A Reddit user said one of the most terrifying hunts of his life happened in northern Wisconsin on a bear hunt with an outfitter and dogs. He wrote that he had hunted bear successfully twice before with a bow, but this was his first time doing it with a pistol, specifically a 10mm Remington. According to the thread, the day started with the outfitter checking a trail camera over a bait site that had been hit around 6:30 that morning. The outfitter looked at the photos and said it was a good bear. From there, they turned the dogs loose. First the lead trail dog went out with one other, and once those dogs got hot on the scent, the outfitter released the other four. Wisconsin allows up to six dogs, and before long all six were on the track.
He said the chase lasted about four hours before the dogs finally had the bear at bay in a thick tag alder swamp. That setting mattered. It was not open timber where you could stand back and take your time. It was brushy, tight, and ugly. The dogs had tracking collars, which was the only reason they were able to work their way in to where the bear had stopped. When the hunter and the outfitter finally got there, the bear was on the ground with the dogs only a few feet in front of it. He wrote that he was about 20 yards away, but all he could really see for the first few minutes was the bear’s head through the brush. He did not want to force a bad shot with the dogs that close and with only a partial view. So he waited.
Then the bear shifted just enough to give him what he wanted. He said it moved and opened up a clear shot at the shoulder. He raised the pistol and whispered to the outfitter that he had a clear shot. The outfitter had his own pistol up as well and told him, “Take him.” According to the story, he was just about to pull the trigger when the whole thing blew apart. Instead of staying put long enough for the shot, the bear turned and came straight at him. At first he did not even fully see it because it had to punch through those thick tag alders to get there. Then, in his words, within a second or two it was on him.
He wrote that the shot ended up being nothing like the clean shoulder shot he had been preparing for. He fired at the bear’s head when it was only about three feet away and about to run by him. That round dropped it immediately. The way he told it, the whole charge happened so fast that he did not really feel fear right then. He was too focused on the bear itself and too full of adrenaline to process it as anything other than a problem that had to be solved in the next instant. The real shock hit later.
That evening, once he was back at camp and the adrenaline had time to burn off, it finally sank in how close the whole thing had come. He said that was when he really felt how lucky he had been. According to the thread, the bear dressed just under 500 pounds and was estimated to be over 600 pounds live. He also said it scored 20 7/8 inches. So this was not a little bear blowing through brush and causing a scare. This was a very big animal covering the last distance through thick swamp in a second or two and forcing a head shot from arm’s-length range.
The story he told was detailed and ugly in the way the wildest hunting stories usually are. A good bear hits the bait, six dogs take the track, the chase runs for four hours, the bear is finally bayed in a tag alder swamp, the hunter works in to about 20 yards with a 10mm, waits for a clean shoulder shot, and then watches the whole setup collapse when the bear suddenly turns and charges. By the time he actually fires, the shoulder shot is gone, the brush is exploding, and the bear is only about three feet away. He squeezes off a head shot, the bear drops, and only later that night does the size of what just happened really land on him.
What do you think — if you were 20 yards from a bear in thick tag alders and it suddenly came through the brush at you before you could take the planned shot, would you trust yourself to make that three-foot shot under that kind of pressure?
Original Reddit post: What’s your terrifying hunting stories
