Adventures with Bears

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast
Episode 107
Adventures with Bears
 
Homestead living is just not for everyone, especially if you sort of live on the edge of the world so to speak. Just like anything else in life, there are good days and bad days, successes and failures.  But if you enjoy the privacy, semi-isolation, and general lack of people, it is fantastic. If you are afraid of the dark and what might be lurking there, it can be a bit unnerving.
 
All along my journey of homestead living I’ve had some marvelous successes. I also have my list of failures and misadventures. I think one of the things that frightens most people are the encounters with wildlife.  And that is the focus of E 107 which is called Adventures with Bears.  
 
Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E107 which is called Adventures with Bears. 
 
After numerous episodes of focusing on a particular topic I decided to do something just for fun. I will be the first to admit that no matter how much I enjoy how I live, I do have my share of misadventures. Despite all of my plotting and planning, somethings things just go wrong. And sometimes that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Things just go wrong. 
 
Many people have lots of romantic notions about living on a homestead, being sustainable, and just having some sort of independent lifestyle. People hear and read so much about living in a tiny home, living in a RV or a camper van. So much of this lifestyle is romanticized that people tend to forget it is just life anything else. It is a lifestyle choice. Just as living in the suburbs is not for everyone, living out in the middle of the forest is not for everyone either. Nothing is ever perfect and you have to accept the bad right along with the good. 
One day I was sitting at my sister’s house in Tennessee and she was complaining about neighbors, traffic, the local homeless population, and general security issues associated with where they live. My sister and brother in law have a home in the downtown area of Chattanooga. 
 
I made a comment that I have no such issues at the cabin. However, when I go outside at night I always wear a headlamp in order to scan the tree line and do an “eyeball check” before I venture out too far. She wanted to know why I did that and I told her it is because of the wildlife. I explained that when you spend enough time out in the forest you get accustomed to looking at eyes in the dark. Judging by the shape of the eyes, the color of the reflection, how far apart they are, how high they are from the ground and how the critter is moving, you can generally tell what type of animal it is. That is important because of the local population of large predators. 
 
She quickly exclaimed that she could never live like that. And I replied that at least I do not have to live behind double locked doors and an alarm system.  
 
That said, since I’ve had the cabin property I’ve had numerous interesting, and sometimes scary, encounters with wildlife. Just recently, I unexpectedly ended up nearly face to face with a rather large bull moose. Fortunately this encounter ended uneventfully and I walked away only with a huge adrenaline surge. At other times I’ve ended up face to face with a mountain lion who then decided to stalk me because I had spoked her off of her latest kill.  Now these types of encounters do not happen every week but they do happen on somewhat of a regularly basis. But to understand why these things happen requires a little background information on my property.
 
My cabin property is somewhat isolated and very private. I purchased the property in 1996 and it has only been in the last 2 years that someone purchased the acreage next to me and live there most of the time. Anyway,  my property is part of a quarter section of land, which is 160 acres, that is completely surrounded by National Forest. The property is 9 miles from the main highway. Access is off a spur road and through a portion of National Forest. The last mile is a private road.
 
You have to go through three locked gates in order to get to the cabin. The property sits on top of a ridge so even if there are other property owners using their cabins below my place, I never see them. The road that leads up to the cabin is a single lane shelf road that most people are afraid of even when the road is dry and free of snow. Needless to say, no one wanders by. Even now, it would be possible for me to go to the cabin for weeks at a time and never see another person because I am at the end of the road and beyond the cabin is nothing but thousands of acres of national forest. 
 
Hopefully by now you get a clear picture as to why I see more wildlife than people. Bear, mountain lion, deer, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, bobcat, fox, and many other critters wander by on a regular basis, not people.
When first living on the property, I was living in a 200 square foot insulated wall tent fitted with a nice wood stove. It was a nice shelter and it kept me out of the weather while building the cabin but it was not very secure. Fortunately, the only things that got into the tent regularly were the mice and the bears. The only way for me to secure my food supply was to store it in a large metal chest that was locked and chained to a tree. Several times a week I would come home and find evidence of yet another bear trying to pillage my food supply.
 
