By Dennis Chastain

Special to The Courier

It was the middle of December, and bears were the last thing on my mind. Like most people, I was under the impression that by mid-December bears were snuggled in their beds with visions of white oak acorns dancing in their heads. I was wrong.

I was deer hunting up in the top third of a nearby mountain. The situation was pretty tight in there. I was sitting on the ground, actually sitting right in a deer trail at the narrow, V-shaped head of a hollow. I had plopped down on the deer trail itself, because it allowed me to watch another more promising deer trail at the bottom of the hollow, which was all torn up with rubs and scrapes. The morning was going smoothly until a big, bulky, 400-pound black bear

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