
I was fortunate to retire at the beginning of March in 2022. My plan was for my longtime hunting buddy, Rob Cotterman, and I to spend two weeks camping and chasing turkeys in the Midwest.
Unfortunately, I had to cancel our trip literally less than eight hours before leaving. Everything was packed and loaded in the truck and Rob was standing at the stove finishing up one of the meals for the next day when I had to tell him I couldn’t go. That was a tough conversation to have, but he understood that sometimes a family crisis must take priority. Everybody is fine today but it meant putting off my retirement celebration until the spring of this year.
While researching new places to turkey hunt, I ran across a website that offered turkey hunting in the mornings and a chance to hunt black bears in the afternoons. The only bears I have ever seen were in the Smoky Mountains National Park when I was a teenager many years ago, so I know nothing about bear hunting. But, what the heck, we were going to be in the area anyway, and while I had never really thought about shooting a bear, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I ran the idea past Rob, and after doing a little more research, we decided to go for it.
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We decided to fly out of Charlotte to avoid an extra layover and things started out just fine. Our flight was an early-morning departure, so we spent the night at a nearby motel and caught the shuttle to the airport in plenty of time to get checked in. Check-in went smoothly until Rob was called back to the check-in desk. Somehow TSA had managed to break one lock on his gun case and entirely lose the other lock completely. Not only did they lose and break them, but they didn’t have any replacement locks that would fit his case and you can’t fly with an unlocked gun case.
The only solution was for Rob to catch a cab to a local store and buy another lock. We didn’t have any other choice so Rob went to Walmart while I caught our plane so I could get our other luggage and get the rental car taken care of. He ended up catching another flight that added a second changeover and got him to Seattle roughly three hours after I did. All our luggage and guns made it to us, so it all worked out in the long run.
Outdoorsman Wes Murphy displays the black bear he shot.
We had planned an extra day on both ends of our trip just in case things didn’t go exactly as planned, so we had plenty of time to get to the outfitters camp. We took our time, stopping overnight about halfway and stopped to explore several Nez-Perce historical sites along the way. The scenery is so different there that we stopped several times just to admire the view or check out different birds that we don’t get to see in South Carolina. We arrived at camp early in the afternoon of the day before our hunts were to start.
It didn’t take long to figure out I was going to feel right at home here. When I walked in the door, Bobbie, the cook and general boss of everything and everybody, was fussing at the guides, Ken and Bob, using some language that doesn’t exactly fit in a family newspaper but gets the point across pretty clearly. They were all laughing and obviously having a good time, so we joined right in. I’ve been in many hunting camps before, but I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so at home so quickly anywhere before.
We ate a late supper and went to bed. The next morning the four turkey hunters in camp all killed a turkey, and then it was time to bear hunt.
If you have ever deer hunted over a corn pile in South Carolina, then you know exactly what bear hunting over bait is like. Instead of corn, they had 55-gallon drums full of pop tarts and five-gallon buckets of old cooking grease for bait, but the concept was the same.
The view was quite different, and I got to watch a small mule deer buck wander by as well as a couple of Steller jays raid the bait pile, but no bears showed up the first afternoon. One of the other hunters shot a small red phase bear and one saw a bear but didn’t get a shot, so I was still hopeful.
Since we couldn’t shoot anymore turkeys on the private property the outfitter had access to, we all slept in the next morning. After a huge breakfast, I volunteered to go with my guide, Ken, to help freshen the existing bait piles. We spent three or four hours climbing mountains while toting buckets of grease and pop tarts and scouting for turkeys for the next group of hunters. I did see some magpies and a bunch of Steller jays, so I got to add two more birds to my life list and spent an enjoyable afternoon learning more about the local history and the art of bear baiting.
That afternoon Ken put me in a different stand with a much better view. I was sitting on the very peak of a mountain from which I could see the Snake River valley and the nearest town 30 miles away by air but an hour and a half by truck. There were rainstorms moving through, so one minute I could see the town and the next I couldn’t see the next hilltop.
An hour before dark, I could see thick fog moving up the valley. First the town disappeared, then the closer mountains disappeared, then the bait pile 80 yards away was gone. I couldn’t see the trees 50 yards in front of me, but I could see the flashes of lightning off in the distance. Being on the highest point for miles around during a thunderstorm isn’t exactly comfortable, so I was glad to see Ken pulling back up in the side-by-side at dark.
The next day, Ken and I put out bait again and he mentioned that one of the stands was new and could only be hunted on days there wasn’t going to be any rain as the road was impassable if it got wet. We made it to the stand, and it was clear the bait had been hit hard recently. The forecast showed no rain until after dark and heavy rain the next two days, so we decided to give it a shot that afternoon.
