was time for me to turn around, in case he came on up to sniff on me. Right about then, I was extremely happy to be holding my .44 magnum rifle in my hands! When I turned, he spotted me, stared at me for about a half a second, then tore off into the clearcut. He ran about 60 yards, stopped & sniffed the air, stood up and looked around. The funny thing was, he wasn't looking towards me; it was as if he'd forgotten what had startled him.
Speaking for myself, I'm hoping for some bear hunting seasons around here soon. With the large number of bears in these woods, and the lack of hunting, I'm thinking we're going to be seeing some attacks on people before long, and that's something we don't need. And I sure wouldn't want to be up a tree with nothing but a bow if one decided to climb on up and swat me out as her next meal!
-Russ Chastain
