Quite a surprise yesterday..

Yesterday my daughter and I went over to check out a spot I always see deer coming out of anytime we're at the cabin. We've always overlooked it because its only about a 10 minute walk from the cabin and it looks to be really thick, but one of the older guys in our camp is limited to short walks.It's pretty thick the first 30 yards or so but game trails crisscross all over the place. Then about 100 yards in there's a small open area about 75 yards wide and long. In the center is a HUGE old gnarly oak that's still producing..Very heavy deer sign in the area. I think they use the area to travel between a corn field and an alfalfa field..I decided this will be an ideal spot for him, so we started to head back up, then I saw what I thought was a black dog running down toward us through the thick area. It was a bear cub running full steam, he ran right between my daughter and I (we were only about 10' apart) then he realized something was amiss and hit the brakes and shot up a tree about 15' behind us to a height about eye level with me. Then I heard grunting and jaw popping coming from about 30 yards up the hill, so momma bear was not happy..All I had to defend myself with was a cheapo shooting stick I use to knock down briers, I mean what can happen 200 yards from the cabin, right? Finally I got a glimpse of momma moving left to right, and the cub jumped down and headed back up the hill angling to the right. I couldn't see them anymore, but heard them crashing through the brush for a few seconds..We gave them a few minutes and then we made our way back up. So all in all a good, and quite memorable afternoon! Now Haley wants to know if her 7mm-08 and 140 AccuBond be enough for black bear when I take her on her first bear hunt.. :lol: All I said was, It'l be plenty good enough.

Close encounters of the bruin kind! Neat experience, without a doubt. Glad Mama wasn't overly grumpy with you. For sure, Haley's 7-08 will work very well on a black bear.

Exciting experience, thanks for sharing and as Dr Mike has already stated and you already know, her 7mm-08 will work just fine on black bears. wishing you both much success on both deer and bears

Ha! Yes, that was quite an experience.

So about carrying only that shooting stick...

Best of luck this season.

Guy

That's a great story! Thanks for posting it.

HaHaHa I bet that was a little touch and go for a while.
We had a bear cub get it's head stuck in a bucket in western MD and it took the DNR several days to catch it to sedate it to remove the bucket, tag and release it back into the wild to rejoin it's mother. The cub got a nick name for the experience yep bucket head. LOL

Yeah, it was a little tense for a few seconds..As anybody who's been in of of these Eastern laurel thickets can attest, sometimes a large critter can be just a few yards away and you'll not see it.