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Many people have heard of black
bear, brown bear and cinnamon bear, but not many people have
seen a black and white bear, much less kill one.
That's why Tom Riggert of
Hartford had no reservations about taking on a hefty fee for a
taxidermist to help preserve the memory of the animal.
Riggert, a carpenter at the Cedar
Creek Retirement Home, didn't begin his hunting habit with
bears.
"My dad passed away when I
was 15," he said. "But I hunted with my grandfather on
a family farm in Jefferson County. It was loaded with pheasants
and the duck hunting was pretty good. The farm was sold a few
years ago, which was really a shame."
Riggert, 45, eventually graduated
to hunting deer with bow, gun and muzzleloader.
"I loved deer hunting, too,
and wanted to give bear a try," he said. "It took me
10 years to finally draw a tag. Because it took me so long, I
thought I'd better use my muzzleloader instead of a bow."
He hunted just a 40-acre parcel,
but it was the "right" 40 acres. His friend, Jim
Coblentz, owned the Three Lakes property and had been getting
numerous hits on the bait.
"We had about 15 bears using
the bait in a wide range of colors," he said.
For bait, Riggert was using gummy
bears he got in huge 50-gallon drums.
"We started putting bait out
back in June and increased the amounts the closer we got to the
season," he said.
Riggert and Coblentz set up two
ground blinds about 50 yards from the bait. The two blinds
allowed for extra room in case other people wanted to tag along
for the hunt.
After the first day, despite
several bears pounding their candy earlier in the year, none
were spotted.
"The second day was slow,
too, with us just seeing a sow and two cubs," Riggert said.
"We weren't sure what was going on."
Then it hit them. Nestled deep in
the woods was a small cabin on a little lake that was used just
once a year at most. Once in a great while, an elderly couple
would show up for a week of relaxation. Turns out, they chose
bear season for their R&R.
"It's not that they did
anything wrong at all," Riggert said. "They were just
enjoying their cabin and not harming anyone. The problem was
that our bait was just 300 yards from their cabin and the bears
were not used to human activity. We think a lot of the animals
went nocturnal once the couple started using the cabin."
On Day 3, a hunt from 5 a.m. to
10 a.m. produced nothing. After breakfast, it was back to the
blind.
"I had been sort of looking
at this back corner of the property," Riggert said. "I
saw the sow and cubs there the day before so I just naturally
kept looking over there expecting something to come out. All I
kept seeing was nothing, nothing and more nothing. Then Jim taps
me on my shoulder and whispers for me to look in my bait
pile."
There, 50 yards away, a 300-pound
bear "snuck" into the pile and was right where Riggert
wanted him.
"We had placed some sticks
with ribbons tied on them next to the bait to help us judge the
size of the animal," Riggert said. "We had sticks 30,
36 and 40 inches tall, which if the bear's back hit them, meant
the animal was either 250, 400 or 500 pounds."
One shot dropped the bear in his
tracks and a second insurance shot sealed the deal.
"It's amazing how fast it's
over after all the time you put in," Riggert said. "I
really liked hunting out of the blind. Jim and I could chat a
little bit and you don't have to sit perfectly still all day.
The taxidermist said that large white patch on the bear was
really unusual and that he had never seen anything like
it."
(Dan Durbin writes a weekly
outdoors column for The Freeman. Call Durbin at 644-7940, or
e-mail him at ddurbin@bastdurbin.com
if you have a story idea.)
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