The Easiest Way
To Carry A Dead Bear
or My Uncle Finley Couldn’t Handle It
By David Robert Crews

 

The dead male black bear weighed 372 lb. on Katahdin Lodge and Camp’s official scale. That hefty, dead bruin had been shot and killed, at a bear bait, by one of the lodge’s paying hunters. It was the biggest bear that had ever been loaded up into a pickup truck bed by just two men from the lodge, prior to that July day in 1969. The hunter who had shot it and I (one of his guides) had accomplished that feat by ourselves, after I had accidentally discovered a trick that made it possible for only two men to lift such a heavy bear carcass up onto the bed of a pickup.

 

The lodge is located in Maine, where legal bear hunting time ends at a half-hour past sunset each night. At that time, we guides had to investigate the possible successes of any shots taken at bears by our hunters, then carry any of our hunter’s dead bears, that we had tracked down and found, out of the woods and load them onto one of the lodge’s pickup trucks. After that, all of the lodge’s hunters and guides went back to the lodge, hung up any bears that we had on the game pole out front and the guides gutted them. Then we went into the lodge and ate a late meal before going to bed.   All of the meals served there at the lodge were home cooked by my Aunt Marty and her staff, then eaten family style at a long set of heavy wooden tables in the dining room. It was a great setup for having good conversations.

 
The night of the two man, 372 lb. bruin lift, I was in a fine mood. I had had an enjoyable time at work. It had been a nice, sunny, summer day out in the woods, and I knew that my little trick that I had discovered was a going to become a classic bit of skill employed by all of the guides at the lodge in the future.

My Uncle Finley was the owner of and chief guide at the lodge. Every night, he always sought and received full verbal reports from his guides and hunters concerning the exact details of each day’s hunt. That night, he had to ask me just how in the hell I had gotten that 372 lb.er up onto the pickup bed with only one hunter to help me.

That night, Fin was out checking to make sure that his other hunters whom he had placed on bear baits, in a different area from the one where the 372 lb.er was shot, were out of the woods safely, with any bears that they had killed. Before Fin made it in from the woods, I had returned to the lodge, hung the 372 lb.er on the lodge’s game pole, using a block and tackle rope system that was there for that use, weighed the carcass and then gutted it.

When Fin came in that night, I was over in one of the lodge’s cabins talking to the guy who had killed the 372 lb.er, and his hunting buddies who were staying there with him, about hunting bears, life in Maine, cold beer, hot women, cold women and how to warm them up or anything else that men like to talk about. Neither any of those guys, nor I, had talked to Fin that night, until we all went in together for the late meal. When we went into the lodge’s dinning room, Fin was already sitting at the dining room table and I sat down across from him. I expected him to inquire about the unprecedented two man hefty bruin lift, and I thought that it was gonna be a proud moment for me, when I told him how it was done.

 
I had figured correctly, that Fin had already spoken to some of the other hunters staying at the lodge and his other guide about the bear that I had hung up on the game pole. He knew how much it weighed and that I only had the one hunter to help me load it onto the pickup truck. I had also sensibly surmised that my uncle was having a hard time believing that the job had been completed by me with only one man to help. As soon as I sat down, Fin made the expected query, to me, about that unbelievable 372 lb. dead bear lift.

 
The answer came out of my mouth with the smooth spontaneity of an old time Maine Woodsman sitting and talking to friends around a campfire.

 
“Well Fin, it was like this.” I began.

