The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/895273
The Press-Dispatch Sports Wednesday, November 1, 2017 B- 3 to get? '" Brent recalled. "He said, 'Two of you will proba- bly get a bear.'" However, Melody said that they quickly learned that they would get plenty of opportunities to get a bear. "The Saturday before, we came back to the cabin, and there was one trying to get in the trash and one out by the air conditioner, and then there was one down over the hill," Melody said. "So there was just quite a few in that area." "We were definitely in bear territory," Brent added. Brent said that they actu- ally spotted their first bear two days earlier, on Thurs- day, when their host led them to the tree stand he had set up for them. "He said, 'Let's park the four-wheelers where we're not going to spook any- thing and walk up,'" Brent recalled. "So we walk up the mountain to see the stand. And when we went up to see the stand, we got to see a bear on top of the ridge then." "My wife, she was kind of skeptical," Brent added. "She thought maybe this old guy was telling us bear stories. And then, after we all got to see that bear up on top the ridge, she was, like, 'I believe him now. There are bear down here.'" Just before bear hunting season opened on Monday morning, Brent and Brent II were waiting – seated on a log – near the tree stand in the dark. "We're sitting for about 45 minutes, maybe 50 yards from the top of the ridge, and we hear something in the dark," Brent said. "We keep looking, hoping to see what it is, and, final- ly, my son looked through the scope of his gun and he saw it was a bear, just as it was getting daylight. So he puts his gun back down and he says, 'There's a bear up there.'" "So we're sitting there, waiting, and it's just time now – legal time – to shoot," Brent continued. "I still don't see it because the brush was in the way. Then, about that time, the bear growls at us. It was about 10 yards from us at this point, and it growls at us. I said, 'Can you see it? ' And he pulls back up and he says, 'Yeah, I can see it.' I said, 'Well, shoot! '" Brent II fired his gun at the bear, which immediate- ly dropped into a ball and be- gan rolling down the hill – toward them. "It ended up stopping maybe less than 10 foot from him," Brent said. "He jumps up and says, 'Dad, it's going to get us! ' and runs down the hill." The wounded bear subse- quently rolled over to within 10 feet of Brent. "At that point, (the bear) jumps up on four feet and starts up on its two back feet to attack," Brent recalled. "It would have died from his shot, no doubt. There was no question it would have died from his shot. But I stuck my gun out, without even aiming, shot, and it dropped. Then I walked on down to where he was at and we stood there and watched it die." "That bear was literal- ly killed in self-defense," Brent added. "It was us or the bear." Brent said that hunting bear was a lot different than hunting deer. "Deer, whenever you're hunting them, if they think that there's a person, they hightail it out of there," Brent said. "But a bear, if they think something's there, they're not afraid, I guess because they know how mighty they are. And his was quite the fighter. It had a lot of scars on its head from being in fights, so it was a fighting bear." Soon thereafter, Brent and his son climbed up in- to the tree stand and waited. "I got to thinking, you know, some wild animal might come and start tear- ing his bear up, and we didn't want that to happen," Brent said. "We'd been there in the stand about a half hour, 45 minutes. I said, 'You'd bet- ter go back and sit at the top where you can see your bear and just watch it, and I'll stay here for a while.'" However, right as Brent II began his descent from the tree stand, Brent spotted an- other bear approximately 30 yards away. "I said, 'Just be still a min- ute,' so he leans over, covers his ears, and I pull up and shoot, and it went about 30 yards and dropped," Brent said. "So we got two bear in less than an hour." Later that day, as Brent and his son were busy pro- cessing their bears at the cabin, Melody got another one. "I was close to the cab- in, and I thought I would just hunt there if I could at all, because I knew there had been bear there earli- er," Melody said. "I saw the bear coming up the hill, so I got ready to shoot, and it