I knew when Grey Fox died that things would be all shaken up within our little hunting group. The interpersonal relationships did take a hit, and the season had some awkward moments, but all in all, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The same group of us are still hunting together at the end of the season, so that’s a good thing.

The bad thing this year has been the actual hunting. I’ve never seen a year so bad, and most of the houndsmen I run with say the same thing, and they have a lot more time on the ground for comparison. So many weekends have been spent driving around looking for tracks or scents for absolutely nothing that it’s got me pretty well burnt out on the whole thing for a while. So much money and time invested, and I only got to see three bears taken. What a terrible year for training dogs this was too, as it’s really hard to teach them what to hunt if we never actually find what they’re supposed to be hunting.

I didn’t want to put my green dogs in on cold tracks for fear that they’d mess up someone’s paid-for hunt, and it’s not as good for training as hot tracks are anyway. They have a hard time figuring out what to do if the smell is too faint. So Jane got in on three hunts, and only made it to the tree on two of them. I never did manage to walk the pups in to a tree, since I was busy messing with Jane and only have so many hands. It’s next to impossible to train young dogs without a lead dog of your own, and I don’t have one.

The dogs are driving me nuts at home too, always barking, like hounds do. I’ve had a lot of animal drama going on lately with Angus killing poultry and me having to take one of the hound kennels for him. Add to that the job insecurity and the irrationality of spending one to two hundred bucks in fuel each weekend to hunt these dogs, besides the costs to feed them and keep them healthy, and it starts to overwhelm me. I’m losing sight of the joy in hunting; it’s all work and no fun any more. I’m working hard on simplifying my life to ease stress levels, and the dog pack is a huge part of my stress.

So after a great deal more thought than I spent acquiring the pack (and that was a lot,) they are now for sale. I have someone coming over tonight who likes Cara a lot and used to own her grandmother. He may take the other two as well, for another friend who’s down a few dogs. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this but rationality says that it’s the right thing to do. It’s just not the right time for me, and getting a green houndsman involved with a green pack was a poor decision. If the financial things shape up, I can get back into it at any time, but next time, I’ll buy some trained dogs to start with. Puppies are just more headache than they’re worth.

I’m having a problem with feeling like a failure and I definitely got more attached to these little hooligans than I should have, but I do think that my life will be easier without them. The box will come out of the truck so I can use the bed, but I’ll keep all of my equipment. I liked being a houndsman, but I think I will like lowering my blood pressure just as much. I’ll miss them but my poultry and the neighbors won’t. At least I’m in good company; more than half of the houndsmen that I know have sold off all of their dogs at one point or another. Grey Fox himself used to sell dogs left and right, and completely got out of it more than once. But if I get back into it, it’ll have to be from another angle. I’m not a dog trainer, at least not at this stage.

You guys know that I’m a little bit hooked on this bear hunting nonsense. It only took one hunt for me, and I didn’t even get to see that bear taken. It’s the whole experience; listening to the hounds, working as a team with your friends, learning the land, putting in maximum effort usually for someone else’s reward, and just plain getting to be there that gets my motor running.

The adrenaline rush is incredible. When you’re at a tree below a bear and the dogs are all singing their hearts out doing what they were born to do, it’s all about the moment. All of the preparation, all of the work to get to that point just drops away, and it’s just the team and the bear. This is when you forget about the dogs being nuisances in the kennel at home, and you don’t care that you’re exhausted and still have to pack everything back up and out of the canyon. Everything that’s always churning in the back of your mind is absolutely drowned out and for once everyone there, dogs, people, and bear, are all focused on the same experience.

People who haven’t done this may not get it. It seems really strange from the outside, even to some other hunters. We kill ourselves all year getting our dogs trained and ourselves in shape and enough money together to get to do this. It’s a ton of work in the off-season, but at that particular moment at that tree, that’s when it’s worth it. I can explain it all I want, but until you’ve been right there, you’re not going to get it. Some people still don’t, but some do.

I had the privilege of passing this experience on to a friend this weekend. Junior is in Colorado, but I always go up even when he’s gone, just like I used to do before we met. And this time I wanted to show my friend Shelley how cool this whole thing was. I’ve talked it up since I met her, and she was really excited to go.

I warned her that we might not even see anything. Bear hunting is really variable, and we can go weeks without treeing a bear. Even getting in on a race would be interesting, and getting to a tree would just be gravy, so that’s what I hoped for. And it turned out that we couldn’t have picked a better weekend to do this.

It had snowed on Thursday night but not too much, which makes for really nice hunting. The snow on the ground shows the tracks really well and keeps the scent longer, and the dogs don’t get overheated later in the day like they can in the early season. So as we do, we split up into several groups to start a bear for the client. We were following Maverick doing a little dog training when Dean called and said that he had something going up high. So we threw the rig dogs back into the boxes and hightailed up up the mountain into the deeper snow.

It took us a while to pinpoint the dogs, but once we did, it was clear that they had that bear in sight. They make a whole different noise when they’re just chasing one from when they’re looking at him. I happened to catch a track across the road out of the corner of my eye, and we got out to have a little show and tell. That track happened to be a big bear, and fresh, and with dog tracks right with it, so it was the one we were after. Dean had seen it earlier too, and knew we were after a good one.

Eventually we narrowed down the best place to walk down to the tree. We had our choice of one side of a creek or the other, but the road around to get to the other was miles and miles away. But we got there, and the men went down with Shelley, Seamus, and I just a touch behind. We were fortunate enough to get down to the tree without any problems. Maverick handed me some dogs as soon as I got there, so I didn’t get any pictures. But Shelley got to see the whole thing. The client used a bow and stuck the bear with his first shot, at which time it came barreling down that tree. Dean and Maverick backed the client up with pistols, as the last thing we need is a wounded bear around. Bears are incredibly tough, and it kept going down into the creek with several bullets and an arrow wound in him.

That creek was as far down the mountain as we’d already come but much steeper. My knee is giving me fits, so I didn’t think it would be a good idea to go down any farther only to have to struggle my way back up. Seamus wanted to go and he’s getting pretty trustworthy about handling himself, so when the rest of the men went down, I checked with Crawler and  sent him down with them. Shelley and I packed out some extra equipment for the guys and slowly followed our backtrail back to the trucks, about a mile and completely uphill.

At that point the challenge was to find a good place for the guys to get the bear out. This creek wasn’t really accessible by any roads; we couldn’t winch it out with mule tape like we can if it’s fairly close. And it was a big bear, the biggest one of the year, so dragging out whole by sheer manpower wasn’t an option either. After some driving back and forth to evaluate both sides of the creek, the guys decided just to skin it out and pack the head, hide, and meat out separately. Fortunately, Dusty showed up with the cavalry; he had the squirrel hunters in his truck, a group of young and strong men that have recently started hunting with us. He sent them down with extra packs to help with the muscle.

Seamus was rather pleased to get to do all of that without a parent around. He and Crawler started a fire down there so the boys could work on the bear without getting too cold; it was 27 degrees all day.  And he came up out of that canyon packing someone else’s rifle and a great big grin; it’s good for a kid to be treated like a man once in a while. Shelley seemed to really get a kick out of the whole thing too, and I think I may have gotten her as hooked as quickly as I was. I’ll lay odds that she gets a bear tag next year. Once my dogs are trained, I’ll sure do my best to get her a bear of her own, but getting to be in on the biggest and prettiest one of the year was a special treat. I’m thrilled that I got to share it, with each of them getting something different out of the whole experience.