A Bear Story

I had been back in Helmville about six months when the bear showed up. A number of people in and around town had mentioned that he had been on their decks or in their garages, but did no damage. He went into the basement at my dad's house, hauled the dog food out onto the lawn, ate his fill and left – without tearing the bag.

A week or so later he sneaked into my back porch, hauled the dog food outside and ate what he wanted, leaving the bag in perfect shape. He was a thief, but a well-mannered one.

A few nights after that incident, my dog woke me up. The bear had been on the porch and was eating about 40 ft. behind the house. I closed the back door and watched him, figuring that I would let the dog out if the beast wanted to come into the kitchen. The dog knew bears from the ranch I managed in Missoula. One fall day he chased four different bears, and could get a bite in when the bear was young and fat.

As I watched him eat, I noticed that one hind leg was atrophied and the animal had a limp. When he turned I could see that he was missing four toes on the left rear foot, and the front of the crippled foot was bloody and sore from all the foraging he had been doing to get ready for hibernation.

This was in October, and the bear was horribly thin, with a poor hair coat. It was easy to see that he wouldn't make the winter. What to do? He was either going to be shot in someone's house or starve to death during the winter.

I had a 16 gauge shotgun in the house, so I grabbed it, hoping to save the poor bear a lot of future suffering and me, remorse if he wasn't shot and I would have to imagine his suffering later on. But I hedged a little and decided to kill the bear only if he returned to the back door.

That's when the stupid set in.

I decided to cut the screen from the bathroom window, lean out, and shoot the bear in the head from about 15 feet away. So I waited in the bathroom and watched the beast limp up to the back door and stand up to look in the window.

While he was standing in the porch light, I leaned out and shot. It was an awkward position and I didn't hit him like I hoped. Instead of dropping dead, he made a pitiful moan and disappeared into the night. Now I had a wounded bear in the middle of Helmville, and not even a candle for a search light.

I called 911 and told them my story. They were 50 miles away, and it was 1 a,m., so all I got was, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be out in the morning." That broke my emotional back, as I wasn't in that good of shape, anyway.

In a lucid moment, I remembered that our ranch, a half-mile away, should have a number of spot lights used for calving. So I called my brother and he met me with a light.

I dearly hoped for help, but all my brother told me was not to shoot toward the cows that were in the meadow behind town. In retrospect, he was right - that the cows come first. The rest is ancillary.

Still terrified, I drove back to town to begin what I felt was going to be a fruitless search. I knew that the next time the bear was seen, he would be dragging someone's child into the brush.

Some god was with me, I guess. I shined my light into a lot about 100 feet from where I shot the bear, and saw him lying, dead, up against a neighboring house. It was the biggest sense of relief I ever felt. And I've put myself into some very weird situations.

I let the dog out of the pickup and he growled and chewed at the carcass for a few minutes before he came back to the pickup. We both went home.

I called 911 to let them know that they were off the hook, but they had no record of my first call. I should have told them that I wounded a unicorn, or something, so they would at least come to see the strange animal.

Some days later I looked at the back door and realized that in the darkness of the house I could have stood on the porch and held the shotgun a foot from the bear's throat and killed him cleanly through a cheap pane of glass.

But then I wouldn't have anything to write about.