Gary Reeder
If WB lived near here I bet he would very seldom sit
Wednesday, October 30, 2024, 15:52

on his front porch drinking a cup of coffee. A while back a few miles south of here had a strange experience. An older gentleman was sitting on his front porch drinking a cup of coffee when a black bear came out of the woods near his house, ran up on the porch, grabbed the fellow and dragged him into the bushes for dinner. The next door neighbor hearing all the screams grabbed his rifle from beside the front door and shot at the bear. Not sure if he hit it or not but either way it was way too late.
A few days after that another black bear was seen walking down the street of that town, looking for lunch I assume.
Here locally, in fact about halfway up the mountain that is seen in my pictures I show from time to time.

I was checking out the area for bears as the season was coming in a couple of weeks. In the 2 days I was scouting I saw 13 bears including 4 small yearling bears. Our water holes were mostly dried up at that time and I was scouting near the water holes that were on that mountain.
What this gets to is there are a lot of bears around here. After the bear killed and partially ate the older fellow everyone was thinking about bears. My drive way is 65 yards long and going out to check the mail in the dark, I carried at least one handgun, just in case. Then 2 years back Colleen hit a black bear on her way home. It was dark and the bear decided to cross the road just as Colleen was driving home. She smacked him a good one doing about $20,000 damage to her truck and banging up the bear a bit. She called me as I was within about 3 minutes of where she hit the bear. When I got there the bear was dazed, still walking around beside Colleen's truck. I walked up within about 10 feet of him and shot him 3 times with my 45 with JHP rounds, doing no damage to the bear. The Hiway Patrol had been called and drove up while this was going on and the patrolman asked if he could shoot the bear. I told him to go ahead as my jacketed hollow point 45 ACPs did no damage to Mr. Bear. The officer got his M-16 or AR-15, whatever they are issued and shot the bear in the head.

We checked the bear and found none of my 3 shots went more than 2 inches into the bear, the jacketed hollow points failing totally. Since then I carry no JHPs in any of my handguns. Strictly FMJs from now on.

My rambling here is just for WB to think about if he goes out in the dark.