History: A Bear Hunt

From an oral history with Ern maupin

Picture Credits. Philo Richards

We had killed a beef there, just a yearling, pretty close to the barn and the trail went out between the barn to where we had butchered this beef. My horse shied; I just supposed he was a scared of them entrails, they was smelling.

Well, I went on and didn't pay any attention to that, went out through the corral and got my other horse and went up to meet the other boys. They had saddled up and we were going to take the weaners on down to the valley. We got down there and that old bear had been at that waste. Evidently when I went out with my horse, he run off down in the gulch just a little ways away.

He made a track about as big as the top of that stool. That bear had just almost cleaned up that waste after it quit snowing.

So we just took off after him, his tracks went off down country. We chased him out of the north fork. We tracked him, I guess a couple of miles. We was going right along, too. He made big plain tracks in that snow.

There was the three of us. We was riding at a lope and first thing I know he just stopped and turned right around and come back, his trail was maybe a couple hundred yards away and he had jumped off down country, running.

I was kind of leading the outfit all the time and Fred followed me. Fred and I were just about the same age, went to school together. When the bear came back on his own track, he come to a kind of slope off down into a gulch, and he jumped. He evidently heard us there. He jumped just as far as he could down that hill. His old claws were five inches long, and he had big old feet.

So we took off after him, run him across country, following that track. Course he was running, and we was just tearing up the dirt. You could see purty far and we run him down across three different gulches that cut all through that country. He run just across each one where they kind of broke off, run out across there and he finally went out to the top of the hill.

We could see the wagon road and Round Park when we ran out to the top of the hill, but we couldn't see him. It was a half a mile or so down to this park and just one little clump of timber down there.

Fred and I decided the bear had run as far as he could so we tore down that hill, went right up to that little thicket.

The bear was evidently in there when we ran out to the top of the hill, but he never stopped. He went on down across the road and across this park. Right at the far side there was a ridge come up around that big old park. I knew the country pretty good, there was just a low rim, six or eight feet high around the park. When the bear come across the park he was running right at that rim. Well, I knew a way across the gulch, so I cut off up there, then cut back to hit his track again. I picked up his track, he wasn't jumping so far by that time. He was just plumb played out. I took off at top speed, I knew if he got a quarter of a mile further he was gone, because the rim ran up on that fork of the canyon.

There was two or three miles there that there was no way of getting off with the horse, so I whipped up all that I could. Pretty soon I ran out on him. He had ran out to three big old pine trees and just stopped. Kind of hunched down on his hindquarters, he'd look up at that tree, then he would look up at me.

I was twenty or thirty feet off him kinda running through the oaks, before I ever saw him, of course, I was kind of watching where I was a going. He was big though and he just kind of hunkered down there between those three old trees. I had run off from Ralph and Fred. they followed the bear tracks instead of mine. I had a six-shooter, but I knew I didn't want to shoot him with that for fear I couldn't kill him. So I just sat there and watched him.

Pretty soon here come old Fred tearing along, he run right up, I guess thirty, forty feet from the bear and I had kind a got around past him so if he tried to run off, I could get a few shots at him with my six-shooter. But he just sat down there.

Old Fred come out with his Winchester and never got off his horse. He just turned the horse around and took a shot at him. I was so close I could see where the bullet hit and it was a little bit low. Fred raised his gun up a little and took another shot at him, and down he went. Ralph didn't get there until it was all over.