Pennsylvania Game News - April 2019 - 21

and his first in 2008. One more would give
him a hat trick on his 10th anniversary
of bear hunting. But he wasn't thinking
about that. He was glad just to be bear
hunting with the gang.
Bear tracks soon were found, and spirits soared. The group set up its first drive.
It was somewhat a needle-in-the-haystack
approach, but most are in this country.
Kyle Allen, 27, of Pittsburgh, positioned 400 yards on a downslope bench
for the pending drive. His gut guided him
there.
After a long wait, a near 220-pound
male bear came ambling along shortly
before 11 a.m. Kyle took his shot with
the bear a mere 10 yards away. If it had
been 20 yards up or down the slope,
cover might have hidden what ended up
as Kyle's third Forest County bear in six
years.
His gut was right on the money.
Mike hadn't been far from the action,
just a couple hundred yards upslope of
Kyle. He, friend Jason Burns, of Sandy
Lake, and Jason's father, George Burns,
of West Middlesex, volunteered to go
for a vehicle and drive back around the
mountain to help with the recovery.
"I'll take some heat for this," Mike said,
"but we did joke on the way out about how
it wouldn't be a bad idea to maybe drag
our feet a bit, you know, let the other guys
get most of the hard work done first!"
Mike said they really weren't sure
how far they had to go, but it was at least
a couple miles and they all were soaked
and cold.
Joking on the way out, Mike asked
wouldn't it be great if they looked over
and saw a bear. The quip earned a sideways glance from George, though they
thought little of it.
But less than five minutes later, Mike
looked up and noticed a bear walking, 50
APRIL 2019

TEAMING ON BEARS
Mike's dedicated hunting group is made of
members of the Little Stinker, Hunter's Glen
and nearby unnamed camps, primarily from
the Shenango Valley.
Most are immediate family and close
friends that share a kinship stretching back
to the Foulk Camp, which has been active in
Forest County for almost 50 years.
The current group pins its success on targeting good bear habitat and tracking moving
bears. It's the older members in the group
who have generally taught the others how
and where to hunt bears in Forest County's
untamed mountains, a place where steep
slopes and rocky terrain abound, and cellphones often don't work.
"We have two sayings that deal with
hunting conditions: 'You know the risks,' and
'You can't cheat the mountain,' Mike offered.
"Those phrases, one from the movie Jeremiah
Johnson, are heard quite a bit during the
season and leading up to it."

yards away.
"There's a bear!" Mike blurted out.
It disappeared before they could get
off a shot.
The bear wasn't wise to them; it hadn't
even looked toward the men.
The hunters hurried to the place they
last saw it and found tracks were heading
upslope in thick cover.
Suddenly, Jason saw the bear and
opened on it with his .357 handgun at
about 50 yards. As Jason shot, Mike found
the bear in his own scope and shot, too.
"I felt pretty good about the first and
second shots; it was thick, but I could
see the bear pretty clearly," Mike said.
"I could see the bullet impacts through
my scope."
But the bear turned and went upslope
farther. Mike and Jason climbed to where
it had stood, and the lack of blood there
was troubling.
"My heart sunk, I thought there was
no way I missed that bear," Mike recalled.
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Pennsylvania Game News - April 2019

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