I was standing around a fly shop in Montana this spring, buying a fishing license and having a conversation with a couple of the locals when the topic of bears came up.

             This is not the first time that I have been entertained with horror stories of Big Bad Bears. It seems that if you spend enough time in the woods you will have an encounter of the bear kind. These stories always seem to end with the beast being dispatched with a large caliber pistol at ten paces, much like shooting at charging dumpster. No mercy.

            I like these tales of wilderness bear whacking, although I wouldn’t bet the house on there validity.  If I decide to share my bear experiences with macho, gun toting, bear slaying mountain men, I prefer to go last as my stories are a little off the wall.

            Although I have run into a few black bear in the lower 48, all my serious bear encounters have been in Alaska with the coastal brown bears, affectionately known as Brownie. For years we would go to Alaska on the 4^th of July fishing for King and Red salmon, stay in a Forest Service cabin or camp out in a tent. Great fishing, fabulous food, plenty of laugh therapy and, of course, Brownie. These are the bears you see on Alaska out door TV shows: huge, furry, fat, and ready for a long nap. In July however, Brownie is a scruffy, thinner, summer bear, like a big dog, I mean a really big dog, in need of some big time grooming.

            As part of the gear we always had a weapon in camp, either a .44 magnum or a sawed off pump gun. The funny part is that none of us wanted to pack the extra weight and I, for one, didn’t want to be the one to make any shooting decisions. Seems stupid now but you had to be there. Actually I found that a big stinky cigar was the best Bad Bear preventative; bears can’t see or hear all that well, but they have a world class snout and they hate the stench of burning plant material.

            My favorite bear- in- the- boonies story began early one wet, miserable morning when I decided I had to get some space between myself and my companions. On this particular trip, I didn’t know three of the others before we met up at the airport, then it was too late to change plans.

             Two of these guys were California Clowns, they had smuggled in a huge bag of Maui Wowie and they had enough ordnance to wage small war. The first thing they did in camp was to set up a wire perimeter boundary and attach bells to it. I was stupid enough to ask, what for??

              It seems that when Brownie comes into camp at night they would hear the tinkling of the bells and get up in time to have a gun fight in the pitch dark with the beast.  Luckily, these guys were so cooked every night they could hardly operate the zipper on the tent door. This was not the Alaskan fishing trip I had in mind, the fact is, these guys were starting to get to me…..and that is NEVER good.

            So on this nasty, wet morning I decided to walk out the half mile and treat myself to the Forest Service outhouse, anything to get some peace and quiet.  With a heavy heart and my baby wipes I started down the trail, through the dark rainforest, talking to myself.  As I broke into the outhouse clearing with my homicidal thoughts I looked over to my right and there sitting on the trunk of a 1979 blue Monte Carlo was Old Brownie himself.             He turned and gave me a dopy bear grin; we made some long, serious eye contact. I stood in the rain with my baby wipes; no gun, no pepper spray, and no bells. Finally I walked over to the outhouse and shut the door, when I opened it; Brownie had disappeared.  So too had my homicidal thoughts

            I lit a cigar and walked back to camp feeling pretty darn good , that old bear could have killed me easily, but on that particular morning  he decided to let me live. When your life is in the paws of someone or something else, it can make you stop and think about the concept of mercy.