“When I got to the bear, I saw that it was laying off in the woods a ways from where I had ta’ park the truck, I thought that it was way too big and heavy for just that fella and me to lift it up and get it onto the truck bed. So I told the hunter that I had to wait until I could get a few other guys there to help us do it. It was still daylight when I had seen the hunter out on the side of the road waiting to tell us that he had killed a bear, and I still had to go check on them other guys we had huntin’ out that way. But then, as I stood there over the bear, I saw its eyelids sorta’ wink a little, and then its chest expanded slightly, as it actually inhaled a little bit of air, then huffed a puff of hot air out onta’ my pants leg. Well, I was about ta’ jump like a jackrabbit outa’ the way and give the hunter a clear shot at it to finish it off, but the bear didn’t make any more movement. And I was watchin’ it close, that’s fer’ sure. Instantly, I realized that there might be a way to get that critter up onto the truck without any other help. I dropped down and started to give that bear mouth to mouth resuscitation. Man o’ day! Did his breath ever taste some kinda’ awful. Sheeoow! But anyways, that there damn bear got to breathin’ some, and he tried to get up on his legs.

The bear moaned a little, huffed again and recollapsed. I knew that I was onto something, so I went right back to my artificial respiration. I had learned all that when I took Red Cross swimming lessons down at Merritt Beach, you remember when I took ‘um. Luckily, the bear responded to my efforts, and began ta’ rasp and breath, ever so slightly, and try to get up onta’ his legs. I quick hollered over to the hunter and told him to climb up on the hood of the truck and lay his rifle at the ready across the roof of the cab pointing it at the back of the truck. Then I grabbed onta’ the bear’s loose furry skin that’s on the sides of its neck, you know like on a dog, and helped it stand up on all fours. Then I stared the bear straight in his eyes. He was groggy, but I saw that he was fixed on my stare. I backed up slowwwly, on all fours, towards the truck while holding a steady beam of sight betwixt the bear’s eyes and mine. That bear followed me with his nose only about a foot away from mine. I gotta’ admit that I was too scared to grin him down like Davy Crocket used ta’ do, but ah’ maintained mah’ fear an’ kept his complete attention with just my eyes. When I got close enough to the truck, I carefully reached around and unlatched and lowered the truck’s tailgate. Then I eased up backwards onto the truck bed. All the while holding that bear in the grip of my stare. Then crawled back to where the bear had room to follow me all the way up onto the truck bed. He did, and soon as he did I slowly stood upright and so did he. I whispered to the hunter, out the side of my mouth, and asked him if he definitely had a round in the chamber of his rifle and did he have the safety off. He said yeah, I dropped to the floor of the truck bed, yelled at the hunter to fire, he shot the bear dead right through its heart and it dropped right there as pretty as you please right in the bed of the truck. Nuthin’ to it. Except I can still taste its nasty breath.”

The hunters sitting around the table roared and rocked with laughter. By the time that I had mentioned where I learned artificial respiration, all ears around the table had willingly tuned into my tall tale.

But my uncle couldn’t handle it.

As I spun that spontaneous tall tale, my Uncle Finley’s eyelids had lowered from the weight of growing anger and his lips never showed a hint of a smile. He ended up staring at me eggzactley like that bear woulda’ done if I had actually invaded his space, like I had just claimed to do. I was a nineteen year old young man from the suburbs of Baltimore, he and my Aunt Marty had belittled me everyday that I had worked for them at the lodge, and according to them I wasn’t smart enough to think for myself.

 
I was just gonna give Fin the usual facts on how I had done my job that day. What happened though was, my good mood, good day and love of great stories that I had heard during many hours of working and hanging out with some of the finest kind of Mainers, during the eight months prior to that night, had overcome me.

My angering uncle didn’t like my one-upmanship on him at all. Fin only wanted the working facts, from me, of how only two men had managed to get that 372 lb.er up on the truck bed, when it had always taken more to do that heavy of a job before. But, it was devastatingly improper in the community of hunters and good liars worldwide to ever call a tall tale a lie to the teller’s face, when it was spun out so smoothly to a willing audience. Great lies are the historically accepted main form of entertainment at any gathering of hunters and fisherpersons. Fin woulda been a spoilsport if he didn’t maintain a good grasp on his temper at that time.

 
I sat there for a few moments grinning at my uncle till he was about to loose his grip.
Then I told him about my discovery.

