Cody Redmon - Photoblog

I went hunting morels again on Monday with my friends Lauren and Mike. We revisited the same area as from Saturday, but it had been picked over pretty well. The problem now is that everyone in our area knows the season is upon us and the hills are full of people. Nothing wrong with that except it seems like folks are grabbing everything in sight because they fear they might not get another chance. If we could all manage to leave these lil’ fellows alone for another week we’d be rewarded with much larger specimens. But that’s how people react when we feel like we’re not going to have another chance at the prize…

So, what’s the title of today’s post about? Well, one part critter, one part morels and another part The Old Man and the Sea. As is common, the farther and farther I went into the woods looking for mushrooms the fewer human tracks I saw. As with Hemingway’s novella, the farther out you go, the bigger the prize…but also the risks. And so I’m walking along the edge of a bog, eyes to the ground, when I see the subject of today’s image – a big, fresh grizzly bear track. At that point it’s just human nature to stand up tall and look around you very carefully, hoping that you haven’t walked into a place you really don’t want to be. I didn’t see the maker of the print so I followed the tracks about 15 yards and could see broken stalks where it looked like the bear had been pursuing its own interest in mushrooms. I decided to go on, intermittently yelling “Hey Bear!” and letting out my own brand of “mountain” Kiai to echo thorough the burnt, standing-dead forest. Each step had me finding larger mushrooms, therefore holding me to my course, but the sense of my not being alone continued to grow as well. 500 yards past the bear tracks there came a rustle from up above me on a small hill that flattened at the top…just out of view. The sound of twigs breaking reached my ears and every hair on my body stood straight up, I even did a quick look around to see if there were any trees to climb if it came down to it. I moved forward along the base of the hill, then up the side to confirm my fears when…hey, is that someone whistling? Peaking up, I was relieved to see it was just my picking partner, Mike. I was sure I was going to have an encounter, so the sight of one of my good friends couldn’t have been more comforting. I have a long history with bears, which I won’t go into now, but there’s no creature I respect more, nor prefer to stay farther away from. The image below is from the bear’s back-left foot and I’m guessing it’s around 9-10 inches long, 12 with the claws. That’s not huge, but probably 400 to 500 pounds more than I care to meet in person. I’m just glad I didn’t need the pepper spray I had forgotten at my house…

The graphic I’ve overlaid below isn’t quite spot-on, but it gives an idea of scale.