Hunter Shoots 640-Pound Black Bear After Hunting Dogs Drive It Within a Few Feet of Him
OutdoorHub Reporters 01.04.18
A man was out hunting the backwoods of North Carolina, when the dogs he was hunting over accidentally drove a 640-pound “monster” right in his direction.
According to The Charlotte Observer, Michael Taylor, along with six other men, a half dozen dogs, and hunting guide Ashley Wishall, were all hunting together in a group.
They were making their way through the woods, following the dogs as they howled in the distance.
Suddenly, things got sketchy for Taylor when the dogs kicked up multiple bears off the trail, and all the hunters fanned out around him. Meanwhile, Wishall went to get more dogs for assistance, which this left Taylor alone. He could still hear the dogs relentlessly howling through the brush, but that was accompanied with occasional (and rather unsettling) crashing of limbs and trees.
“I heard something coming through the woods,” Taylor recalled in a Carolina Sportsman article from Dec. 29. “After all the commotion going on, I figured any of the bears had scattered and it must be a big buck slipping through. And since it was deer season, I was getting ready to get myself a big buck.”
He was in for a BIG surprise.
Instead of a big buck, Taylor found himself only steps away from a massive male black bear, and the two instantly made eye contact.
“His head was the size of my Yeti cooler. It was the biggest bear I had ever seen in my life,” Taylor told Carolina Sportsman.
He shouldered his 30-30 rifle, and Taylor fired one shot at the approaching bear.
“When I asked Mike on the radio what he had done, all he said was: ‘It’s big’,” hunting guide Wishall recalls, who’s in charge of Adventures Plus Outfitters out of Conetoe, N.C. “He didn’t say anything else. He wasn’t even speaking in complete sentences. He just kept saying: ‘Big, big, big’.”
Wishall, who has reportedly been bear hunting for 20 years and guiding hunts for 10 years, said it’s the biggest bear he’s ever seen.