turned sideways. When I shot, it dropped and went in- to a ball and then just rolled down the hill. I could see it for just a little bit, but then I didn't know where it went." "I hollered, 'I think I got one! ' and it was getting real- ly close to dark," she contin- ued. "Brent ended up com- ing down with me. So I went first, down over the hill, and I went, 'There it is! '" Melody, however, said she was still unsure whether the bear was dead. "I wondered if it was, for sure, dead, and I didn't want to get too close," Melody said. "We went a little closer and we could tell that it was dead. I think I touched it in the thigh with the gun ... just to make sure it was dead." A fter retrieving Melody's bear and checking it in, they processed it that same eve- ning. "So Monday night, we only got, I think, about 3- 1/2 hours of sleep, and was back up the next morning at it again." Stanton, who had fired at but missed a bear on Mon- day evening, got his bear – a 200 -pounder – on Tuesday evening. "It went down the moun- tain, through the mountain laurel, and into a creek, and died," Brent said. "So then we had to get it out of there." Their host suggested that Brent and his two sons use their belts to drag the bear out. "There's no dragging a 200 -pound bear over rocks and logs," Brent said. "So I decided, well, we needed a pole, so I took a tree that had fallen and broke off part of it, and we took our belts and went around the bear and around the tree and car- ried it out that way. We got back to a four-wheeler trail, where we could get it out." Earlier the same day, both Suzannah and Rhoda – nei- ther of whom had planned to hunt – decided that they wanted to get in on the fun. "Neither one of them had plans of hunting at all," Brent said. "We weren't that far from Gatlinburg and Pi- geon Forge, so we thought we possibly might take them and drop them off and let them have fun somewhere." "So, about halfway through, on Tuesday, we decided, 'Hey, there's a high likelihood the girls are go- ing to have a chance to get a bear,'" Brent continued. "So they buy their license, and they started hunting at one of the spots we had to hunt." "At first, before we even went, I wasn't sure if I want- ed to," Suzannah said. "If the rest of them got one, then me and my sister were going to go. Then they got theirs, so we decided we would try it." On Wednesday morning, Suzannah – accompanied by her brother, Brent II – went back out to find her a bear. "That night, we'd only gotten just a little over two hours of sleep, because we were up so late getting that one out of the woods and then getting it dressed and everything ... and went to the check station and checked it in," Brent said. "I had just laid down, was just starting to try to get a little sleep, and I heard the shot, which was two ridges over from our cabin." "So I told (Melody), 'I think they just shot,'" Brent said. "I said, 'Call them and see.' So she called them up. 'Yeah, they've shot ... we think maybe she got it.'" "It was exciting," Suzan- nah said. "I was kind of ner- vous. When I shot mine, it jumped in the air and then went down the hill, so we had to trail it, trying to find it, for about two hours." "A fter I shot mine, it growled really loud, like, three times, so that was kind of scary," Suzannah added. "But it was pretty fun." "To find that bear, we had to crawl on that moun- tainside on our hands and knees through mountain laurel, through these bear trails, trying to find that bear," Brent said. "And we found it." Suzannah's bear weighed in at 205 pounds, topping Stanton's by five pounds. "Suzannah had said if she got one, it would be the big- gest one," Brent said. "And it was." Rhoda got her own bear later the same evening. "Normally, a bear doesn't leave a blood trail because their fat plugs the hole," Brent said. "But the shot placement was just a little bit different on hers. Hers left a tremendous blood trail and it went all the way to the creek." "The guy there, where we were staying, he said he was BEARS Continued from page 1 Call us at 812-354-8500 or email sports@pressdispatch.net GOT SPORTS NEWS? COMMERCIAL LEAGUE BOWLING RESULTS At King Pin Bowling Center, Washington TEAM STANDINGS (Through Wednesday, October 25) Points Points Team Pins+ High High Team Name Won Lost Avg. HDCP Game Series Washington Warriors 62 26 934 35330 1217 3197 King Pin 