Woodpecker Lips Part 2
A story about a great friend, mountains, wild animals, trout rivers, danger, and adventure.
If you have not read Part 1, here, you probably want to do that before continuing.
Stan and I met by a matter of chance less than a week after I arrived in Montana, a fresh flatlander from Indiana. He had moved to Montana 8 years earlier with his wife. A native of west Texas with close family throughout East Texas and Louisiana, our backgrounds are very different, but our mutual love for hunting, mountains, wild critters, and adventure made us fast friends.
Picking up the story back at the trailhead, dampness in the air and low dense clouds made it feel like rain was always moments away, it held off while I organized my gear and loaded up my pack. Packing gear in the rain is not my idea of fun, what starts out wet in the mountains typically stays wet in weather of this sort, so I hurried to keep my essential gear dry. Hurry too much and leave something behind, you are either doing without or making the round trip back to the trailhead. I enjoy a few creature comforts in the backcountry, just to where it makes the experience more enjoyable, but doesn’t add too much weight to my pack, moving weight up mountains is hard work. Stan on the other hand is a mountain minimalist in its truest since and as I may have mentioned before, hard as woodpecker lips. He once spent the night on a mountain, no camping gear, only his daypack, slept with his back to a tree, most likely eating a dinner consisting of a granola bar, and a few pieces of beef jerky mixed with a handful of Peanut M&M’s he found at the very bottom of his pack, waiting for daylight so he could safely navigate out. Most people would freak out in that situation and get themselves seriously injured or dead, not only is he hard but wicked smart… I prefer to shade to the over prepared side.
It was a nice hike up, the rain stayed at bay, and I was able to clear my mind of my modern world distractions, my reason for being here. Feeling refreshed and optimistic, I had camp setup and was glassing for bears by 6pm. The excitement was building inside me, I could feel the weight in my stomach, and it didn’t take long for things to get interesting. Within the first 5 minutes, a large herd of elk came into view, including some promising spring velvet bulls. Within 30 minutes, had my first black bear sighting. I worked up a nice appetite on the hike in, so I had water heating for my freeze dried. Eating dinner on a high perch, in pursuit of some critter, deep in the Rocky Mountains is one of the great pleasures and humbling experiences of life to those who know it. I can feel its mass and gravity inside me now even as I sit here and type this, in that moment you know you can count yourself as one of the rare and lucky humans to have had that experience in this increasingly modern world, so removed from our human past, you share it with all the people that came before you, thousands of years’ worth of stories just like this one.
As I spooned the rehydrated Beef Stroganoff into my mouth with the titanium spork, there it was, the blonde color phase black bear, more than a mile away working across and up the mountain face in front of me. No binoculars were needed to find this bear, it was like a single red rose in the middle of fresh cut green spring grass, blatantly obvious and strikingly beautiful. Moving quickly up and over the mountain, I knew there was no way I could catch up, so rather than giving chase I opted to finish my dinner and watch. Hopefully gleaning some valuable insights into the bears behavior for future use. The bear disappeared over the high alpine boulder fields at the top of the mountain as fast as it showed up, never even found it in my spotting scoop.
To say I was excited was an understatement, here I am two hours into my first bear of hunt of the year, right in the middle of some great action, and then a moment that changed me forever. I see a big bear headed in my general direction, 2 miles away, maybe further. Due to the angle, overcast sky, low clouds, and distance, it was hard to tell exactly what I was looking at. I was confident it was a big bear though, they walk with a different sort of attitude, a commanding stroll. I started thinking about packing up my gear and trying to get on an intercept course with the bear. As I formulated my plan, continuously looking to my topo maps and back to the terrain front of me, I kept an eye on the bear, to not lose it.
Bears cover ground quickly when inclined, even at a walk, by now the gap was closed to less than a mile, with over an hour of legal shooting light, I had plenty of time to get in front of this bear, but I needed to give chase soon. I take another gander through my spotting scope and keep trying to record some footage of the bear with my phone. At this distance it was now easy to see this was no black bear, I was looking at my first in person grizzly bear. A bear whose path of travel was in my general direction. This is the exact moment in the video. This was one of my early attempts to video through my spotting scope with my phone, hence the jerky and shaky video, to be perfectly honest with you, I was also shaking like a dry oak leaf in a stiff breeze.
Soon after, as I was playing out the scenario in my head, deciding what I would do, the bear turned, now it was basically coming right at me, and sunset was looming. As I was fumbling with the spotting scope and the video in this moment of mental chaos, I watched this bear walk up to tree, look at it with a slight head tilt, take its measure, then stand up on its hid legs and scratch its back on the tree trunk, marking territory and reliving a bad itch. I spent more than 20 minutes watching this bear, but only videoing a couple minutes worth.
Once the bear moved into thick aspen grooves surrounding my perch, I decided it best to get inside my tent, a mere 50 yards away. I know how to survive in grizzly bear county, I had made all the necessary preparations. That night I slept with my rifle on my left side, my revolver on my right, and my Garmin Inreach right above my head. I decided right off that sleep was my best option, so I took a couple of melatonin and tried to get comfortable, intently listening to every noise in the looming darkness. I don’t remember how long it took me to fall asleep, but not as long as one might think. My thoughts go back and forth between the image in my mind’s eye of both bears. Stan would be showing up in morning and we would hopefully find that blonde bear to chase, it really is best to not hunt alone in grizzly bear country. It began to rain, I fell peacefully asleep to the pitter patter of rain drops on my tent, content with the uncertainty.
To be continued…
