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Bear season evokes many memories

When I sat down to write this week’s column, I was almost stunned to realize that bear season starts next Saturday.

Bear hunting has enjoyed a tremendous surge in popularity here in Pennsylvania for a number of reasons. One of those is the remarkable success rate Pennsylvania hunters have recorded several record bear harvests in the past decade, including all-time record bear harvest of 4,350 bears in 2011. The bear population in Pennsylvania continues to grow at historic levels as well, with an estimated 18,000 black bears residing throughout the state. And those bears are just about everywhere, as hunters typically harvest bears in more than 50 of the state’s 67 counties each season.

Pennsylvania bear hunters also bag some world-class trophies each year with the top ten specimens harvested having live weights of more than 600 pounds. Last year, the heaviest bear taken was a 713-pound monster from right here in Blair County. Without a doubt, the first two decades of the twenty-first century have been the golden age of bear hunting in Pennsylvania. For me personally, the last 18 years of bear hunting have produced many special hunting memories.

I added a Pennsylvania black bear to my personal hunting resume in 1998 on what I would freely admit was one of the luckiest days of my life. I started the opening day of bear season hunting squirrels with a .22 rifle. I was enjoying a balmy November morning, more concerned with deer scouting than shooting any squirrels, when I spotted a bear slowly walking through the woods about 80 yards away. As I watched it through my riflescope, I was amazed to see the bear lie down beside a fallen log and apparently go to sleep. As improbable as it may sound, I quickly made my way back to my car, drove to three different stores to find a bear license, then went home to fetch my .30-06. When I sneaked back to the spot an hour and a half later, the bear was gone. But 15 minutes later I found the bear and downed it with two quick shots.

My friend, Bill Carter, might have experienced a bigger dose of luck during bear season few years ago. Bill had already killed two black bears in Pennsylvania during his long hunting career but was at his hunting camp as usual for the first day of bear season. After a few hours on his stand that morning, he returned to the cabin to relax and have lunch. As he stepped onto the front porch to make a trip to the outhouse, he saw a familiar black shape picking its way through a thick stand of pine trees. Bill quickly picked up his rifle and was ready when the bear stepped into an opening in the trees. At the shot, the bear ran a short semicircle around the cabin and dropped dead just 15 or 20 yards from his truck. I’m not sure how one could get a bear any more conveniently than that.

Satisfied that one bear was enough for me, I had considered myself retired from Pennsylvania bear hunting after my success in 1998. But in 2005 several friends from Huntingdon County were putting together a gang to hunt bears that season, and they coaxed me into joining the crew. The idea of hunting with more than 20 folks to put on some old-fashioned bear drives was an appealing one. I also figured we were likely to bag a bear or two, but I couldn’t have imagined how interesting that first day would be.

I was one of the watchers on our first drive just after dawn. As I sat listening to the drivers getting ever closer, a couple of shots rang out near the center of our line. A few minutes later, I learned that one of the hunters in our party had indeed hit a large male bear as it rushed past him. Approaching the downed animal, he noticed it was still alive, and while he prepared to finish it off, the bear lunged, scratching him on the stomach and biting him on the thigh. Although the wounds weren’t that serious, the bite had produced a deep puncture wound, so one of our crew took him to the emergency room to have it treated as a precaution. Later that week, the Game Commission issued a press release about the incident, saying this was the first recorded incident of a hunter in Pennsylvania being attacked while attempting to recover a wounded black bear. Along with making some rather strange history that day, our bear crew also managed to take two more bears before lunchtime.

Since then, our bear crew has killed many more bears on opening day. That record of success has me looking forward to this year’s campaign and what new memories it will bring Our successful hunters have spanned several generations from 14 to 72 years old, and the camaraderie of the day makes it a special time whether we bag a bear or not.

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