Well this past weekend a few of my buddies went on an Elk hunt. I have been looking forward to it since we drew our tags in April. We left right after work on Friday and got to our spot in the Mountains about 2 hours away from home right before dark. Started the whole campfire and bullshitting portion of the night. Got to bed shortly after. The tent I brought I was a small single person backpacking tent and I had a small inflatable sleeping mat. Unfortunately, I seemed to have placed my tent on a million rocks, so I slept like shit. My friend(Scooter) and myself woke up at about 0430 to go out and try to spot something. There were 4 of us but Scooter and I were the only ones with tags, the other two slept in awhile. We hiked up and down the mountain about 5 or 6 miles while we were watching we see this small bear, probably only about 200 lbs, maybe smaller. It sees us then takes off up the trail. We decided to keep going our path. We end up walking to a steep cliff and turn around and try to get back to where we started. I started walking back when I turned around and saw Scooter walking behind me. Next thing I noticed was the small bear climbing down a tree about 20 ft behind Scooter. I yelled to him, "Bear!" He looked at me and said, "What?" I pointed the small cinnamon colored bear who started approaching him. We start moving away a little quicker. The little guy seemed to be extremely curious about us. We speed up, and he speeds up. He doesn't seem to get any closer than the 20 ft or so he started with. He followed us for about an eighth of a mile. Scooter took a couple pictures and a short video of the bear following us. It was a pretty unique experience. I have spent a lot of my life hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting, this was the first up close encounter with a bear I have ever experienced. Definitely will not be something I forget any time soon.
