Field Stories

No Photo, But What a Sight !

It was a bright sunny Saturday at the beginning of February. The ground was covered with four to six inches of snow covered with an icy crust and the temperature was about ten degrees. I was out scouting for Great Horned Owl nests in a hemlock woods along the top of a rocky, tree covered cliff that rises about 150 yards above a railroad bed, and no, I didn’t have my camera. Suddenly, approximately 35 yards ahead of me, a black bear, that I would estimate to be about 400 pounds, rose to its feet from where it had been sleeping beneath a large hemlock. As the bear moved its head up and down to check the wind, I stood as still as possible watching it with binoculars. I shared about ten minutes with him before the bear caught my scent and bolted fifteen yards along the edge of the cliff, turned and crashed down, over and out of sight. I walked to the tree and found a depression where it had been curled and piles of scat filled with corn. Then I crept as close to the icy edge of the cliff as I dared, but it was impossible to see over without sliding over. I didn’t see how it could have survived going where it went and was convinced I was going to need to call the Game Commission and tell them I had killed a bear. I worried about it all night, so the next morning my wife and I went back to the scene and carefully worked our way around and down to the railroad tracks at the bottom. Walking along the drainage at the base of the cliff, dreading we’d see a black, lifeless body, we found instead, to our relief and amazement bear tracks coming down the impossibly steep side and out onto the railroad bed where they headed north and back towards the cornfields. Bears are good at what they do. So what does the picture of a beech leaf made of ice have to do with the bear? How rare is that moment? Has it ever happened before or is it a common occurrence? Hard to say, but if you spend enough time in the woods you’ll have the joy of seeing the most unusual things, like a huge black bear in the cold of a beautiful winter morning.