I stood slowly and took my bow off the hook and in only a moment I saw the bear facing me trying to drag a salmon onto the bank. The bear turned and walked to a clearing we cut only 10 yards from the stand.
I drew my bow.
One more step and he would be out of the brush. He started smelling a pile of limbs that the guide had drug into the bushes. The bear turned and disappeared into the thick bush. How did he do that? He appeared without a sound and disappeared without a sound.
My knees were shaking.
I finally admitted this to English. I have hunted African lions, Cape buffalo, and leopards with a bow, but none of them impacted me like this creature. I have never taken a lion but I got within 20 yards of a large male that had his neck torn up from a snare and I’ve shot a Cape buffalo, and a leopard. I hunted all of these animals on the ground, not from a truck or a tree. The truck has unfortunately become the norm for hunting dangerous game in Africa with a bow. SCI’s books are full of truck-killed animals, guns and bows. It’s pathetic in my opinion. Why hunt with a bow if you’re going to do it from a vehicle. That’s another story for another time. This bear excited me, gave me hope, and motivated me to press on despite the circumstances. I was pumped!
The walkie-talkie blasted from my backpack with a static filled voice. I responded and we climbed down to meet Victor and Dema and went to the spike camp. We did the best we could to tell the story with bad Russian and sign language. They nodded and with bad English and sign language said we should eat, sleep and set the alarm for a morning hunt. So, we did.
I woke 30 minutes before the alarm and lay there meditating. Conversing with Jesus about how I had probably muffed my one and only opportunity at a Kamchatka brown bear by piling limbs in the woods instead of throwing them into the stream. Hindsight is perfect as usual. How could I have been so enthused the night before and such a whiner the following morning? I had noticed my spiritual attitude slipping. I had already lost my religion, as they say, several times since arriving. I prayed for forgiveness and the alarm went off. We got up and prepared to hunt.
Victor and Dema had made a plan. After waking at 6:00 am, we would wait until light and go to the place where two streams converge, a place where the salmon were still good to eat.
It was a dense fog as Victor, English and I slowly walked down stream. Every few minutes Victor would stop to listen. It was an eerie morning to be in the bush full of bears, and Victor with an SKS. In 30 minutes we arrived at the stream intersection. As we were walking, we saw fresh fish carcasses, and bear feces everywhere in the bushes. There were bears here, no doubt. English and I thought that 10 might be a conservative estimate.
We built a small, short wall of weeds and sticks on a point protruding over the intersection, maybe 3 feet above the water and hundreds of salmon fighting their way upstream on their march to death. In a week, their decaying bodies would be floating downstream. It was hard for me to comprehend; as everywhere I looked there were dead fish. I was beginning to smell like one.
About two hours passed after we set up, perched over the fog drenched fish race. English sat with his back to the bank holding the camera in his lap pointing out of a hole in our makeshift blind. Victor toyed with his rifle. I remember twice when he raised his hand to his ear when he heard a stick break or an unusual noise downwind of us. I let it pass because I knew a bear would never approach from downwind.
I watched English nod out while Victor was aimlessly pointing his gun at me. I pointed to the barrel and he swung it away. I turned to face the stream and began to stare blankly into the sea of thrashing flesh. My bow was leaning against the single wall of weeds between the water and us. The fog was clearing to a blue sky and life was peaceful.
And then, a blur! The bear appeared in an explosion from the opposite bank. He had crossed diagonally away at 16 yards. Victor yelled, “Shoot, shoot!” I had already picked up and drawn my bow only seconds after he hit the water. The moment he was broadside, I would take the shot, not a second sooner. I was well aware of how much bone was in the front of his body. I was going to be patient despite my screaming guide.
Then it happened.
The bear turned in our direction and in a few steps, was facing us. At 5 yards, he threw his head up and made a guttural woofing sound.
He was staring straight at me.
I did what I thought I would never do and in my mind, I knew we didn’t stand a chance, but I couldn’t let him take another step. I was not going to die this way!
I put the pin on the center of his chest, raised it slightly, and turned it loose. The bear bellowed a roar and ran back across the river. Somewhere in the commotion a muzzle blast echoed in my ear. Even though I had given strict instructions for Victor to shoot only if I said to, I knew he had shot out of fear.
I was trembling so bad I could hardly speak. He had us dead to rights, yet turned and ran. I looked at English and said, “miracle”. He nodded and said, “Divine intervention”, and I knew absolutely he was right. We had just experienced a mountain of God’s mercy and grace that was beyond our comprehension. English tried to talk to Victor but he wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t talk for 5 minutes. I asked Victor if he saw where the arrow went. He just shrugged. “English, did you see the arrow?” No!
I really wasn’t sure what had happened. I thought I had hit him above the brisket, but nothing was sticking out of his chest. Maybe I missed.
English and I started looking for the arrow. First, we checked where the bear was standing in the stream. Nothing. And then, along a small sand bar where the bear ran. Still nothing. Finally, we went to where the bear ran up the opposite bank. Immediately, my knees started to shake as I stared at a wall of leaves covered in blood. There was a thick spray of blood everywhere. I looked at English and said, “I think we killed him.” English nodded and smiled. “The arrow must have passed completely into his chest cavity”, I said. English said, “It must have.” I looked at Victor who had slowly walked up behind us, and tried to explain my conversation with English.