56 32 915 35455 1022 3005 Buckeyes 52 36 734 35139 943 2472 A & R Home Center 51 37 841 34785 908 2625 Crips 50 38 773 34467 897 2476 Balled 49 39 848 35113 1068 2772 No. 423 Smokehouse 48 40 883 35279 1086 3003 Daviess County Tire 48 40 750 34396 898 2578 Hands Termite & Pest Control 46 42 937 34456 1072 2949 German American Bank 46 42 765 34272 926 2372 Pocket Pounders 42 46 754 34474 824 2410 Misfits 39 49 896 34972 1045 2938 The Tux 37 51 705 34430 825 2274 Anthis Heating & Air 36 52 880 34625 1008 2789 Water Department 30 58 876 34708 938 2708 RESULTS OF WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25 Hdcp. Hdcp. Lanes Team Name Total Won Team Name Total Won 1-2 Washington Warriors 3289 6 Daviess County Tire 3102 2 3-4 Hands Termite & Pest Control 3054 0 Buckeyes 3409 8 5 -6 Bye 0 Crips 3008 8 7-8 Anthis Heating & Air 3331 5 The Tux 3163 3 9 -10 Misfits 3451 6 Balled 3435 2 11-12 No. 423 Smokehouse 3434 6 A & R Home Center 3267 2 13-14 King Pin 3341 8 Pocket Pounders 3162 0 15 -16 German American Bank 3232 6 Water Department 3217 2 Top Scores - Teams Scratch Game: 1057 – Washington Warriors; 1045 – Misfits; 1011 – No. 423 Smokehouse. Scratch Series: 2938 – Misfits; 2915 – No. 423 Smokehouse; 2869 – Washington Warriors. Handicap Game: 1216 – Misfits; 1197 – Washington Warriors; 1193 – Buckeyes. Handicap Series: 3451 – Misfits; 3435 – Balled; 3434 – No. 423 Smokehouse. Top Scores - Individuals Scratch Game: 268 – Brent May (Balled); 255 –Dakota Thurston (Buckeyes); 239 – Brent Lovell (Misfits). Scratch Series: 706 – Dakota Thurston (Buckeyes); 660 – Wade Hurdle (Anthis Heating & Air); 643 – Jeremy Carlton (No. 423 Smokehouse). Handicap Game: 312 – Brent May (Balled); 303 – Dakota Thurston (Buckeyes); 280 –Phil Claridge (German American Bank). Handicap Series: 850 – Dakota Thurston (Buckeyes); 746 – Phil Claridge (German American Bank); 729 – Mi- chael Cary (Anthis Heating & Air). UPCOMING SHOOT FINAL MATCH IRELAND SPORTSMAN CLUB FRIDAY NOVEMBER 3 Saturday, November 4 8am-4pm (CST) Sunday, November 5 8am-2pm (CST) Warrick County 4-H Center 133 E. Degonia Road, Boonville BRING THIS AD AND RECEIVE $ 1 OFF Admission New Dealers Welcome • Doors Open at 8am For more information or table rental, contact Tammy at; 812-897-3844 UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT Southern Indiana Gun Collectors Association GUN SHOW more proud of the youngest one getting her bear than anyone else," Brent added. "He said it was just like the icing on the cake for her to get that. But, he said, 'That's something you'll never do again – all six get a bear on a hunt like that.' He said, 'That's just unheard of.'" Brent said that his taxi- dermist agreed. "He couldn't believe we got six," Brent said. "He said, 'I thought you would get one, maybe two.' And he has done at least 13 bear hunts, up in- to Canada, so he's very expe- rienced at bear hunting. He said, 'I did not expect you to get six bears at all.'" Brent, Melody, Brent II, Stanton and Suzannah are each doing a full mount of their bears – in various pos- es – while Rhoda is doing a shoulder mount. "She's doing a shoulder mount, but then doing a pil- low and two lamps and a gun rack," Brent said. Suzannah said that hunt- ing bear was a lot different than hunting deer. "Well, bears, I mean, they can eat you if you don't shoot them and they come after you," Suzannah explained. "Bears can climb trees, and deer can't." "Ninety-nine percent of the time, if a deer senses you at all, it's gone almost before you have a chance to shoot," Brent said. "People do get at- tacked by deer, but it's a ra- re thing. But bear, you know, they're in for the fight – es- pecially when you're where they want to be." Brent said that it was like- ly that the family would con- tinue bear hunting. "But we probably won't all try to get one at the same time," Brent added. "I mean, it was such a workout to do six bears. It was major." "I think I would like to have a rug," Melody said. "This time, I did a full mount, so I would like to have a rug. So, maybe, some day I will." Melody said that she real- ly enjoyed hunting bear. "I guess just the challenge of it, realizing that it may be a little more risky, to bear hunt, knowing the danger that could be there," Melo- dy said. "It was very excit- ing, and challenging. I real- ly liked it." Melody Myers Rhoda Myers Stanton Myers