Posted on 11/23/2021 3:53:43 PM PST by nickcarraway
A Louisiana man deer hunting in Mississippi was looking for a trophy deer, but he wound up bagging something much more special, a memory he’ll never forget thanks to four black bears.
Hunter Art Melancon of Larose, Louisiana, was hunting on a lease in Franklin County, Mississippi when he captured the rare sight on video.
“I’ve been hunting there for 12 years,” Melancon said. “We’ve seen bear tracks, I get them on my game camera, but I’d never seen a live bear.”
Two weeks ago that changed and he saw a single bear as he was hunting.
“I was super excited, I’d finally seen a bear,” Melancon said.
But the following Thursday, Nov. 18, Melancon saw something very few hunters see.
“I hurried up and got the stand, the wind was in my face,” he said. “I hear something on the side of me, and hear something walking and there’s a big bear sitting there.”
Melancon was in a box stand approximately six feet off the ground.
He said he watched the bear eating grass for a minute.
“Then a little while later, there’s another one comes out,” he said. “Then on my right another one came out.”
“When the third one came out, I say oh ****!” Melancon said. “It was crazy because I’ve been wanting to see one. Then one week I see one, then the following week I see four come out.”
Melancon guesses that one of the bears was a female and two of the others were her babies from last year and the fourth, perhaps, was this year’s cub.
“I could have dropped a pin on them, they were right there,” he said.
Melancon said he didn’t get a deer that day, but he didn’t care. He got a memory of a lifetime.
“It actually made my day seeing those bears than actually killing a deer.
Two species of black bear live in Mississippi, the American black bear and the Louisiana black bear. The species are visually identical, but have slightly different DNA and bone structure, officials with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks say.
The four bears in the video are Louisiana back bear, based on where they were spotted.
For many years, the Louisiana black bear was listed as federally threatened. They were removed from that list recently, but remain listed as endangered and thus protected by Mississippi law.
As recently as 2002, when the state of Mississippi setup a bear protection program it was believed that perhaps less than 50 bears existed in the state.
Now, thanks to protection measures, the state believes more than three times that many bears exist in the state.
“That’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.”
Too bad the site wants me to disable my ad blocker.
LOL! That’s what I first thought too!
Me too.
I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t have a chocolate bar stashed in his pocket.
We had some bear encounters during our boy scout ‘vacation’ trip to the porcupine mountains in da yoop. Thankfully, we had our food hanging by rope from the trees, but one of the bears actually got up there and was trying to grab the rope and pull it in.
We left the next day and spent the rest of the week ‘camping out’ in the scoutmaster’s cabin on the au sable.
Good times...
He get excited when he sees a real live bear.
I grab my Marlin 1895.
I’ve seen some amazing things sitting in a deer stand from coyotes to turkeys roosting in my tree to having birds land on my head and squirrels sitting a foot away from me chattering because I’m in their tree.
These bears could be descendants of the Mississippi bear that Teddy Roosevelt refused to kill, inspiring the original teddy bear.
I’ve tree stand stories,,,
So where, exactly, are Louisiana black bears spotted? On their bellies? Backs? Haunches? Faces? Sides?
We all know where these guys are spotted...
Down here in SW Florida, we have bears in the swimming pools, having to get bear-proof trash cans.Common sight especially in the Naples area.
Mrs Romulus’s cousin lives near Ashville. His Facebook feed shows black bears (as in bears, plural) in his yard all.the.time. Right now they’re coming for the acorns.
I think most hunters do :-) Half the fun is just enjoying what’s going on around you and for the record, I know what an Osage Orange is. Used to pick them by the dozens out of road ditches near Kansas/Nebraska. My FIL used to tell stories about making fence posts out of the wood and they’d still be in use 30 years later.
It was a great stay...most of the time we were there anyway. One night we had gotten distracted by fishing and boating and didnt even think to come in to have supper until long after it was dark. I do know better but I had some very thick Tbones and I was frying them up in a pan deep with butter as the late night hours approached. It was shortly after that when the outside motion light started coming on and going off. I ignored it for a while thinking it was a bad sensor or night critters. I wasnt entirely wrong but it was a somewhat larger creature than I was envisioning. Apparently a bear had thought that I had made a steak for him too. This is when we remembered that the motors were out so we couldnt retract the stairs, just a couple steps and a screen door keeping us safe. The kids were terrified that it was going to come in during the night and after a few hours of crying I drove everyone to a hotel for the night.
Theyre always so rude. If theyre going to show up for a meal uninvited they should at least bring a bottle of wine or a fruit salad or something.
Some around here 80 yrs old or more...
It's a hard wood...
I have two Osage Orange posts in my yard. One holds my street numbers on it.
They are two of four large stakes (4-5 foot) that used to hold down the wooden windmill on my great grandparents farm in Iowa. Still solid as concrete they are at least 130 years old.
One still has a bolt and some iron strapping on it where it attached to the leg of the windmill.
I’ve got (and I’m sure you do too) sex photos of this POS who claims he’s done nothing wrong, but can’t put them out there. If it was Trump, however.....
It made good bows too, hence Bodarc wood.
It was easier to plant O.Orange trees to use as your fence posts than to quarry a bunch of limestone fenceposts out of the ground. I can look out my front door and see a line of trees that marked someones quarter section from before the suburban sprawl flowed over this county.
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