Requiem for a Bear


Bear hunting season does not start until mid-October, but the bear hunters can’t stand to leave the bears in peace except when killing them. All summer long, though they’re forbidden to hunt, they get up here and run their packs of hounds at the bears for the sheer joy of terrorism. 

Today there must have been a dozen or more hunting trucks, each with a cage filled with hounds up on the mountain. The packs push down from the Blue Ridge Parkway to harry the bears into what is traditionally called Bearpen Gap, currently known as Sugar Creek Gap. Supposedly this is to train the dogs; it’s really just an excuse to engage in hunting out of season. 

At Balsam Lake today a bunch of dogs chased a bear into the lake, where they tore off its ears and fought it until it drowned. Federal Forest Service officers eventually came to recover the bear’s body. The poor thing was living free in the forest this morning; tonight it has been killed in terror and pain, and not even for food as it was out of season. They just ran it for fun, and now it is dead for no better reason than their amusement. 

16 comments:

Mike Guenther said...

That's a damn shame. They do the same here, above Walhalla around the crossover road and down to Cheowee Road below Burl's Ford. There will be groups of trucks parked at every pull off and a group of hunters at each one, jacking their jaws.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I don't think I have seen that here. Of course, we have a smaller concentration of bear. Hunting is mostly deer and grouse/pheasant type here.

It is a damn shame. People will justify whatever they are doing. I have to ask, are the dogs necessary at all? Can't they just find and shoot bear in season?

Grim said...

“…are the dogs necessary at all? Can't they just find and shoot bear in season?”

As far as I can tell, the dogs are the point more even than the bears. They are a point of pride, and having a good pack of hunting dogs is something a poor mountain man will spend real money on.

I don’t think there’s a real hunter among them. The dogs either tree the bears or run them into a linear ambush (set up near the road, so no one has to walk far nor carry a carcass far either). They can’t even track their dogs; they put radios on them and use machines to map out where the dogs are.

Mike Guenther said...

Even the radios don't help if the hunter forgets to put fresh batteries in the dog's tracking collar...or the dog gets out of range of the locator. Many times, driving up to Cashiers from Walhalla, I'd see lost dogs with tracking collars wandering up and down hwy 107, gaunt and looking half starved.

Mike Guenther said...

By the way Grim, the famous breed of bear dog, the Plott Hound, was bred in the area of Cullowhee/Tuckasegee by the Plott family.

Of course, back then, hunters used to run with their dogs and could tell by their baying whether they were still running the bear, or had it treed.

Grim said...

As as matter of fact I did know that! My neighbor has a Plott hound named Horace. He’s a very good dog, not however employed for hunting. I’ve been considering breeding Plotts with mastiff dogs. I think they seem compatible: I think you’d get a dog that could fight as well as hunt.

E Hines said...

Maybe it's time to hunt the premature [bear] hunters.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I'm sorry to hear this.

raven said...

I don't mind hunting in general, but there is a component of people who like to kill-rather than as a necessity for food, varmint control, etc.

Aggie said...

Man's taste for the blood sports is a dark set of impulses that brings shame to all outdoorsmen - not to mention, some outrage. I'm sorry to see the Fish & Game depts. putting up with it. I thought that harassing wild game and casing it to suffer, in or out of season, is unlawful.

The first time I worked in Cajun country, there was a red barn down the road that had a big crowd every Thursday night. You'd see dozens of cars and trucks, sometimes including a deputy's cruiser and the occasional law enforcement slickback parked outside. Finally I asked one of the rig hands what went on inside the barn. Weekly cockfights, apparently.

Tom said...

That seems at least in violation of the spirit of the law. If people are responsible for what their animals do, then isn't that poaching?

Grim said...

There’s not a lot of law up here, Tom. Mostly that is to the good: occasionally less so.

Grim said...

I am working very hard to avoid temptation on this point.

Grim said...

When I lived in China these were very popular, at a nearby place ironically named “Hangzhou Bird’s Paradise.”

Tom said...

Yes, knowing an animal has been poached and catching the poacher are two different things.

Grim said...

I did meet the Federal investigator, though. That was helpful, mostly because he's also the investigator for fires/arson in the local National Forest. We often arrive to such things hours before any Federal resources, and have a better idea of where fires started or from where they spread as a consequence. I don't like arsonists almost as much as I don't like bear poachers.