Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
T night was quiet save for the occasional slap of a fish and the hooting of a horned owl. Giant slugs, slimy and black, oozed across moss-covered logs, but we weren't awake to see them. The glassy bays at dawn would transform into dancing waters by mid-afternoon. White-capped rollers poured through open channels where no islands broke the back of the Pacific. Salt spray soaked us as the bow slapped into troughs as if falling off a trailer onto asphalt. But back in protected coves the water was calm and the bears fed undisturbed. The boar eating shooting stars was one of these. We'd glided past him on the first day, but his broad head looked bigger this time. When he heard the metallic click of my camera and looked up, we could see his scarred muzzle and a lump above his right eye. "Another old one, but no more than six feet," Kim barely whispered above the wind. I don't know if bears are as myopic as their behavior suggests, but this one stared at two full-grown men crouched in ankle-high sedges for a dozen more clicks of the shutter before loping away. S POR T he next morning we steamed oysters over an open fire while glassing distant sedge flats, hoping a particularly large bear we'd glimpsed the previous evening would return for an early breakfast. By mid-morning it hadn't appeared, so after sating ourselves from the oyster bar, we boated to another small cove where we'd spooked what appeared to be a stocky, broad-beamed, old boar at dawn. It was back. Kim beached the boat well downwind and tied to an old stump while I peeled my 7mm Remington Magnum from its case and shoved three bullets into the magazine. Quickly we put a hump of ground between ourselves and the bear, tiptoed 200 yards, crawled around a big cedar log and sat, rifle in the sticks. The bear was broadside, still foraging, but on the opposite side of the narrowing inlet, five leaps and a bound from deep forest. The sun was climbing, the temperature rising. This bear could go to bed at any instant. I hit it with the EL Range. Just 150 yards. We could get no closer without swimming. Black bears are notorious for soaking up lead and leaving no blood trail. Tracks from soft pads would be nearly impossible to spot in forest duff. I aimed for the spine. The 7mm barked. The boar collapsed. "I'll stay on it while you get the boat," I said. Spineshot animals sometimes are only stunned. This one wasn't. We puttered over in the Lund, sloshed through wet sedges on a rising tide and pulled the bear into the shade for skinning. Its upper incisors were worn to the gums and one canine was broken to a stump. Its coat, rich and dense, shone like sable. We packed the meat and hide in bags, laid them in the bow for ballast and started our long, scenic ride back along the coast. ING C 188 LA S S I C S