WCA member Boreegard (aka Mike O'Neil) recently transcribed this from Paul Miller's tape recording. it is a very wonderful piece of WV history.
The Bear Hunt
by Paul Miller
No doubt about it—Claude Yerry was one of the
very best hunters in Ulster County.
He knew the woods like the palm of his hand. He knew the best spots to hunt. He knew the habits of the game. As a matter of fact, John Lord said, “Well Claude Yerry—he’s
half man, half a bear.”
He could travel very fast in the
woods. There were very few people
who could keep up with him. He saw
everything that was going on around him.
He could spot game, get a gun up and crack off a couple of shots before
you were aware that there was any game around. He was just a great hunter.
Claude liked kids and seemed to be very
happy to take any one of us along when he’d go hunting; and really, rabbit
hunting with Claude was a lot of fun.
I’ve known Claude to take down a whole section of stone wall because
there was a rabbit in there and he wanted to get him out—and he did get him out. On one occasion I saw Claude actually
dig a rabbit out of a bank. He was
head and shoulders in the ground digging the rabbit out, and he got the rabbit.
Well, when you went hunting with Claude
and you got some game, it didn’t make any difference who shot the game or who
got it, Claude always said you had to whack-up what you got. And as kids, when Claude whacked-up or
divided the game, you generally came home with a little more than your
share. He was awful good to kids.
I got to go bear hunting with Claude a
time or two when I was a kid. In those
days there was no law on bear. You
could hunt ‘em any way you wanted.
And the way the bear hunters did hunt bear was to find a track after the
first snow, and track ‘em in snow to the dens, and then shoot them in the dens
or as they came out.
This one time between Christmas and New
Year’s, Jim Austin was visiting me.
The snow was about knee deep and it was pretty late for a bear to be
out—he should have been in his den hibernating, but he wasn’t. Claude ran across the bear’s track and
he invited Jim and me to go along with him and track the bear in.
So we did. We got up in the morning. God, it was way
before daybreak—black dark out and cold. We went out and walked up the
road. There wasn’t any road—hadn’t
been plowed—just knee deep snow.
We picked Claude up at his house and we
went up to the end of the valley, which was about two miles from our house, and
then followed the old road that used to lead over the mountain to Winnasook. Claude knew just about where that bear
was going to cross the valley. And
up along that road we struck the bear track. Well, the bear went right straight up the mountain, and of
course we followed. Where the
tracks went, we went.
The tracks took us straight up the
mountain to the foot of Giant’s Ledge.
Then the bear turned, in I’d say pretty well a northerly direction and
walked along under the ledge and up the ridge to the top of Panther
Mountain. Up there the snow was
even deeper and it was cold. Holy smoke, it was a cold day.
Jim and I had some lunch with us but
Claude wouldn’t stop to eat. He
wouldn’t stop for lunch so we had to eat on the go. By the time we’d gotten to eating our lunch the sandwiches
were frozen, but we ate them anyway.
And the bear tracks were continuing in a
northerly direction. While we were
on the top of Panther mountain, Claude looked down in sort of a westerly
direction, down into Big Indian Valley, and he said that the bear was going to
hole up on “such and such” a ridge, which he pointed out to us. And he says,”He’s going to be either on
this side of the ridge or that side of the ridge. There’s no use in us following all the way around this big
circle to get there. We’ll just go
right down there and pick his track up down below.”
Well you know, I didn’t know about that,
but Claude said so, so it had to be so. So we broke on down into the Big Indian Valley and, yes,
sure enough, we picked up the bear track down there again.
This was a big bear, no question about
it. And he had no business being
out that late. He should have been
holed up, but that’s where he was.
And the we struck what they call “back tracks.” A bear will make a side trip and then
he’ll turn around and come back right in his own tracks, then start off in
another direction. And he’ll keep
doing that ‘til he gets quite an area tracked up that way. That indicates that he’s going to hole
up pretty soon. I’ve been told by
some old bear hunters that bears will walk around and make a lot of tracks—go
around here this way and that way—kind of to throw anything that’s following
him off the track. I’m not sure I
believe that, but anyway, that’s what they said.
We followed these back tracks around quite
a bit. But Claude was pretty
smart. He would dip the snow out
of a bear track and he would point off in one direction. And then he’d come back and point in
another direction, and we’d take that track. So we avoided a lot of these side trips that the bear ad
taken, and pretty soon we came up to the bear.
I suppose it was two or three in the
afternoon. Anyway, there was still
plenty of daylight. We shot the
bear. And the bear was just about where Claude said it
would be—on the side of that ridge in the Big Indian Valley.
Well, now we had to take the bear
out. Jim and I were pretty tired
by that time. But Claude seemed to
be still fresh. We used my belt to
drag the bear, and we got him going downhill. I remember one time Jim and I were carrying the guns and
Claude was dragging the bear, which of course was rollin’ down the mountain
with him. The bear started to
slide and took Claude from behind.
And there was Claude—ridin’ down the mountain astraddle of the bear!
So we got him down on the flat land, and
as I said, Jim and I were pretty tired; but Claude, he was still fresh. We struck a wood road down there and
Claude took off to get help and left us with the bear.
He found a native there, a resident of
that area, who had a team and sleigh and he brought him back. Jim and I were pretty near froze by
that time, but we put the bear in the sleigh and went down to the Big Indian
railroad station with a whole bunch of people. There were trains back then—the U and D (Ulster and Delaware)
was still runnin’ and there was a train due later that afternoon.
We put the bear on the train and took him
into Phoenicia. And there in
Phoenicia at the station we waited again, and Claude got another sleigh, and we put the bear on that sleigh and we hauled it
into Woodland Valley to Claude’s house.
And there we left it for the night.
Well—that was a really long day. It was pitch dark and late at night by
the time we got home. We were
tired but happy. We had a bear!
Claude liked to take pictures. So the next day Jim and I went up there
to Claude’s house, and my brother Tryon took his camera and went with us.
We got some pictures of Claude and Jim and
myself with the bear. He was a big
bear.
And that’s the story of that hunt.
(Transcribed from Paul Miller’s tape
recording HUNTERS AND SOME OTHER CRITTERS).
