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Mark Freeman's Commentary The hunter became the hunted ASHLAND - Dressed in camouflage clothing coated with vanilla extract to mask his humanity, Lane Grow had all but given up on finding a bear he was tracking down an old Soda Mountain logging road. So the 44-year-old Nevada man slung his 30.06-caliber rifle over his shoulder and began pondering a change of plans when rustling in some oak trees behind Grow caused him to stop. He turned to find a mammoth black bear, its contorted face woofing angrily and charging quickly at him barely 25 feet away. "If I would have run, I'm sure he would have taken me," Grow says. "If I got down and (appeared) smaller, he would have taken me." So Grow figured he had just one good option. "Shoot him," he says. And that's just what he did, firing a rifle shot from 10 feet away that ended Grow's first bear hunt and forged the hunting story of his lifetime. The bear turned out to be a 612-pound boar - about twice the size of an average Southern Oregon male black bear and big enough to land Grow among Oregon's top black bear hunters ever recorded in this bear-rich state. Yet even among the size-does-matter crowd, this bruin is unique for how he made the hunter feel hunted. "I was looking for this bear," Grow says. "As it turned out, he was looking for me." And this Gary Larsonesque twist to the standard man-meets-bear story likely comes down to a few shakes of the potent cooking ingredient sprinkled into Grow's clothes. "I don't know if it was the vanilla that drew him to me or not," says Grow, a sergeant on a college campus police force in Reno. "But he came after me." Black bears are one of the largest and most misunderstood omnivores in the woods, normally leading secretive lives among the thick brush and brambles. But they have a definite aggressive and unpredictable streak that British Columbia researcher Gary Shelton says makes them five times more dangerous to humans than grizzly bears. So much so that Shelton, who has written three books on bear behavior, predicts a predatory attack by a black bear on a human in California or Oregon in the near future. Late fall is perhaps the most unpredictable time for black bears as they aggressively forage to put on their final few pounds before winter hibernation, says Don Whittaker, a bear biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. It's called "hyperphasia," when bears' single most important drive is food. "The later you go in the fall, the more aggressive they can get when feeding," Whittaker says. "If you get too close to a gut pile, a road kill or a favorite huckleberry bush, a black bear can be real aggressive." In Grow's case, he was simply walking an old powerline road Nov. 3 on the south side of Soda Mountain, which is crisscrossed this fall with so many bear tracks and signs that it is one of the beariest spots in the state. Grow has hunted deer in the area for the past eight years, but he turned to bear hunting this fall because it seems harder and more sporting to him than searching for a blacktail buck. He was on a "stalk and walk," which is a long hike along bear trails with a gun, hoping to see a boar. And he was awash in vanilla extract, which he uses to disguise his human scent so a bear is either unaware of his presence or is drawn to him by the aroma. When the rustling trees triggered him to turn, he saw the boar bearing down on him from 30 feet away. When it got to within 10 feet, it stopped and reared. After Grow shot, the bear whirled and bolted down a ridge, and only then did Grow realize what transpired. "The whole incident lasted three or four seconds," Grow says. "I really didn't get scared until after it was over. I could actually hear my heart beating in my chest." Afraid to confront a wounded bear, Grow waited 15 minutes before going into the brush after him. He found the bear dead in a creek and was struck by its enormity. The bear weighed 612 pounds, well above the 300-pound average for a western Oregon male black bear. It also measured 61/2 feet long. "That thing was like the Rock of Gibraltar," Donn Stroh says. "At first, the four of us couldn't budge it." Once to the skid road, Grow was able to haul the bear out on his four-wheeler. Its skull is large enough to qualify among the best black bears ever shot in Oregon, and Grow plans to have a taxidermist mount the full-size bear. And when the stuffed bear is returned to Grow next spring, Grow will have a bear-hunting story that will end with a message. "If you go in the woods," Grow says, "don't wear vanilla." Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.