Woodpecker Lips

A story about a great friend, mountains, wild animals, trout rivers, danger, and adventure.

Part 1

Published June 21, 2023

The Madison River Valley, Montana - It was mid June, I took that Friday afternoon off work and was pulling into the trailhead by 2 pm. One of my best friends and hunting partner, Stan was planning to hike in that evening after work. It was Stan who so kindly introduced me to this hunting spot and glassing knob, my destination and camp for the weekend. I had seen on two occasions, weeks earlier, a beautiful blonde color phase black bear glassing from this spot, along with a handful of other bears. There was also a sighting and encounter with two grizzly bears, so there was that element as well, it is the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. They all weighed heavy on my mind for different reasons. This place deep in the Madison Range of Montana is as pristine and spectacular of a place start to a hunt that exists any place in the world. On any given day you might see one or all of the big game species in Montana: elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, black bears, mountain lions, and last but certainly not least the grizzly bears. An amazing slice of mountains and wilderness.

If you have never seen a blonde color phase black bear, my words to describe it will fail miserably, it is simply amazing, it is the rarest of the black bear color phases. The bear glows in color as it effortlessly meanders over deadfall and boulder fields, over and across mountain faces, one of the natures most beautiful creations.

The destination was only a 2 mile hike in but with a formidable climb of 1500 vertical feet, and 50lbs of camp, food, water, and hunting gear, you work up a nice lather going up. I was packed in, had my camp setup, water heating for my freeze dried B&G dinner, and glassing for my bear by 5pm, it was all business. My plan was to spend the weekend, locate and go after that blonde bear that had consumed my thoughts for a number of weeks.

Actually, I should probably back up and start the story earlier, weeks earlier. Montana, late May to be more exact. I was amped up to do some bear hunting, mostly I was just jacked to be back in the mountains. Freshly tanned from chasing bonefish in the Bahamas, full of piss and vinegar, feeling like I could conquer the world, my 2006 Tacoma was loaded and I was headed out of Bozeman through Four Corners, Montana over the Gallatin River. As I passed through Ennis, along the banks of Madison River and down the valley, it just felt like good bear weather, it was cool wet day, not cold but not warm either, not raining but a light mist occasionally. A heavy dampness hung in the air. I was optimistic about my first hunt of the season.

My friend Stan that I mentioned earlier is from west Texas, Amarillo to be exact and he is as hard as woodpecker lips, but we will get to more about him later. We were set to meet at the formally mentioned glassing knob the next morning. I was planning to pack in that evening and spend the night, hopefully finding some bears for us to chase in advance of his arrival the following morning.

Part 2

Published June 29, 2023

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. 

Part 3

Published July 20, 2023

Those of you just joining this programing known as my life may be confused, so let me give you a Stan insight about Josh, he once told me on a scorcher of a September day hunting elk in the Missouri River Breaks in Northeast Montana, a day the temperature topped out at 110 degrees, that basically I was like Hunter S. Thompson but big game hunter, rambling through the desert shirtless looking for wild animals to chase.  I suppose this was prompted by my typical take on life, I was living in a van, and in fact I was hunting elk shirtless in a magical high desert paradise, admittingly I enjoyed it and have embraced the comparison, always a fan of his insights and writing.  Owning a bit of a hippie mindset yet being excited about the adventure of hunting, cooking, and eating wild food is a confusing enigma for most people, not particularly appreciated by either side in this increasingly divisive world.  This is what I am though, a human being living and breathing on this earth, with a touch of counterculture tendency, fascinated by playing my role as a human hunter and gather, and advocate for wild creatures and places.

Picking back up where we left the story, I got through the night without incident, knowledge of a big grizzly in the area certainly made my 2:00 am pee more interesting than usual. I assumed the bear had moved away from the area, taking no chances though, I carried my Ruger revolver in a ready position for the duration of said pee.  I mentioned the rain earlier, well it started as I fell asleep and it rained all night.  That next morning, I did my best to kill time in the tent, queue the creature comforts, clouds and fog moved in thick and the rain fell steady, visibility was down to a few hundred yards in all directions. Awful conditions to look for bears through optics.  I expected rain and drizzle, in fact I welcomed it, as do the bears.  By early afternoon the weather forecast and visibility looked bleak for the rest of the weekend, so I decided it was time to pack up and leave.  I was only two miles from the trailhead, I could always hike back in, if and when the weather cleared.

Met up with Stan that evening at his house, we cooked steaks, drank a few beers, discussed grizzly bears, and I slept in the bed of my truck. Tucked inside his garage, warm, dry, and with a full belly. The weather was just terrible the next day, so we drove mountain roads, scouted for hunting spots, but mostly we just spent time doing what grown men do when riding around in a truck all day, telling the tales of our lives.

