Posted on 06/28/2003 12:45:05 PM PDT by decimon
LIVINGSTON, Mont. (AP) -- A retired Montana railroader turned mountain man knew the odds were good he'd have a close encounter with a grizzly bear someday while alone in the back country.
"It finally happened," Bob Johnson said Thursday from his hospital bed in Livingston. "She tried to kill me."
Johnson said he was attacked by the grizzly Wednesday in the Tom Miner Basin, north of Yellowstone National Park.
He said he couldn't remember how big the bear was. "How can you tell, when the SOB is trying to give you dental work?" he said.
Johnson, 55, remembers grabbing the bear by the nose with both hands as it tried to bite his face and throat. And he remembers taking an incredibly hard blow to the head. Doctors used 75 staples to reattach his scalp to his skull.
He also has a deep gash under his right arm, claw marks on his chest and back, bruises all over his body and some deep teeth punctures on his left forearm.
Johnson still hobbled several miles to his truck and drove to the B Bar Guest Ranch for help.
"He was not a pretty sight," said Aaron Davis, the chef at the ranch. "That scalp wound was downright gruesome."
Johnson said he was moving quietly through the woods, looking for petrified rock and believes he probably awakened the napping female grizzly with a cub.
He said he heard a sound, looked up and the bear was coming at him in full charge. The bear knocked him on his back and went for his face.
"I thought, I'm gonna fight until I die," he said.
Johnson, who lives in Clyde Park when he isn't in the backcountry, said family members want him to stay out of the mountains, but "I'll never do that.
"This was just bad luck."
I watch with interest any stories of bear attacks, as some have selected my neighborhood as the prime target for large predator reintroduction. We're already overrun with mountain lion and black bears that go around 400 pounds, so that leaves grizzlies and wolves. Frankly, there are enough folks around these parts who trace their ancestors to the last wolf hunt that I doubt any reintroduction attempt would last more than a few weeks.
A few years ago my family was camping in the woods just north of town. We were awakened by a bear pushing against the tent, sniffing for goodies. I only had a .45 colt with snake and badger loads so I was seriously undergunned. After what seemed like hours the bear finally wandered away. All the food was enclosed in our vehicle or hung up in a tree, but he apparently found the tent interesting. As Elmer said, "... overgunned? Hell, it's better than the alternative!" I now carry some 300 grain teeth rattlers in my "sleeping bag" gun and keep a shortened and long chambered .45-70 loaded with 350 grain FPs for the "tent gun." But I don't sleep too soundly in the woods if it's a dry summer.
Here's a real hair-raising story of an Alaskan bear hunt chipped in from a viewer of the photo in post 105.
phurley posted 01-20-2003That picture brings back my Bear hunt, like it was yesterday. I will make it short, because I have told it here before and don't want to bore those who have heard it. I was hunting near Cold Bay with a close friend, who was a Bear guide, my brother-in-law who lived there two years and another hunter.
On the third day of the hunt we spotted a big Bear in a Salmon stream and crawled a half mile up the stream. At 90 yards I shot the 91/2 ft. Bear with a .300 Win mag using my 200 grain Nosler Partition handloads at 2900 fps. The Bear fell splashing water 20 ft. and made a tremendous roar I will never forget. Immediately, three more Bears rared up from other Salmon streams close by. We had crawled with 20 yards of one, the others were with 30 yards of us.
The guide said G.D. shoot bears. We killed two more bears, one took 5-shoots the other 4-shots from a .375 H&H, and another .300, and a 30-06. The fourth left with gusto flinging sod that would weigh 10 pounds per piece behind him, much like our Ky horses on a muddy track. He also sounded like a large horse running on dirt, you could hear the footsteps and feel the ground shake plainly. I cannot describe the roar's, shooting, screaming, and general confusion, that occured, and will hear everytime I see a Bear's picture. A young Bear guides coolness, green hunters following his instructions, saved the day.
We were tagged for three Bears but certainly didn't want them all at once, because each is a formidable skinning job.
Well that is my story, a repeat to some of you and my apologies for that, but that picture made my hair stand on end, bringing the sounds and smells of Alaska back in living color. I hear debates on rifles adequate for the big Bears, and listen with interest. My next Alaska trip found me with a .340 Wby and my next, this fall, will find me with a .358 STA shooting a North Fork 270 grain bullet at nearly 3000 fps. I have a buddy in the ground up there that thought a 30-06 was enough gun.
I *think* a 30-06 is plenty enough gun when you are hunting the bear, and have time and distance for accurate shot placement.
On the other hand, when the bear is hunting you...
As you note, there is a difference between the cartridge you select when walking in the woods, hunting, or what you'd pick to stop a charge. Carrying a string of trout out from a secret spot in black bear country, I'm happy with a 6 pound .45-70. If I were hunting the big bears with a .30-'06 (which I wouldn't) I'd want the coolest SOB in the world next to me with the biggest big-bore he could control.
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