Hunting Black Bear

Mar 18, 2022

black bear on yellow flower field during daytime

Hello friends welcome to the KB ways of survival, today I would like to talk about getting lost in the woods or losing your direction in the woods or the mountains when you’re hiking biking, or hunting, I like to tell you a story about a time when I was out there black Bear hunting, up in Elk County of Pennsylvania, the mountains up there are really big. We camp in a valley at the foot of a mountain. Upon the top of the mountain is where the Bear live up there, they run up and down that mountain like it’s their backyard, but it took me 6 hours to climb that mountain to the top, there’s a lot of thick Laurel up there, this is where to find them. and my friend had come in from the opposite direction from the other side of the mountain so I chose to go into the Laurel and push it out in hopes that maybe I would see something or perhaps push something to him and the Laurel was very thick and heavy and by now this time I started my day probably 6 a.m. and it’s whenever I entered into the Laurel it was probably maybe 1 in the afternoon and it was thick and heavy and it was over my head and the branches were all twisted up and it’s hard to navigate through it. as I was working my way through it I lost my sense of direction the sun went away the clouds moved in and it started snowing by the time I realized it, it was getting late in the afternoon and I am stuck and it’s heavily Laurel and I lost my direction and I did not know how to get out so I was looking for a high spot so I could see above the Laurel and try to pick a point that I could start walking towards and then I’d walk ways and find another high spot to where I can look over and see if I’m still heading in that same direction because you have to zigzag a lot and I’m moving closer and I saw these two rocks, really big rocks like the size of your house and it was getting late and I’m thinking I might have to stay out here tonight because I can’t get out of here and I might need to start looking and gathering wood to build a fire. maybe I will camp out by those rocks which would be a good protection and as I made my way over to the Rocks I climbed up on them and fortunately, I looked down and I saw another hunter in Orange and I walk down towards him by the time I got to him it was dark and I asked him directions and he told me where we were. Then I realized oh yes I do know where I’m, I was still about a two-hour walk from my friend’s camp. And so I started walking towards camp and I made it there within two hours and it was about 7:00 by the time I arrived, well I was not prepared for this hunting trip if I would have had a topographical map of the region and also a GPS and possibly a compass I may have not have gotten lost in the Laurel I had come to realize that I was walking parallel to the power line once I met up with the hunter, lesson to be learned. sometimes when we learn these lessons after we experience an adventure no harm is done but it was something to think about and try to prepare for the next trip when I go out hunting all again. Thanks for checking out my story and I hope that I can share more stories with you later that’s for today.