Only morning birds’ songs broke the silence of the forest in the pre-dawn hours when two of my nephews set out in search of a black bear.
They carried a video camera, a quiver of arrows and the bow my sister’s husband spent many hours of intensive hand labor to produce. He calls his elegantly crafted, simple bow and wooden arrows – similar to the ones native Americans once used – Grizzly Bows. Each of his four sons has at least one bow.
The five men had gathered for a weekend of bonding and hunting in the wilds of Idaho.
The grown sons have already proven their dad’s homemade bows – family portraits include them holding their bows over wild hogs, elk, deer and a buffalo. On more sedate weekends they hold trophies won at tournament shoots.
This weekend, up in bear country, while the others slept, the two brothers slipped out of bed and the cabin to set out the bait and climb a tree to wait.
The photographer of the day captured the rest of that morning’s story with a digital video camera.
Dubbed music beats out anticipation of the hunt.
A blonde-colored black bear wanders down the mountain. Between the trees and leaves, it ambles in and out of view. The music fades, only the sound of a woodpecker and a morning bird’s call breaks the silence of the forest. Shambling over to the bait, the bear sniffs, walks away, pauses with one foot on a branch and looks back, staring at the bait.
For 15 seconds the bear stand there, while the hunter in the tree takes a slow, quiet breath, positions the arrow on the homemade bow, pulls the arrow back, holds, aims and lets go of the arrow’s shaft.
The bow makes a quiet twang as the camera captures a fleeting image of the arrow. The bear startles and begins running up the hill.
“Nice shot,” the camera holder whispers as the bear disappears up the hill promising the men a long walk, trailing it over the mountain. But first they have a mandatory half-hour wait before they can climb down and set off to see if the arrow hit home.
As they wait they study the site where the bear had stood and the hunter repeatedly whispers an astonished, “I shot a bear. I shot a bear.”
The hunter says that the arrow is still there.
Incredulous the camera operator zooms in on the arrow buried into the bark of the tree behind where the bear had stood.
“I’d say that Grizzly Bow did the job.”
Several minutes of trees and whispered excitement follow on the video. The long hunt ahead does not concern them. They can wait. They are hunters.
Through the trees, up the mountain where the bear headed, something moves. The camera zooms in to reveal the bear rolling down the mountain.
“Oh yeah! Oh yeah!” they gasp in disbelief. The bear tumbles to a stop on the trail just outside their cluster of trees.
“Can you believe it!” they laugh, bumping closed fists in exaltation.
“You killed a bear, dude,” the camera man gushes.
“It think there’s another bear back there,” the hunter points around behind his tree. “Hey, you wanna grab my bow in case another comes?”
His brother laughs.
“I’m glad you woke up,” the shooter says.
“I know. I was sound asleep. I saw you get your bow … and said ‘there he is’,” the film maker’s excitement matched the hunter’s.
“Must be time for a new bow,” the hunter laughed disregarding the other three bows his dad has already made for him.
“I can not believe what just happened. It just made my day and it’s not even 7 a.m. You shot a bear, dude!”