The BB thread prompts me to post a hunt I referred to. I suppose we've all been involved with or caused a screw up, and here's one of mine, or was it...you decide...

Some years ago, I had already shot a number of black bear, but wanted to shoot one with my .44 revolver. I worked up a load, a heavy .44 Special-performance-level load due to the light Smith and Wesson Heritage Model 29-9 I was shooting, and shot-shot-shot for practice before the hunt.

Four hunters were involved; myself, my 14-year-old son, the houndsman and another fellow I did not know who had some worthless rat terriers.

Latter point is instructive, as we divided myself with the houndsman in his rig with the 3 Walker hounds and my son with the fellow I did not know and his terriers.

After rigging around for an hour or so, the strike dog went off and we turned loose both the hounds and the rat terriers. The latter took off for parts unknown and the fellow and my son spent the morning looking for the worthless little dogs.

Thus developed a strange race.

A couple hours went by. The hounds sounded like they were stopped high on the mountain, but not baying treed but rather like they were on the track. This was confusing. Then we realized the sounds were in fact moving, but very slowly. On the radio I and the houndsman heard that my son and the fellow actually crossed the path of the bear some time before. Evidently, the fellow barked at my son to shoot at the thing as it crossed a trail ahead of them. Sonny, young and feeling under pressure of an elder, did, but missed the running bear.

We raced to the spot where they were.

Upon arriving, we got the details and the fellow barked out "I'm gonna get that bear", grabbed his rifle and set off down a ravine that had to be crossed in order to get to the sound of the hounds and the bear. My son was uneasy about the whole thing, but was pretty certain he had missed. I was pissed off at myself for hunting with someone I did not know.

I grabbed my .44 and with Sonny behind me, set off as well, running, tripping, falling, climbing and sliding hard thru the thick creek brush and dog's back fir thickets on the slope of the mountain. We pushed as fast as we could, but once high up the slope heard the shift in direction of the hounds and changed our direction to the sound.

The houndsman had run lower than us and actually arrived at the bear and hounds right before we did. The other fellow was far behind.

I kneeled to get a better view under the thick boughs on an old overgrown skid trail, and there appeared the bear, jogging along, occaisionally grabbing a dog, chewing on it, and then letting go and jogging along again. This explained the strange race. Never treeing or baying, the bear just moved slowly along, fighting but never stopping for good.

At 40 or so yards I fired a shot. I held on the shoulder and swung along, giving the critter some lead and at the crack the bear dropped like a sack of rocks, still. Two dogs pounced on the bear, and...IT EXPLODED, literally launched into the air, grabbed a dog and rolled off the downhill slope into a fir thicket. I sprinted to the spot, jumped and slid down the slope and chased the bear that had now just let go of the dog and was running hard away. At about 20 yards I held for the seat of the pants and broke the trigger. The bear swung around, grabbed at its butt like it got stung by a bee and came for me. At about half the distance I held for center chest and broke the trigger again, but hit it too far back just behind the ribs, after which the bear, seemingly unconcerned about the bullet in its guts, ran into a dog that attacked it from the left side. The bear, like a mutt catching a tossed ball, engulfed the dog's head in its mouth.

I could not shoot at this point, so I ran to the bear, shoved my revolver into the hair of its chest, and fired fast double action what I thought was two rounds. The houndsman rushed up to the bear, put the muzzle of his new .444 onto its head, stood there for a second, and walked away without firing a shot.

At this point the bear lunged at me again and was literally at my ankles so I bent down and held the muzzle of my revolver on its head, or tried to, dodging his mouth and broke the trigger fast over and over again...with nothing but clicks and no bangs coming from the gun. I must have clicked a few times before reality sunk in.

I, feeling pretty lonely, reached for spare rounds from my belt loops with the bear for a moment restrained by the dogs, the bear having rolled over backwards at my feet and rose up like it was doing situps, fighting the dogs, its feet at mine. Then a flash appeared over my shoulder. My son, who had been more or less glued to my back, dove over and shoved the muzzle of his Baikal 7x57R combination gun into the bear's chest and fired the one round he had in the gun, a Sellier & Bellot 175 grain factory load. The bear relaxed, collapsed backwards, and died.

I never even got a spare round from my belt.

All three dogs were chewed up. All survived, even the one with the head wounds. The inside of the bear looked like a collander. It had 13 holes in the hide. I recovered one .44 bullet, the one that I'd shot when it was running away. Every bullet hit vitals {lungs & liver} except for the one that hit too far back, but none struck central nervous system.

There.

Lessons Learned?

Your call.