After a very disappointing day on Saturday that mostly consisted of waiting on dogs to come out of the Cherry Creek canyon (the last one finally came out the next morning) we were off and ready to go at daylight on Sunday. Todd had finally come up, so we had both of our experts.

We changed terrain, and went down into some oak-bottom land near an old ranger station. The boys took their Toyotas up into an abandoned apple orchard while I stayed down below with my fat Dodge.

As soon as Todd got to the top, his dogs lit off like the bear was trying to crawl into the box with them. He turned them out, and the game was on. All four of the guys were out of the trucks, standing and listening to the race, while I listened from below. I was all prepared to be disappointed every time they crested the ridge away from me, but they kept circling back and I could hear them loud and clear again.

Then Todd called me on the radio:

“We see him! It’s a big one, and he’s on the ground! Don’t let him get by you! If you see him, kill him!”

So I raced down the road a little bit, hoping to intercept before they crossed it. I estimated a little short, and Todd flew on by me. As I was standing there, a deer hunter drove by; I warned him that there was one more bear hunter coming and to watch out.

The dogs got by Todd, so he told me to get on the road below; I hauled ass down there and sure enough, got slowed up by that deer hunter again. It took a minute or two for him to find a wide spot and let me by, and then I turned onto the side road, put the hammer down in four-wheel drive, and hauled ass. My eight-foot wide truck was barrelling down a nine-foot wide jeep road, knocking my mirrors in and my CB antenna off the roof, and pinstriping the sides, but by god, I was going to get to that bear!

I hit the end of the road, and I could hear the dogs right there. I jumped out, shoved my ass through the brush toward them, and had my rifle up, safety off, and aimed. And it was dogs popping out; I had missed the bear by no more than ten seconds crossing the road I’d just come in on. I could hear one dog up with him; I was so close that I caught them in the middle of the pack.

Todd and Don meanwhile were hauling themselves down the next lower road, so I got out of where I was and raced down there too. Of course, we got hung up by that same damn deer hunter; that guy cost us that bear three separate times. The bear slipped by Don, but he was close enough to catch up the dogs; sneaky ol’ bear had gone down into a really rough canyon and the gate on the only road was locked, so we called it off.

From the time we turned them out until the time we caught them couldn’t have been much more than an hour. All of the guys saw the bear, but none of them had their rifles out of the trucks with them. They said he was so big and black that at first they all thought he was a cow, so he was probably in the 400-pound range, with a big hump on his shoulders.

And that, my friends, is what this sport is all about. Even though we didn’t kill the bear, we all got a hell of an adrenaline rush that morning. Standing by myself in the middle of the brush with a pissed-off 400-pound bear running right towards me (I thought) sure got my blood pumping! I was grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the morning, and so were they. That one run made the whole weekend worthwhile, and I can’t wait to do it again.