Slick with mist, the back deck wraps to the side, where Gypsy stands tail up.  She’s looking toward the cabin’s front, while I take in the view. It’s New Years day, Blue Ridge, and dense warm clouds drift along the range, slivers of blue intrude the gloom.  Out front, a man in a raincoat walks an old dog on tacky dirt.  An Escalade toting a spear-like kayak rolls to a stop beside him.

The Escalade has the dog walker’s attention before he turns, spies me on the side deck, “Buddy, did you see a dog run through here?”  Turns out the dog walker lives nearby, a local, late 30s, but his youth, designer eyewear, and cuffed sweatpants don’t square with my image of local.  “Buddy” feels off too, but my social instincts kick in and I go inside.

Cheryl has told me earlier in the morning a small, black and white dog chased a deer through the backyard.  In the kitchen, she pours coffee, ripping a paper towel from a spool of wire shaped into a bear.  “Barked up a storm, but strange, the howling.  It sounded distressed.”  My brother-in-law Steve adds, “That’s the sound hunting dogs make, all worked up.  Chased that deer right past the green house, up and over the mountain.”  Steve grew up with guns and dirt bikes. He sits in a small dining room where an artificial Christmas tree is wedged in a corner decorated with bear ornaments.

I relay our sighting.  The hipster says thanks and points to the stuffed trash bag on our porch near the designer front door, an elaborate wood carving of a bear amidst leafy tree limbs, “I’d toss that if I were you.  Two bears have been seen in the area.”  He turns to the Escalade as I wait for someone inside, the lost dog owners, to introduce themselves, but the window glides up as tires peel off wet dirt.  The young man walks his dog into the mist.

About an hour later from the kitchen, Cheryl sees a different man out front and places her mug on a bear coaster.  She sticks her head out the designer door, “Excuse me.  Is that your dog?”  I hold Gypsy back.  I’m kneeling on a rug with a design border of tree limb and bear cub.

The man says, “Little guy just popped out of the woods, been following me since.”

He’s older, Merrell hikers, a t-shirt with the old Atlanta Braves logo.  We share the lost dog story, and Cheryl kneels beside the little guy, a beagle, while I go for treats and a leash.  The beagle is calm, barely lifting its head to receive a treat.  It’s coat is tricolor: dark brown, light brown, and cream, a nice sheen, tick-free.  It seems exhausted or resigned, no eye contact, clearly eager to go nowhere.  I’ve grown accustomed to my dog’s idolatry and face-licking and forgive the beagle’s lack of gratitude.

I read one of two phone numbers on the collar.  The first, an answering machine of a vet hospital in Blue Ridge.  Cheryl dials the second and says, “We have your dog.  We’re on Green Mountain Trail.”

Too soon to be the owner, a woman stops in a color and gloss of Land Rover I’ve never seen.  Ball cap pulled low, black hair, she points a manicured nail out her window, “That’s a hunting dog right there.  Underweight.  See, its carriage?  Too small.  They starve ‘em.”

The beagle takes fewer treats than expected, but it isn’t that surprising, an appetite suppressed after exertion.  The dog seems alright.  The woman continues, “They hunt with them dogs.  Tomorrow, last day of the season.  Been living here year-round, four, no, five years now.  Two bucks visit me daily.”

***

Deer hunting with dogs is legal by permit in select Georgia counties on specified dates.

***

Cheryl says, “We just called the owners.  They’re on their way.”

“Keep the names off their collars.  Shame.  Hunt bear too.”

“Bear?”  Bears captivate Cheryl.  They captivate me too, but within the appeal for Cheryl lies a seed of fear.  I ruined a hike for her once, claiming a dog print in the snow was bear.  I may have convinced myself too, but she couldn’t shake the notion we were accompanied by unseen ursines.  We’ve only seen bear once in our lives, and that from a safely ensconced distance.

