My encounter with a very large bear

When I was 17 or 18 years old I spent the summer working in beautiful Island Park, Idaho as a lumberjack. I am taking a lot of license by calling myself a lumberjack but we did cut down trees, trim them, skid them out and load them for the sawmill. It was hard work but enjoyable. Due to the distance from town to where we worked we decided to stay in a tent. Talk about the life. The we I am referring to is my friend Garl Winger and myself. The boss had his trailer back there but hardly ever stayed in it. How could one not enjoy a peaceful mountain setting, animals of various kinds all over the place and just the two of us most of the time. Frankly I don't know how we survived since we had to eat our own cooking.
We had put in a particularly hard day and quit a little bit earlier than normal. The boss had left for a couple of days so there was just the two of us doing our thing. We walked down the hill and back to camp when what to our suprise; bears had been having a great deal of fun tearing up the place. Our food was scattered all over the ground, our gear was pawed over and tossed around, they had just had a great time. We muttered and sputtered and cleaned up the mess, arranged camped into some sort of normalcy and then settled down to relax.
Now I was not a fisherman at that time. However there was a small stream about 4 ft. wide that ran past the camp and we had been told that there were indeed fish in it. Garl wanted to clean his rifle. (We kept rifles there for protection) I decided I was going fishing. I picked up the pole, found some worms and proceeded to fish away in the stream. I always wore a baseball cap and usually with it pulled down to shade my eyes. This day not only did I have it pulled down but I had my head down concentrating on fishing. Low and behold I caught a fish. Now it was not a big fish and I should not have even kept it. I would say it was 3 - 4 inches long, but it was mine.
I had the fish on a line while I kept trying for another fish. I was really concentrating now when all of a sudden I heard, "Whoof." I looked up and standing on the other side of that 3 - 4 ft. stream was the largest bear I had ever seen. I now realize that at that close range even a chipmunk would have looked large. I stood perfectly still and we just looked at each other. I hollered to Garl, "Garl, there is a bear out here!" No answer. I started to back up very slowly not wanting to run and cause myself more grief. The bear just matched me step for step. I hollered again at Garl, "Garl, there is a bear out here!" I think my voice was a little louder that time cause at least Garl answered me. "You lying pup. There ain't no bear out there." That miserable @#$%&*. I slowly placed the fishing pole against a tree behind me. You have to realize of course that I was still holding my prize 3 - 4 inch fish. "Garl," I screamed this time. "There is a @#$%&**&%$#@ bear out here!!! This time Garl realized I was serious for he came running out of the tent, rifle in hand to see what really was going on. Of course this spooked the bear who ran up the hill about 50 yards and then stopped to take a look at this new development. Garl, who was an excellent marksman, shot the bear in the ear and it dropped right where it was.
As we were skinning it out and taking care of things Garl pointed out something to me that I had not known before. When a bear is skinned and lying there it looks almost like a fat human being lying on the ground. Kind of freaky actually. While we were skinning out the bear I looked down the hill and there standing on a log about 60 or 70 yards away was another bear just watching us. That is another story for another day. The bear we had turned out to have a head span of about 13 inches which is not small at all. We hung the hide in a tree and had he of stood on his hind legs he would have towered over me big time.
Now here is an interesting side note. During all this I did not get scared once. I actually was quite calm and collected, outside the screaming part that is. We had a good laugh about it and went back to being lumberjacks which will make for another story. A sad part to this summer of fun and high jinks; my friend Garl got killed from a falling tree later that fall.
I don't hunt anymore. I have no desire to shoot animals because I would rather see them in the wild when I am visiting it. Does that mean I am anti-hunting? Absolutely not. There is a reason for hunting and hunting seasons and it is, for the most part, a good program. I just lost my interest over the years. That is all for this time.