Confrontation

Kind of a sad day. It was great to see the bear last week after almost three years on this ribbon of wilderness. Yesterday someone shot the bear. I'm pretty sure it was the same one. It happened in the same area, an area where a lot of people fish. People described it as a juvenile male, which pretty much describes what I saw. They said it menaced several people, probably competing for fish or maybe lunches. Anyway it got close enough and menacing enough that a guy shot it. Investigators found no reason to think otherwise. I hope that is what happened; some guys can get pretty trigger happy. In my only close encounter i had the gun in my hand but i managed to discourage the bear with a couple of well placed bottle rockets and everyone lived. It is part of life, I enjoyed seeing it, but better the bear than a kid. So it goes. That isn't the bear in the picture, just one of a random black bear.