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I was walking to the pickup with my work partner when I noticed another US Forest Service employee carrying a pistol.

I asked my coworker, “Does that guy think he’s Jesse James or something?”

My coworker said, “Shut up and leave him alone.”

Turns out the guy was on a four man Trail Crew that got between a Grizzly sow and her cubs. When the sow got done with the four of them, this guy was the only one still capable of moving and he went and got help.

I surprised a bear in a Huckleberry patch. I started up the brush saw and the bear exploded out of the patch.

I don’t know what kind of bear it was. I forgot all my training and ran screaming down the trail.

I don’t know why it didn’t take me. My guess is the chainsaw motor may have confused it.

I don’t know. I just consider myself lucky.

Look at a bears hind legs.

That bear exploded out of those bushes.

Saw a relatively small black bear at Maine's Baxter State Park explode when a tourist snapped a flash camera in his face. Family with three kids in their jammies left the safety of their giant station wagon to watch bears scrounging at the dump. That bear cleared 20 feet or more in less time then the family took to jump back in the car from the hood line. But for several other campers leaning on the horns, causing the bear to pivot as though on ball bearings, the laggard kid would have been caught. McGovern bumper sticker.

Last year deep in the bowels of western NC we had a bear hunter out training his dogs to come into our camp.

He was waiting for one of his dogs that was coming down the logging road.

Had a great time talking with him and asked him what the scariest encounter he’d ever had with a bear.

Paraphrased, “It was cold with about an inch of snow on the ground. The fellow with the dogs was on the top of the ridge and I tracked it into rhododendron thicket.

I got in there and had to get on my hands and knees and was crawling when I heard a snort and looked up. That bear was as close to me as you are. I reached for my pistol which I keep strapped to my chest but I had put my jacket on and zipped it up. We looked at each other for little bit then he” turned around and walked off and looked back at me couple of times then was gone.

The dogs up on the ridge got on him a bit later and we got him.”

I can’t do justice to the southern mountain accent he had which made the story that much better as he told it.

Incredible guy. He came back the next day to witness to us the Gospel of Christ in the most non assuming, comfortable way I ever heard.