The following day was looking a bit better, at least there appeared to be a break in the weather the next morning, with more rain and colder weather in the forecast later in the day. Neither of us are the type to sit around doing nothing, the day of driving endless mountain roads had us eager to burn boot leather, so we made our plans to hike back into that same spot the next morning.

Once boots hit the ground and I worked up a good lather, the bears I had witnessed two evenings before began to race though my mind, both the pristine blonde bear and the big grizz.  Hiking in and out of the mountains as we are requires a level of stamina and fitness, Stan is 14 years younger than me, and having lived in Montana at elevation for years gives him a big advantage,  I just do my best to keep up.  As we approached the final big climb up to our preferred glassing knob, grizzly encounter number two occurs. We are gaining elevation quickly now, I am winded and on tired legs as we come up over a rise in the trail, in front of us, a juvenile grizzly bear at 80 yards.  This was a smaller bear, it happened quickly and at a safe distance, the bear wasted no time turning to run. While the encounter did make the hair on my neck stand up, it happened so fast and there was never much concern of impending danger. That young bear had no intentions of anything besides running away.

As I mentioned before, we only expected a brief window in the weather, and that is what we got.  An hour or two into our glassing session, the rain started again, with the elevation and a cold front moving in, it quickly turned to the heavy wet snow you would expect in June.   Within 30 minutes the mountain was socked in and visibility was nil, giant wet snow flakes the size of half dollars are coming down at a clip.  We do our best to stay dry and warm and wait it out, but the forecast looked bleak and it is hard to stay dry in that type of snow without shelter, so we hiked off the mountain and went to a watering hole in Ennis for burgers and a beer. Then I made the drive from the Madison Valley, with the Tobacco Root Mountains to my left, over Bozeman Pass, past the outlet of the Madison River at Bear Trap Canyon, back to everyday life in Bozeman. The blonde bear would have to wait for another day.

At this point the timeline gets fuzzy in my head, a couple weeks past, a business trip to Monterrey, life in Bozeman, and the weather was not cooperative.  In fact, it felt like it rained continuously for weeks. With the weather at higher elevations even less favorable, Stan and I spent some time streamer fishing a world famous stretch of the Madison River, landing some nice trout, rainbows and browns.  This stretch of the Madison is beyond imagination, miles of riffles, seams, slack water pockets, undercut banks, unapparelled scenery, an abundance of big trout, and best of all, accessible by foot. As usual Stan was sharing with me his favorite spots, paid for with time and miles hiked over a period of 8 years.  I guess he was just happy to have someone as devoted to the outdoors as him to kick around with, many people like to talk about outdoor pursuits and buy gear, but few are willing to put in the time and effort to get after it with regularity.  I will forever be grateful for every single waypoint he shared with me.

“Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.” - Hunter S. Thompson

Part 4 - The Finale

Published August 21, 2023

As I mentioned previously, I met Stan as a matter of chance.  Total Archery Challenge in Big Sky, Montana, I rode a ski lift to the first target, and missed gloriously at African Lion, an 80-yard shot, losing my arrow, a preview of the day to unfold. At the next target I see a guy crouching along the concrete and metal ski lift support structure in his suede chukkas waiting to shoot.  I invited him to join our group, I am running solo, along with a couple I met at the first target from Tacoma, Washington. Stan was his name.  We ended up at Scissorbills Saloon, in what would become usual protocol, we finished the day with burgers and a beer, or two.  Over the course of the next couple of years we would become friends. 

There are only so many people you will meet in this life that will elevate to best friend level, and we meet many people, but most will only be acquaintances.  When life circumstances and chance bring a new friend into or and old one back into my life, I try to cherish it.  I can count on less than two hands the best friends of 44 years, and most are from my childhood, Stan happens to be one of them.  Now for some real life, best friend stuff, a friend sends you a message on a Sunday morning in rural Montana, saying his Bloodhound Otis has had “something really bad go wrong”, stroke, aneurysm, something, and is laying in in his kennel convulsing and there are no vets available. He then mentions, “I am not sure I can do this”. You respond in kind, “I will take care of this, I will be there as soon as I can.”   You go to his house and put an end to the dog’s suffering, relieving your friend of the burden.  Otis remains the only dog ever dispatched by my  hands, it felt awful,  but I did the deed, I liked Otis, always the first of Stan’s three dogs to greet me and smell my hand.

In any case, it was Friday afternoon, exactly like the one I wrote about earlier, I had finished up my work early and was headed from Bozeman to the Madison Range, and back to that spot, that Blonde bear had consumed my thoughts for the last couple of weeks, I could think of little else but getting out there and looking for that bear. 

Once again, I was headed in that evening and Stan was planning to hike the next morning, hopefully one of us would be notching our Montana black bear tag before the end of the weekend.  As it had been for weeks, more rain was in the forecast, at this point I was considering building an ark!   I filled my Stone Glacier pack with the intent to spend the weekend chasing bears and hopefully pack one out.  This is the point where one could question my decision making, but I did what I did. I thought the odds were in my favor, grizzly bear sightings are rare, even in this area of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.  Just back from winter in the Caribbean, a transformative experience to say the least, feeling emboldened and invincible on some level was certainly part of the decision-making equation.  

