Of Bear, Bow & Buck

Big Game Hunter Fred Bear remembers the moment clearly. It was 1933, the first day of the Michigan deer hunting season, and he was deep in the wilds of the Porcupine Mountains. "I crept out onto a creek bank," he recalls, "and about 100 yards upstream stood a deer. I raised my rifle and shot it. That was it; the season was just an hour old, and I already had my limit. Right there I decided to give up gun hunting. It was too darned easy."

In the years since, increasing numbers of hunters have come to the same conclusion. To give their prey more of a chance and themselves more of a challenge, many have followed Bear's example and reverted to the bow and arrow. By necessity, they have also returned to nature. "The bow hunter is accurate at only 30 yards or less," explains Bear. "Getting that close to a wild animal is like trying to sneak into Fort Knox. And that's the fun of it. It's not the kill; that's always anticlimactic. It's the tracking, the learning of the ways of the woods' creatures."

Now 67, Bear is the Natty Bumppo of the bow to 7,500,000 U.S. archers. In his home town of Grayling, Mich., the chief industry is the Bear Archery Co. The main tourist attraction is the new $350,000 Fred Bear Museum. Though Bear has stopped a four-ton bull elephant with a single arrow, shot polar bear in the Arctic and Bengal tiger in the jungles of India, he claims that "the wariest, craftiest and hardest game of all to hunt is the white-tailed deer of North America."

Last week the Michigan bow-hunting season was in full swing, and Bear was among the 60,000 bowmen stalking the wily whitetail. The deer were in little danger; while one in four gun hunters bags a whitetail each season, only one in 20 bow hunters is successful. Reducing the odds further, Bear chose to hunt on St. Martin Island, an uninhabited, densely wooded patch in Lake Huron that stands as a kind of moated fortress of the whitetail. Associate Editor Ray Kennedy joined Bear. His report:

FIRST DAY. As dawn streaked across the amber and gold foliage on a heroic fall day, Fred was already prowling the beach, studying the heart-shaped tracks. "They're here," he whispered. A rangy, rawboned man with the weathered look of a backwoods sage, he was wearing his favorite old camouflage jacket and a battered gray fedora. As he explored the island, half a dozen deer bolted from distant thickets, their upturned tails waving like white flags. Later, sipping black coffee out of a tin can, he smiled: "Looks like this is going to be too easy for the bow. Maybe 1 should have brought my spear."

SECOND DAY. Bow cradled under his arm like a violin, Fred moved through the bush like the prey he was pursuing --three steps, pause, slowly look around. Stepping in slow motion, he somehow worked his size 14 hunting boots through the tangle of twigs without a sound. Coming upon a clearing, he pointed to deep ruts in the black soil and whispered: "That's as big a buck track as I've ever seen." As he sat statue-still behind a huge uprooted maple, a woodpecker's tattoo shattered the intense quiet like small arms fire. Overhead, squadrons of Canada geese flew south like dark arrows in the sky. They were the only signs of life the entire day.

THIRD DAY. A chill, gusty rain whipped through the trees. "This is good," said Fred. "The deer's vision will be dimmed by raindrops on their eyelashes." Toward nightfall, as the downpour subsided into a fine mist, Fred spied a big buck munching on ground hemlock 80 yards away. Slowly, silently, Fred positioned his razorhead arrow and watched for five, ten, 20 excruciating minutes as the buck worked his way toward the clearing. But suddenly, he jerked his head, wriggled his nose, and was off into the bush. "Damn!" exclaimed Fred as he huddled over the camp stove. "With this island's tricky wind, it's hard to beat a deer's nose."

FOURTH DAY. After bracing himself with a shot of peppermint schnapps, Fred peeped out of the tent flap at 4:30 a.m. to find four inches of snow on the ground. Then he slipped on an extra suit of thermal underwear and set out in the dark. In the near-zero temperature, the inlet rimming the camp was layered with ice, and the sand was frozen hard as concrete. Bending like a bloodhound over the maze of snow tracks in the clearing, Fred whispered: "They're moving out of that shintangle [thicket] over there just after sundown." At dusk, as he watched a deer 100 yards off through his binoculars, a red squirrel barked behind him. Turning, Fred looked straight into the eyes of the big buck standing 20 yards away. Startled, the deer quickly thumped off into thick cover before Fred had a chance to react.

FIFTH DAY. After an uneventful day's hunt, Fred went to the mainland for supplies. At the Ponderosa on Interstate 75, he bought some smoked fish, and the proprietress, Mrs. Melina Hills, invited him into her kitchen for some homemade dandelion wine. She showed him a 20-lb. coho salmon she had "pulled outa the crick this mornin' " as well as photographs of the half-grown pet bobcat she had "potty-trained." Then, handing Fred a sponge soaked in anise oil, she confided: "Don't breeze it around, but that's the best buck lure there is. Just hang it on a tree near your blind." "How long will it last?" Fred asked. "For three rains," she replied.

SIXTH DAY. Fred was awakened by the violent flapping of the tent. Outside, an icy, 45-m.p.h. wind was screaming off the lake. In the clearing the trees were bending in the wind like drawn bows as Fred hung Melina's sponge in a spruce and sprinkled the trunk with a liquid lure made from the sex glands of a doe. Nothing worked. "The only thing left to do," said Fred, blackening his face with soot, "is hunt by moonlight and shoot by shape." Shortly after dusk, his eye caught the reflection of antlers in the moonlight. Again it was the big buck, and again he was moving enticingly close--70 yards, 65, 60. Then the wind shifted, the buck snorted and disappeared into the night.

SEVENTH DAY. The hunt was over. Deer spotted: 17. Arrows shot: 0. "Boy, those whitetail are really something," said Fred as he headed home. "They're just smarter than hell. Reminds me of the time I was hunting mountain goat in Alberta with Bud Gray, the chairman of Whirlpool. After about three hours of panting up those icy mountains, he rested on his bow and said: 'Tell me we're having fun, will ya?' "

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