My impression was that Victor really couldn’t believe an arrow could do such a thing. But I couldn’t imagine anything else. I told Victor we needed to give the bear time to die and we needed to go get Dema to help find him.
When we arrived at the spike camp Victor woke Dema and then retrieved a full bottle of vodka and asked, “Drink?” “No”, I said, “First we find bear!” I knew his nerves were frayed and now I wanted to look for a wounded bear. I could sense his anxiety, but vodka wasn’t going to help find the bear. I needed him sharp.
At this point, God had taken my anxiety away; I was completely at peace with the situation. Victor did not understand my thoughts about God as he told me repeatedly that we were very lucky. Later that night he told me that was the closest he had ever come to death, and I said, “same for me.”
We approached the bank where blood was sprayed on the bushes and ground. Victor handed Dema his rifle and motioned for him to go first. I cautioned them to go slowly and they looked at me as though I thought they were stupid.
Dema went first, followed by Victor and me and English was last as he was videoing the event. Dema was following blood and tracks in the dried streambed from the bank when at only 30 yards from the river he looked back at me with a blank stare. I ran up and looked down to see my bear piled up in a pool of bloody water. Victor and Dema, astounded, grabbed my hand to shake it. I melted as the gravity of the situation hit me. A gift from God! All Glory to the King of Kings. I looked back at English and said, “miracle”. He smiled and said, “Divine intervention!”
The four of us dragged the bear out of the water into a small opening 10 feet away and began examining the body. There was a massive wound to the right of center of his throat, half way between his brisket and head. The arrow was inside him somewhere. Victor later reminded me that when the bear saw me that he raised his head high to size me up. At 5’2” and 138 lbs., maybe 1/4th the bear’s size, I laughed at the thought. But, that is what made him vulnerable. When he rose up, I turned the arrow loose. The arrow had passed through his vitals with such energy that he immediately lost interest in us. He needed to get away from whatever had a hold of him.
We took pictures, ran some video, and spent two hours skinning the bear. The whole time, all I could think of was my arrow. I wanted to see where it ended up. While skinning, we did find a tiny hole in his abdomen where Victor shot him with his SKS. I can’t believe they have confidence in those things. But I was reminded that they never get close to bears.
As they were wrapping up the skinning, I was overwhelmed with the need to pray. I went to the river, knelt in the water and prayed a prayer of thanksgiving. I trembled. And I tremble now at the thought of it, as I am reminded how often God has rescued me from my own folly.
When I returned, they were splitting the bear open, not for my arrow, but for the gallbladder that they will sell to the Asians. Victor started at the abdomen and cut around the base plate of the ribs to open a window to the chest. Instantly, among mountains of intestines, liver and lungs, I saw the black shaft. I yelled in elation at its discovery and slapped both Victor and Dema on the backs.
They were stupefied!
The arrow had come down the throat, cut the aorta completely off, split one lung, passed through the liver and was buried in the intestines and stomach. The bear, in English’s estimation, lived 10 seconds. I said maybe 30. He had died in a full run.
Amen, Amen.
That night the guides would celebrate by eating bear paws with vodka. I tried them both and enjoyed neither. I believe in traditions, but that is one I could live without. Victor told the story over and over to the rest of the staff how I held my ground at full draw until the last second, and how he feared for his life. He started calling me Rambo, and I thought that was funny since Rambo was no friend to the Russians.
Over the next 12 days it rained almost unceasingly, preventing the helicopter from retrieving us, so we continued to hunt and fish. We ran out of food on the 8th or 9th day, but there were plenty of fish. Victor got drunk every day until the vodka ran out, and became hostile and aggressive, so we took his gun away from him. He tried to convince the camp staff to abandon English and me, but they were in absolute agreement with us.
We all persevered together and were blessed in it. The skies finally cleared and we heard the chopper coming. I went to the river alone and prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and also prayed that God would reveal himself to my new-found friends.
I tell of this hunt, not to discourage anyone from going to Kamchatka or anywhere else, but to encourage hunters that when you get into a bad situation not to give up and quit. Against terrible odds, I got my bear, mainly because there were a lot of bears in that area.
I suffered a fool.
But if you hunt enough, you’re going to experience a few. I was blessed to have five other people in my corner, all of which worked toward a common goal. They were competent, enthusiastic, and joyful and they sustained me through a trial that demanded patience and perseverance. I was also blessed to see the hand of God in such a wild country and to experience His Holy Spirit in the greatest hunt of my life, and that’s worth hunting for. Amen.
THOUGHTS FROM THE HUNTER KIND:
For three days prior to the sky clearing and the helicopter coming to get us, it poured down rain most of the time. So, I took this time to fast and pray. English struggled with it as he didn’t understand why, so he asked me that if he caught a silver salmon would I take it as a sign that we would get out alive soon.
Well, we had only caught one silver the whole trip and that had been early on, so I told him that I would. While he fished every day, I read the Celebration of Disciplines by Richard Foster and studied the Scriptures he referenced and for some reason I focused on the last chapter, The Discipline of Celebration. It starts out with a great quote by Augustine of Hippo saying, “The Christian should be in alleluia from head to foot!” On the third evening, in from a foggy drizzle, stepped English with a huge silver salmon! And we celebrated! The next morning as skies cleared we heard the whoop, whoop, whoop of chopper blades….
Prayer of the Hunter Kind:
Philippians 4: 6-7
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Lord, give me the wisdom to trust your Word as I scream “alleluia” in my circumstances.
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