Now we pick up the story where we left off all the way back at the beginning.  I made it to the glassing knob by early evening and was boiling water for some freeze-dried sausage biscuits & gravy, my favorite freeze-dried meal.  Within minutes I was looking for bears and eating the chunks of biscuit with the smooth sausage gravy off my titanium spork designed to eat right out the freeze-dried bags.  A well-designed and efficient delivery system I might add.

My previous Grizzly bear encounters in this area were certainly on my mind, in fact they weighed heavy the entire hike in, as I set up camp, and attempted to focus my attention on locating black bears.  I remember the hair on my neck and arms standing on end.

My eyes are buried in my optics, a pair of Zeiss 10x42 binoculars.  Glassing for animals, I zone in, and the reality that surrounds me becomes background noise.  I am not very aware of my surroundings in these hours, it all just fades away into darkness.  For whatever reason, I can’t remember why now, I looked away from the binoculars, I was fiddling with items in my pack, most likely a snack, my peripheral vision caught something off the left, and my nose picked up an odor, as my head turned to the left my eyes immediately picked up a giant bear head.  A large Grizzly had just crested the knob and was headed directly at me, 40 yards, my first thought, “this is too close, I am in a really bad situation right now”.   

I like to think I have good instincts when it comes to responding to threats, I spun to my right, away from the bear, scooping up my rifle as I stood and said, “hey bear”, in a stern but voice full of fear, then the moment of eye contact.  As we stood there looking at each other for a split second before I looked away, I knew right then I was staring at a large mature Grizzly bear, likely a big boar, facing any fear that I may have had directly in the face.  There was no running away, I had one option, stand my ground, then react to the bear.    He turned slightly, enough that I could now make out the unmistakable shoulder hump that is the most recognizable feature of the grizzly bear.

Here I am face to face with one of the biggest and badest animals on the plant, close enough I can smell him, the odor was unlike anything I have smelled before or since, intense, thick, and musky. This encounter was different than the others, there were seconds where I wasn’t sure what this bear was going to do. The wind was in my favor, he couldn’t get a scent, bears don’t see well, this was the worst kind of situation.  In that moment that felt like minutes but was most likely just seconds, I knew he was deciding what to do, and fleeing was not the only option being considered.  He took a few more steps towards me further closing the gap, I had my rifle shouldered, safety off, and was speaking in a firm voice to the bear, fully expecting him to charge.   The pit in my stomach was indescribable, the sun, now low in the sky, reflected off his grizzled coat, strands of fur danced in the light against the long shadows of dusk, shifting color between silver and brown.  I will carry the memory of that image and the physical manifestation of fear in my guts to my last moments on this earth, in fact I am certain I will think about it upon my death. In the end, and fortunately for both of us, he decided that avoidance was the best policy, in that moment he turned and went back down the way he came up.  

I was shaken and shaking, not only was this a bear encounter, but it was also a close encounter, in that moment, I felt fear like I have never felt before.  I paced around on top of this knob trying to figure out what to do.  Talking to myself as usual, “Less than an hour before sunset, do I stay or do I pack up and leave?”  I couldn’t see where the bear went, he could easily still be hanging around.  My tent is within rock throwing distance.

I would like to tell you that I stayed, faced that fear, and filled my Montana Black Bear tag, but I can’t… This thought crossed my mind.

The Madisonian

Black Bear Hunter Mauled & Eaten by Grizzly Bear in the Madison Valley. 

Joshua Keith Clemence, 43 yrs old, residing in Bozeman, Montana, from Covington, Indiana, cause of death: Grizzly mauling, body only partially recovered from known Grizzly bear hotspot, now the site of multiple Grizzly attacks.

In the end, I decided this was one of those adventures not to be written in time.  It was time to go, I was alone, and I had pressed my luck far enough.  My butt was puckered as I tore down my tent and smashed everything into my pack.

I hiked down off the glassing knob, picking my way though the boulders and small rocks as the elevation drops quickly, along the game trails, to the main trail, through the switchbacks, past the spring, along the mountain creek, through sweet smelling Aspen groves, past the bear scat, unloaded at the trailhead, packed up my Toyota, and left uneventfully.  Had dinner in the warmth and hospitality of my friend’s home, the rest of the weekend was forgettable I suppose.  Thus, the end to my 2022 Montana Black Bear season and the end of this story.

Dedicated to my friend Stan, you are as tough a human as I have ever known, a fine outdoorsman, and an even better human being.  I can’t forget to mention that blonde black bear I know is still out there gracefully traversing boulder fields and deadfall deep in Grizz Country, Montana, you remain magic in my life. 

Joshua

“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it” – Roald Dahl