Some of these issues were resolved once I moved into the cabin. At least I had a secure bear proof shelter and I could stop sleeping with the Colt 45 and the Winchester. However, my bear and mountain lion encounters were still so frequent that I constantly carried some sort of firearm or had something within easy reach. Although the cabin was secure, I fixed bolts in the wall on both sides of the door and would attach a large chain across the door at night before I went to bed. Occasionally I would awake to having a bear trying to push in the front door. Also the bears still loved to get into the tent, which was now only used as storage.
When I would get up in the morning, I would walk out on the porch with a cup of coffee in one hand and the 30-30 in the other. On one such morning, I was standing on the porch deciding what project I wanted to work on for the day. I sat for a few minutes watching and listening for any signs of wildlife. Deciding that it was completely safe I left the 30-30 on the porch and walked down toward the tent to retrieve some tools. Little did I know, there was a bear in the tent.
 
Due to the snow on the ground and the crunching of my boots, the bear heard me coming. As I approached the door of the tent, carrying only a cup of coffee, the bear decided to make a quick exit. He suddenly came out the door and literally ran right into to me. I spilled most of my coffee on his head. He was just as startled as I was and for a few seconds, we stood there eye to eye frozen in place. Then simultaneously we both had the same reaction, which was to run in the opposite direction.It made no difference that the Winchester was sitting on the porch because such a weapon is not designed for up close and personal encounters. 
Fortunately for me, this was a very young bear. He still retained a fear of humans which obviously worked in my favor. But that was not always the case with some of my other encounters as you will soon see.
 
One bear in particular, would come to the cabin during the day and actually sit on the hillside and watch me for most of the day. One of my classmates, who was a well traveled experienced hunter, told me this was very unusual behavior. In fact, he told me that I’d be better off shooting this bear before he got me first. I always disagreed because I was actually living in the middle of their territory. But, more on the fate of this bear a little later.
 
On one particular occasion I had some friends over for dinner. My friend Michael was a former chef. Between him and I we cooked up a fabulous steak and lobster dinner complete with some fantastic sides. In retrospect, I think all the good smells were yet another thing to attract the bears. Anyway, after they left, his wife sat a partially empty bottle of wine on the porch. I left it there thinking surely this would be of no interest. But I will still learning about bears and soon found out that I was wrong again.
 
I was awakened in the middle of the night after the bear tipped over the bottle and it was rolling across the porch. I laid there in the dark listening to toenails clicking on the wooden planks. The bear was also pushing against the door trying to get in the cabin. I came out of the loft with the Colt 45 and started making all the noise I could in the hopes of scaring him away.
 
After I heard him run off the porch, I slowly opened the door. I was wearing a head lamp and did not see him initially.  When I stepped outside, I saw this rather impressive large male standing less than 20 feet away. He was approximately 5 feet tall at the shoulders.
 
Once again determined not to shoot him, I stepped off the porch and picked up a baseball sized rock. I nailed him in the shoulder, which of course only fueled his bad temper. So, I did it again. He started snarling, pacing back and forth, and slowly getting closer. I loaded the Colt with a high capacity magazine containing hollow points and stood my ground. I fired one shot over his head. He kept coming. I fired several shots in the ground in front of him. He then stopped but continued to snarl and growl.
 
I looked at him and said, “One more step and I am going to empty this into your face.” Not that he understood anything more than “Blah, blah, blah”. But, at that point he turned and ran up the hill. I like to laughingly say that I then went into the cabin to check my shorts. That is when I discovered I must be a brave mountain boy because at least I did not pee on myself!!!
 
Now back to the bear that would sit on the hill and watch me during the day. This behavior continued for several months. In fact, I got to the point that I was completely paranoid about that bear. At the time, one of my clients was an officer with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. I expressed my concerns with him and he just informed me that it was legal to shoot in self defense. Being a lover of wildlife, that is not what I wanted to do of course.
 
At any rate, this bear kept harassing me by coming around at various hours of the day and night. I was constantly armed in one manner or another and getting more and more paranoid. One afternoon I left for a couple hours to run errands. I came back to find the storm door to the cabin in pieces. Only the hinges were still attached. That pesky bear had once again tried to get into the cabin. Needless to say, I had to build another door.
 
Shortly thereafter, on one chilly fall evening, I decided to have a nice bonfire. Once the fire was going, I pulled up a chair and sat down to enjoy the fire. After a few minutes, I heard some noise up on the ridge above the cabin. There were snapping branches and several squirrels started chattering even though it was well after dark. I assumed it was that darn bear again.
 
