Gary Reeder
I met his twin brother back in 1990. he came at me after
Saturday, August 21, 2021, 14:51

killing two of the guides bear dogs. The dogs had had him bayed against a big rock wall. The guide yelled at me to shoot him as it was killing his dogs. One shot on the shoulder just pissed the bear off. At that he came at us on a run. The brush was so heavy we were on our knees crawling thru the brush. The guide had his strike dog leashed to his belt as the strike dog is the one that scents the bear from a long way off and is the most valuable dog of the bunch. The bear was maybe 20 yards from us at the shot and he came running. As he got to within about 5 feet the dog on the leash jumped at the bear which caused the bear to change directions a bit. The bear knocked me over along with the guide and jumped on the dog. I hit the bear 3 times while he was coming at us. When he knocked us over all I could do with the bear's ass on my chest was put the 44 into the bear's armpit and fire the remaining 2 rounds into him. The guide had a Contender of mine in 41 GNR#2 in his hands and shot the bear in the throat with it. As the bear died his nose was almost touching the guide's nose and he was doing that spastic snapping of his jaws. The guide kept saying "shoot him again" but I was out.

The bear died on top of both of us but I had the good end of the bear on me. The 3 shots I had taken at the bear in his pissed of rush at us had hit him in both shoulders and one on the lower chest. Any would have been a fatal shot but he had the adrenalin pumping so he just didn't know he was dead. That bear was in northern Washington state.

I had another bear incident in Alaska where the bear came at me and I shot him at less than 5 feet for the first shot, and right next to me on the second shot. He then ran off into the alders and I had to go in after him.

My first Cape Buffalo wasn't really charging. He was just trotting over to say hi.

My second Cape Buffalo didn't charge at all. He just stood there at about 25 yards, snorted, pawed the ground, said bad things about my Mother and called me foul names. So I shot him for that.

So I have had a small amount of situations where the animal was thinking of chewing on me or stomping me into a brown stinking puddle. So good Lord willing I will be able to get the African lion down without becoming lunch.