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Hunter turned Prey !
as submitted by Beatrice Daily Huser of Edmonton, Alberta
Homestead near Fork Lake, Alberta, Year 1941
There was a desperate banging on our homestead
door. I jumped to open it. A man stepped over the threshold, his summer-tanned face mottled white, mouth working
in a feeble attempt to speak. Our neighbor.
"Ole! What's the matter? Here sit down." I shoved a chair at him. He collapsed
onto it.
"A nail . . . I need a nail," he gasped. I found a spike and handed it to him.
"Gun jammed," he muttered as he worked to dislodge a stuck cartridge from his rifle.
"Here." I handed him a cup of coffee.
"Thanks." He gulped the drink. "I needed that. Been running . . ."
The story came out.
On the weekend a bear had killed one of the Olsen brothers' sheep. The boys had followed
the tracks into the muskeg. On this day, Wednesday, October 1st, 1941, they'd recruited Ole to help them hunt the
bear. As Ole road up the trail between the boys' place and ours, he caught sight of the predator, a big black bear,
on the ridge above him. Dismounting, he took aim, fired and hit his target. The wounded bruin came straight for
him! Ole pumped another cartridge into the chamber, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing! The gun had jammed.
Blaze, Ole's horse, took off at a gallop up the trail. Ole ran, too. Managing to reach a fair sized spruce, Ole
scrambled up that, the enraged animal snarling at his heels. The bear then swung around, caught sight of Blaze
and took off after the horse.
Ole remained in the tree until he felt fairly sure the bear wasn't coming back. Then he climbed
down and ran to our place, a half mile away.
The next day my husband, Harry, carrying his 25-20 pump action rifle, joined Ole in the hunt.
They found fresh bear sign in the swamp and separated. Ole circling one way, Harry the other. After a while Harry
decided to rest a minute, sat down on a fallen tree, and had just started rolling a cigarette when he heard a sort
of snuffling sound behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he spied the bear, nose into the slough grass, shuffling
along, following the tracks Harry had just made. That black bear was actually tracking Harry and had done a fine
job of it! Carefully, Harry pulled the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. He told me it was amazing
how fast that bear covered the ground between them. It made the fifty feet in three or four bounds, Harry pumping
and firing frantically at every jump. Then the animal finally swung to one side a bit and fell. It was so close
that when Harry stood up he could reach the beast's head with the end of his rifle.
Still shaky from this ordeal, Harry sat back down and finished rolling his cigarette. He
was just taking a puff when he heard Ole's voice off to one side.
"Harry, Harry, did you get him?"
"Yes, over here, he's dead." With that Ole sheepishly appeared, peeking through
the brush. "Why the hell didn't you come sooner when you heard the shots?"
"Well," Ole paused for a second, "I didn't see any sense of him getting both
of us, Harry."
********
That bear was six feet long and rolling fat - ready for hibernation. Harry could put both
his hands, side by side, in one front paw track. Harry brought home a hind quarter of meat and the hide.
There was a couple of old healed bullet holes in the hide. A fresh one showed where Ole had
grazed the bear's back the day before. No wonder that bear was mad! The meat was tender and tasty, a welcome addition
to our wartime larder. I tried it fried, roasted, and as hamburger; all were delicious. Even an old bear's flesh
is tender in the autumn. Harry polished and mounted the claws as watch fobs and other trinkets. I still have the
necklace he made me incorporating two of the claws along with wooden beads on a chain. Harry scraped the thick,
shiny black hide clean and tacked it on the side of an outbuilding to dry. It became our bedside rug, warming our
toes on cold winter nights for many years.
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