I went into the cabin and grabbed the 12 gauge. I chambered a round and as soon as I started to sit down I saw the bear at the edge of the firelight. He was in full charge. By the time I shouldered the 12 gauge and fired he was 10 feet away. He deflected long enough for me to get off a second round. He then ran off into the forest.
 
The next day I saw my client that was the officer with the Division of Wildlife and informed him of the incident. Because I was not injured and there was no bear available for examination, he did not seem concerned. I have always felt that this was an unfortunate incident simply because I was literally living in the middle of their territory. Even though I never saw that particular bear again my bear encounters continued because there never seemed to be a shortage of those guys. 
 
At one point, I decided to make major improvements on the root cellar. This required me to empty the cellar and use camping coolers for my refrigeration. This was early Fall so it was already cold and snowing on a regular basis. No problem leaving the cooler on the porch temporarily, except for the bears.
 
I had just gone to the supermarket and purchased chicken, sausage, bacon, and some vegetables which included jalapeños. I took a break from working and left for a few minutes to make a phone call. At the time, I had no cell service but had a land line along the main access road. The phone was about 1/2 mile away. I was gone for maybe 20 minutes. When I returned, the cooler had been ripped apart. All the meat and vegetables were gone except for the jalapeños. The bear took one bite of those and decided it was not worth it.
 
But, one other thing was missing, which was my dog. He was a 110 pound malamute. He was somewhat aggressive, which of course made him a good mountain dog. He never really seemed to be afraid of anything. At any rate, he was missing.
I assumed the bear had killed my dog. I got dressed in winter gear, grabbed the rifle and started tracking the bear despite the fact that it was snowing heavily. A couple of hours later I found myself in white out conditions well after dark. Any further tracking was futile if not down right dangerous. I returned to the cabin.
 
The next morning I resumed my search, of course not expecting to ever find him. After several hours, I was snowshoeing along the creek calling his name. He popped his head up out of a snow drift, completely unharmed. That was when I learned that he did not like bears very much. I am not sure to this day if he had some close encounter one day when I was not home. Interestingly enough, he always stood his ground with mountain lions but would run away from a bear.
 
Now for something really funny.
 
About a month after this episode, and several bear encounters later, I was still being very cautious and never ventured far without the Winchester. On one particularly cold and windy morning, I needed to take care of some “personal business” so to speak. At the time, I did not even have an outhouse. All I had was a hand made wooden stool that loosely resembled a toilet set. I laughingly called it the “poop stool”.
 
So, I would simply pick a direction, carry the poop stool a short distance into the forest along with a roll of toilet paper. When I picked my spot for the day, I would sit down and take care of business. The only real challenge was that on cold and windy days, it was never fun having a strong breeze blowing up your back side while trying to focus on important business. So………….
 
Try and use your imagination here.
 
There was plenty of snow on the ground. The wind was gusting strong enough to break tree branches. I am sitting on the poop stool taking care of business with the Winchester laying across my lap. All the while trying to keep an eyeball out for the bear.
As I am about to finish up, I heard a huge crash a short distance behind me. I assume it is the bear. I jumped up from the poop stool, wheeled about and chambered a round in the Winchester. I immediately discovered that the crashing noise was a large branch that had broken off due to the gusting wind.
 
So there I am, Mr Big Bad Mountain Boy. I am standing there with my pants around my ankles, Winchester in hand, and a two foot string of toilet paper hanging out of my butt crack and flapping in the breeze. I took me about 30 seconds to realize just how comical the situation really was as I looked down at myself, had a good laugh, and said “Wow, I bet I look real intimidating right about now. 
 
Of all the wildlife encounters I’ve had over the years of living at the cabin, that is most likely the funniest of them all. Because of where and how we live it seems there is always some sort of misadventure or unexpected event whether that be a large bolder blocking the road, a downed tree, several feet of snow over night, close encounters with wildlife, an unexpected injury with us or with the dogs, or whatever. 
 
As you can see, life on the homestead is not perfect. But neither is life in the city. Despite some of my unnerving experiences with wildlife, in my opinion, the behavior of the critters that I live with is far more predictable than that of humans beings. Plus, I do not have to live behind doors that are closed and locked. 
 
Well folks, I hope you have enjoyed this episode for this week. And if you enjoy the material I produce, then don’t forget to take the time to leave me with a review. And of course don’t forget to subscribe to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast as well as my companion blog Off Grid Living News.
  
Until next week, this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.  
Patrick
Patrick