One Less

[Tom Flanigan]

Charlie, that’s interesting that the coyotes rolled the melons. I’ve never heard of that before. In Saskatchewan, I’ve seen the damage caused by bears rolling on the oats in the fields. It made those areas a loss since you can’t combine oats that have been flattened. If they just ate the oats and didn’t roll on them the damage they caused would be much less. The interesting thing is that they never bothered the canola fields. Just the oat fields.

I had a farmer friend up there, called Snuffy, who just grew oats. He claimed that the bears did a lot of damage to his oats just before harvest and used to carry an ancient Winchester Model 94 on his tractor. He shot all he could that were within range and dragged them out of the fields and dumped them into the woods. When he heard that I had arrived in the small town, he would call my French Canadian friend Lawrence and tell him to send me over to shoot the bears.

I shot a total of only four over a couple of years before I decided not to shoot them anymore except for the somewhat rare cinnamon color phase. I got a cinnamon and never shot another bear. To me, it was just like shooting a big racoon, albeit with an incredible nose. I was watching a big boar bear in the fields and he was about 600 yards away but feeding toward my stand. I decided to take him when he got to the 200 yard range. I felt a momentary slight breeze on the back of my exposed neck. I thought no big deal, the bear was too far away to pick up my scent. I was wrong. In about a half minute his head went up into the air and he bolted into the woods.

The oat farmers up there don’t mind the coyotes. But bears are vermin to them.