 
We guides usually carried a piece of tarp in our trucks that was big enough to load a dead bear on to and still have enough room all around the edge of the tarp to allow for a requisite number of people to be able to grab a hold of it to lift and carry it with the bear in it. The bear had always been placed on its back on the tarp, because it was easiest to lift it by grasping its limp legs and then dropping it onto the tarp. Doing it that way meant that, when it was being lifted in the tarp, the dead bear’s back bent upwards, and the carcass tended to roll and flop about.

When I had seen where the hunter’s 372 lb. bear was laying dead that afternoon, I had backed the pickup down into the woods as close as I could to the fresh carcass. I had reconnoitered the lay of the forest floor there first and had strategically backed into a nice little depression in the ground that I had found for the rear tires. Then I dropped the tailgate and took out the tarp. Plus, there was a handy little hump of moss covered earth right under the edge of the lowered tailgate. This allowed for minimal required lifting distance.

 
The successful hunter and I then dragged that heavy, floppy dead critter onto the tarp. Then we grabbed a hold of the tarp, counted off 3,2,1 and said ready lift, then lifted and carried the bear laden tarp, then dropped it when our muscles gave out, several times, till we had lifted and carried that hefty load right up to the lowered tailgate.

Then the problems began.

We lifted and shoved and shoved and lifted in every combination that I could think of to get that heavy carcass on a tarp up onto the truck bed. It was like a 372 lb. blob of jiggling Jell-O. We tried lifting the tarp and pushing the bear’s head and shoulders on first; then we tried placing its left side on first; then we placed it at an angle with one front leg and shoulder and its wobbling head on the tailgate and then slid our arms back under the tarp and tried lifting the rest of it onto the truck. Each attempt ended with us dropping that heavy load back onto the ground when our muscles gave out.

 
Nothing worked.

We were sweating and swearing with hard headed determination to tackle this task by ourselves, because it was right there in front of us, and we were both young, healthy men with normal egos. We were out in the wild woods, where we wanted to be, we felt good and strong from breathing clean, fresh air and all of that helped us want to achieve maximum manly success at our determined task.

Cut 372 lb. in half, you got 186 lb.. Either one of us two men there coulda’ lifted a barbell with 186 lb. on it. But barbells are one thing and blobs of Jell-O are another.

I said, “Let’s spin it around and try tail first.”

We twisted the loaded tarp around till the bear’s tail was pointing at the truck bed, looked each other in the eye, grabbed a good strong hold onto the tarp, started to lift it, gritted our teeth, grunted and groaned, turned red in our faces, gagagagagot the bear’s fat butt up and part way onto the tailgate and lost our load.

 
The bear did a back flip off of the tarp and over onto the forest floor.

 
I shall not repeat what we each said next. We were cursing in different directions off into the tree tops around us and it wasn’t nice. But that kind of a release of frustration often helps at times like that.

 
The bear had landed stomach down on the ground. I looked down at it, wiped the sweat from my forehead and thought about how hard it is for a human to bend backwards and that bears have similar spines to ours.

 
I told the hunter that now we were gonna’ slide the tarp under the bear again, but leave it on its stomach. We did that easily.

 
Then we twisted the bear around till its nose was pointing towards the truck and located a few inches from an imaginary line on the ground underneath the end of the tailgate. We grabbed the tarp, gripped hard, once again repeated the count-ready-lift sequence, lifted the heavy load, the carcass stayed flat like a board, and we slid the loaded tarp right onto the truck bed.

I tell you, we jumped around and let loose some hoots and happy hollers.

 
All those many times that a Katahdin Lodge bear hunting guide had used a tarp to transport a dead bear to a pickup truck the carcass had acted like a, hard to control, blob of jiggly Jell-O, because when it was lifted and carried, it had always been carried with its backbone down. By placing the bear carcass stomach down, I had discovered that it was much more controllable when it was lifted and carried, because it was like a flat board. That was the trick.



David Robert Crews
2727 Liberty Pkwy
Dundalk, Md.
21222
410-282-3618
ursusdave@hotmail.com