By JAYSON JACOBY

Baker City Herald

When the bear just up the hill roared, Joshua McKim’s first thought was that he had never heard a bear make a sound like that.

His second thought, almost instantaneous with the first, was that he was awfully glad he had brought his pistol on this mushroom-picking trip.

When he first glimpsed the bear through the thick brush, McKim had cocked the hammer on the .45 caliber semi-automatic Taurus, a copy of the famous 1911-model Colt.

The bear didn’t move.

McKim, 22, who has picked mushrooms and hunted deer and elk in the Wallowa Mountains above his hometown of Halfway since he was a boy, has seen maybe 20 bears.

And every one had fled, rumbling away from him in that awkward but oddly efficient gait peculiar to bears.

But this bear just stood there, no more than 35 yard away, staring down at McKim.

andquot;I was saying, why isn’t he running away the wind’s blowing right at him so he must be able to smell me,andquot; McKim said, recounting what happened a week ago today, on the evening of May 28.

andquot;This is really weird. Bears always run away. Maybe I should holler at him.andquot;

The bear hollered first.

Then, finally, the bear started moving.

Right at McKim.

McKim yelled.

andquot;He kind of hesitated for a second,andquot; McKim said.

andquot;Then he came on. Faster.andquot;

McKim fired the first of the eight bullets in the .45’s clip.

andquot;The first shot hit him in the shoulder.andquot;

The bear tumbled, rolling for about 10 feet until it came to a flat place.

McKim had just enough time to recognize that the bear, which had cinnamon-colored fur, was not a grizzly but a black bear.

Black bears, despite their common name, sometimes have brown or cinnamon-shaded fur that makes them look quite like a grizzly.

McKim didn’t think the bear was a grizzly they are officially extinct in Oregon although people occasionally claim to see one in the Wallowas or in Hells Canyon.

But the bear sure acted more like an aggressive grizzly than a shy black bear.

And it was bigger than any bear McKim had seen.

As it rolled, though, McKim saw that the bear lacked the grizzly’s distinctive shoulder hump.

This was scant comfort, though, because a black bear, though not a predator on par with the grizzly, is quite capable of killing a person.

The bear righted itself and kept moving, not directly at McKim but in his direction.

The bear was closer now, 15 yards or so.

McKim pulled the trigger until the clip was empty.

andquot;I knew I was hitting him; I didn’t know where,andquot; he said. andquot;I wasn’t about to let him get any closer.andquot;

The bear careened into a patch of brush and McKim couldn’t see the animal.

andquot;I wasn’t about to go into the brush with a wounded bear in there,andquot; he said. andquot;I couldn’t see much.andquot;

Besides, he was out of bullets.

McKim walked half a mile or so to where half a dozen of his relatives and friends were looking for morels.

His dad, Ivan McKim, found the bear, dead, beneath a tree.

andquot;I had walked right by him twice, but the tree had overhanging branches and it was pretty dark in there,andquot; Joshua McKim said.

He gutted the bear, figuring the State Police could salvage the meat and donate it to local food banks.

The bear’s stomach was empty, and his teeth had been ground to nubs.

andquot;I guess he was really hungry and he thought I looked like an easy meal,andquot; McKim said. andquot;Or maybe I was right in the middle of his mushroom patch.andquot;

McKim drove back to Halfway and called Oregon State Police.

The next morning he met Sr. Trooper Chris Hawkins, and they drove in Hawkins’ patrol pickup truck to the site along Beecher Creek, a tributary of East Pine Creek.

The pair dragged the bear to Hawkins’ truck.

Hawkins, who works in OSP’s Fish and Wildlife Division, drove to his office in Baker City, where he skinned the bear.

He found several bullet wounds, including holes in the bear’s shoulder and in its chest.

The position of the wounds confirmed McKim’s account that when he fired, the bear was moving toward him.

Also, one of .45 slugs, which travel much slower than, say, a rifle bullet, penetrated the bear’s thick hide and lodged in a lung, Hawkins said.

All this proved to Hawkins’ satisfaction that, as McKim said, the bear was quite close to him when he fired.

andquot;Everything lined up with just what he said,andquot; Hawkins said. andquot;He did the right thing by calling us. We appreciate that.andquot;

There was a bear-hunting season going on last week, but McKim didn’t have a tag.

You don’t need a tag, of course, to legally shoot a bear that charges you.

But because McKim didn’t have a tag, he can’t keep either the bear’s meat or its hide, Hawkins said.

OSP gave the meat to food banks and disposed of the hide, he said.

McKim said he’s a bit disappointed that memories will be his only mementoes of his bear encounter.

Based on the measurements of the bear’s skull, the animal, which probably was about 10 years old, would have qualified for Oregon’s record book for hunting trophies, McKim said.

Mainly, though, he’s relieved that the bear was the incident’s lone casualty.

McKim figures it was good fortune that he, the only person in his mushroom-picking group who had a gun, came across the bear.

Just 15 minutes or so earlier, McKim had decided to separate from the rest of the pickers to check a place where he had found morels before.

Evening was coming on and a light rain was falling, and McKim wanted a quick look before the rest of the bunch decided to go back to Halfway.

That contingent included his 20-month-old niece, Opal Burnette, who lives in Bend.

Opal’s mom, Tonya Burnette, who’s McKim’s sister, said she was wheeling Opal in her stroller when Joshua had his confrontation with the bear.

andquot;I’m just really happy that nobody got hurt out of the deal,andquot; Joshua said. andquot;I’m alive; I guess that’s what counts.

andquot;And I’m really glad I had that gun.andquot;

He even found a few morels which, though you can’t make a handsome rug out of them, are pretty tasty fried in a pan with a bit of butter.