A Reddit user said the encounter happened while he was bow hunting and getting ready to walk out after an evening sit in the woods. According to his comment in the thread, it was already dark enough that shapes and sounds did not mean much unless they got close, and that was exactly how the whole thing started. He heard something walking down through the trees and into the clearing where he was sitting. His first thought was not danger. He thought it was an elk and stayed put, hoping he might catch a glimpse of it in the dark before leaving.
He wrote that about a minute passed with the sound getting closer, and then he heard panting. That was when he realized it probably was not an elk after all. He clicked on his headlamp and pointed it toward the sound. What he saw in the beam was a little black bear cub standing there about 20 yards away. That alone would have been enough to make a lot of hunters uncomfortable. But he said the real problem showed up right behind it. The sow was already charging.
From the way he told it, there was almost no space between recognition and impact. The cub was there in the light, and the mother was already coming. He said the bear closed the distance down to about five yards. He did not have a rifle in his hands and did not have some comforting amount of distance to work with. He was bow hunting, in the dark, with a sow black bear coming in hot after he lit up her cub with his headlamp. That is the kind of setup that goes bad in a heartbeat.
He wrote that he had a .357 on his hip and got it out in time. At about five yards, he fired a round into the dirt in front of the sow. According to his comment, that finally broke the charge. The shot into the ground was enough to make her turn and leave rather than keep coming the last few yards. He made it clear that the whole encounter happened fast enough and close enough that he still thought about it afterward. He added one detail that probably explains why it stayed with him so hard: he said he had no idea how he was even going to drag a dead bear out if he had ended up having to shoot her.
That little line made the whole thing feel even more real. In the middle of the adrenaline and the charge, part of his brain was still practical enough to realize that if this crossed the final line and he had to kill the sow, he was going to be standing in the dark with a dead bear, a cub somewhere nearby, and a serious problem on his hands. But it did not get that far. The warning shot into the dirt worked, the sow broke off, and the situation ended without him having to put a round in her.
The story he told was pretty brutal in its simplicity. He was finishing an evening bow hunt, heard what he first thought was an elk moving into the clearing, switched on his headlamp, and found himself staring at a black bear cub about 20 yards away while the sow came charging in behind it. She got to within about five yards before he drew his .357 and fired into the dirt in front of her, which finally sent her off. For a hunt that should have ended with nothing more than a quiet walk back out, it turned into the kind of moment that probably rewired how he listens to footsteps in the dark.
What do you think — if your headlamp suddenly lit up a black bear cub at 20 yards and the sow was already charging behind it, would you trust yourself to fire a warning shot like he did, or would you assume you were already out of time?
Original Reddit post: What is the scariest thing you’ve encountered or experienced while hunting?
