When the mud-spattered Toyota stopped at the end of the gravel road, I slid out and strode to the edge of a clearing that had most likely been a log landing in the recent past. The ground dropped off quickly beyond the crushed stone and scattered bark fragments, and below me stretched a vast forest of pine towering above thick, green undergrowth. A soft wind swayed the branches of the trees at the edge of the landing, and I caught my breath when the breeze delivered the faint yet unmistakable sound my ears had been straining to hear.
A bark, a bawl … somewhere down in there—way down in there—the hounds were still on the trail.
I turned around to get the attention of the guys in the truck and, excited to hear proof that the race was on, pointed in the direction of the sound. It was a needless gesture. Casey Hileman, the owner of the hounds and a guide with Table Mountain Outfitters, had been watching his pack’s progress on a Garmin GPS handheld unit since the dogs had picked up the bear’s scent more than an hour before. He knew exactly where each of his dogs were, if not where the bear was going to take them.
Good thing, too, because even though my friend Brian Lynn, vice president of the Sportsmen’s Alliance and an avid bear hunter, hopped from the truck and joined me to listen, neither of us caught the sounds of the hounds again. Brian just shrugged.
“And that’s why we have GPS,” he quipped. “Could you imagine trying to keep track of dogs out here without it?”
I couldn’t. In the 80 minutes or so that the hounds had been trailing the bear, they’d covered more than 6 miles. The terrain was seemingly straight up and down in some spots, and innumerable snarls of deadfall and brush covered the forest
