What A Drag

This bear-dragging business just ain’t what it used to be. 

For some reason or other, the last couple of years seem to have brought about either a decided increase in dead weight or a similarly marked decrease in my back’s desire to heave-ho for even a mile or three.

Preston Cox, of Waycross, with a 300-lb. Okefenokee Swamp bear—780 yards from the nearest swamp road.

Not that we’re talking actual highway miles. Or even nautical miles. These are Okefenokee miles. Please allow me to divulge the differences.

OK, so now that all the shooting has ended—we hope—there’s this 300-plus-pound lump of deceased—we hope—bear lying somewhere  “in there.”

The sophisticated GPS system in the truck is pinging off the dog collars, as it has been for the last two hours while this bear hiked from Miami to Seattle. It has been SOME race; he treed twice and bailed out early both times, before a hunter could get into place.

That being any spot where said hunter could get in a kill shot. After frenziedly following, all morning, this big black bowling ball through some of the thickest crud the planet has to offer. After trying to get the dogs caught up and out from under the tree, so as not to be fallen on or cut to pieces just in case we have one wounded and not dead…

I could tell you a lot more than you want to know about that final minute. Suffice it to say that he DID come down the tree with a bullet in him—vengeful but very much ambulatory—just before things got about as hectic as hunting gets. Forget running; it’s difficult to walk and sometimes even stand up deep in this swamp. Stand your ground and let the big handgun do its job. At the end, it sounded more like a high-powered dove shoot than a bear hunt. And when a shooter knelt down just behind the bear for a finally final neck shot, all he got was the click of a hammer on a fired casing. There hadn’t been time to count… 

But it’s over now. And nobody got bit or clawed. Close, but no. It has happened before, and I well remember when the ‘copter set down not all that far from this very spot to pick up a badly mauled fellow hunter and whirl him back to a Jacksonville hospital.

Bad stuff. Bad bear…

But this one is now lying… 780 YARDS from the nearest road.

Later—much—after the trail had been hacked in with a cane knife and machetes, we looped a tow strap over the front quarters, lined up shoulder to shoulder, and headed back up that trail.

 Six feet of heave at a time…

 An ATV made it part of the way in, and the bear was manhandled on top of the dog box for the rest of the trip out. The hounds underneath, by the way, didn’t appreciate taking on boarders all that much…

The next weekend brought a whole new episode, this time with a sho’ nuff man—475 pounds. You will likely hear more about that one down the line…

Many—indeed, most—of you are likely thinking, “That’s just not for me…”

I get it, believe me. I don’t fling sharp sticks at whitetails. Couldn’t care less if I ever see another turkey in the woods. But if it bites, I love chasing it. And next season, as soon as my back is back in whack…