As we were riding out to the stand that afternoon, we both looked up the mountain at about the same time and saw a bear walking across an opening in the woods 500 or 600 yards away.
Ken said, “He is heading in the general direction of your stand, so you should have a pretty good chance of seeing him this afternoon. I would be ready early if I were you.”
There wasn’t a stand or blind at this bait pile, so I made myself as comfortable as possible in a rock pile roughly 90 yards from the bait and tried to sit as still as possible. Easier said than done when sitting on a slope in a rock pile but I did the best I could. Ken said he was going to drive about halfway back to the next hunter as he didn’t want to be to far away if it did start to rain or drive back through the other hunter’s stand.
I had been sitting there for 45 minutes, peeping under the lid of my hat up the mountain every so often when I saw a dark spot that hadn’t been there 10 minutes before. My first thought was it was a bear sitting down but I had thought every dark spot in the woods was a bear in the two hunts before that too. Then it raised its head to sniff at the breeze. Holy crap, it is a bear.
He was too far (away) to shoot, but slowly, ever so slowly, he started making his way down the mountain. He would walk a few yards, stop, sniff the air and then move a little closer. I watched this for probably 10 minutes, trying to keep my nerves in check until he went behind a clump of trees.
I thought, “When he comes out on the other side, he will be well in range,” so I eased the rifle onto the shooting sticks and got ready. Ten minutes later he hadn’t appeared. I knew he couldn’t leave without me seeing him, but I had no idea what was going on. Ken told me later he was watching it through his binoculars from the next mountain over, and the bear was sitting there just watching. Ken kept saying to himself “Why isn’t Wes shooting him? “
Finally, the bear stood up and started back the way he came from. What we figured out later was he was going to another trail that led to the bait pile, but all I saw was that he was leaving. He was well in range, so I shifted around on the sticks and touched one off.
At the shot, the bear ran straight downhill into this thick ravine. I could hear limbs breaking and see trees shaking so I could keep up with where he was going. Soon all the crashing and shaking was coming from one spot, then it stopped. I marked a tree close to where the last clue came from and tried to calm my nerves while I waited on Ken.
Once Ken got there, we made our way over to where I had last seen the bear. Even though it was only 90 yards across the ravine, it was closer to 200 yards around the valley. It was thick and steep, so it took us 10 minutes to get there.
We found what I thought was the tree I had marked and Ken started uphill to look for any sign of a hit. I told him I was sure the bear had gone downhill, but he wanted to check there first. I was waiting while he scouted when I realized I was at the wrong tree. I made my way over to the right tree and started hearing leaves crunching about 30 yards downhill. I let Ken know the bear was right there and he made his way over to where I was standing. I wanted to lead the way, but it was to0 thick to be effective with a scoped rifle and Ken had a pistol so he went first.
We hadn’t taken 10 steps when Ken said, “There’s either a big black log or a big black bear laying there.” No sooner than the words were out of his mouth than the bear stood up, less than 15 yards away. Ken took a quick shot before it could get into an even thicker thicket, and my first bear was down.
There is no agriculture in this part of the state, so a 300-pound bear is a true trophy. It was entirely too thick for us to drag this bear out, but Ken estimated he would go 250 to 300 pounds. We stood around, talking about both our views of the hunt for 10 minutes or so, then the work began.
Honestly, Ken did 99% of the work and I sat on a log and offered moral support. It’s a lot of work to clean something as big as a bear while hanging off the side of a mountain, but Ken made quick, efficient work of it.
Once we got the meat, head and hide back out to the access road, there were still two hours of daylight left, but we couldn’t leave without messing up another guest’s hunt. We walked over to the other side of the mountain and got comfortable on a grassy knoll. We relived the hunt as well as the turkey hunt, drank bottles of water and enjoyed a successful hunt while watching Chukars and Steller jays flit around.
It got dark, so we picked up the other guest and met Bob as he came out with Rob and another hunter, who had also shot his first bear. The next two days called for cold and rain, so I must admit I was pretty glad my bear hunting was over.
I probably won’t ever go bear hunting again, but if I do, it will be with Ken, Bob and Bobbie. They made the entire trip feel like I was hunting with lifelong friends. I don’t know if they feel the same way, but Ken did tell me before I left that he had been doing this for 30 years.
After doing it for so long that for the most part, the hunters all kind of blended together and that the only ones who really stood out were the really fun ones and the horse’s butts, and I met both qualifications.
Outdoors writer Wes Murphy is a periodic contributor to The Times and Democrat.
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