Our bear sighting came a few years ago.  On vacation in Jackson, Wyoming, I was driving a Chevy Suburban rental with a severely cracked windshield and unadjustable driver seat, stuck awkwardly close to the wheel.  Driving down mountain switchbacks, I pulled to the shoulder behind a parked car, a woman already out and waving, pointing to the woods.  Lucky for Cheryl, I’d parked perfectly for a vantage.  She trained binoculars on two cubs fifty feet away, clawing a downed tree, mama nearby.  “How do you focus these things?” Cheryl said.  “The round knob,” I said, fumbling with my camera lens.  “Wait,” she said, “there’s something in that log.  Grubs!  They’re pawing at grubs!”  My hands shaking, telephoto finally snapped in, I accompanied a small, growing crew of looky-loos deeper into the woods.  The bears ambled into the thicket.  I never got a clear shot, not even close. For all I witnessed, the black masses could have been bearskin-wrapped children, and yet, the fever was real. Cheryl sat with binoculars in her lap when I returned, warning me not to get too close.  To her or the bear family was unclear.

Aldo Leopold, famed conservationist, says we are all born hunters.

A man may not care for golf and still be human, but the man who does not like to see, hunt, photograph or otherwise outwit birds or animals is hardly normal. Babes do not tremble when they are shown a golf ball, but I should not like to own the boy whose hair does not lift his hat when he sees his first deer.

Aldo Leopold, Goose Music, A Sand County Almanac

Channeling the spirit and research perseverance of Jane Goodall, Cheryl confidently informs the woman in the Land Rover, “We’ve been coming here for years, never seen one bear.”

“Two,” the woman says.  “Each with triplets.  Not supposed to shoot the females with cubs.”

“People hunt bears?” Cheryl asks.

“Sure.  Eat ‘em.  Sell ‘em for parts.”

“Bear stew,” I say, rubbing the dog’s floppy ears.  I’m thinking of years ago, my dad’s venison stew, the venison roadkill my brother provided, hunting with the inertia of a 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser shortly after receiving his driver’s license.  My dad retrieved the carcass from a dark country road and had it butchered.  Ground deer was wrapped in our kitchen freezer for months.

“Stew.  Soup.  Starve them dogs.  That one, I’m telling you, undersized.  Keep the names off their collars.  You renting this place?  I know the owner, decorates her cabin with all that bear shit.  Got a bear cam out back, maybe she’ll share footage with you.”

Cheryl says, “That would be awesome.”

The woman snugs her cap, “Tomorrow, last day of hunting season.”

Every opinion from this woman, she repeats. Driving away she points, “Your trash.  Can your trash.”

***

Contraband wildlife comes in many forms: rhino horns, hippo teeth, sea turtle shells, elephant tusks.  Black bear populations are stable in Georgia, 5000 statewide, of which 4000 are estimated in the northern mountains, but declining in Asia.  It’s illegal in the US to sell bear paws, claws, gallbladders although bear claws are easy to purchase online.  Bear skins and heads can be legally removed and sold.

***

The Escalade with the kayak returns.  A woman exits the passenger side in electric blue running shorts and luminous shoes.  She waits as Cheryl crosses a grassy median with the beagle.  

Hands on hips, the woman stares at her dog and says, “Ruben.  What do you think you’re doing?  Where have you been?”

Her tone suggests more inconvenience than relief.  Her attention focuses on the dog which feels odd, no thank you or questions.  Later, I would wonder if she thought it suspicious, of all the people, we were the ones to locate her dog.  Could she have thought we had given harbor to her fugitive canine and had a change of heart?  But this clearly, my convolutions, the mind of someone who thinks he is doing wildlife a favor, watching from a three-story, 2000 square foot cabin in the woods where acorn-bearing oaks are felled for views, where cabins never existed five, ten, twenty years ago.

After the gentle scolding, she lifts Ruben into the rear seat, looks toward the woods, shakes her head, “We were all the way down by the lake.  Tried shocking him.  You seen his collar.”

***

I have as much experience training dogs as shooting guns, so I was surprised collars could be used that way, as a call to return.  I thought the hard plastic collar a GPS tracker. I’ve only recently learned from my neighbors, shocks can reduce “nuisance” behaviors, like running away or barking or leaping.

A neighbor recently suggested, “I can fix your problem”, the problem being, my dog on hind legs, paws on the kitchen counter licking the edges of my granite countertop.  I think he was joking.  His unloyal Husky ran at every unleashed chance, “Put a shock collar on him, cranked that thing up to five.  Dog took off, halfway down the street, when I zapped her.  Stopped in her tracks, spun around twice chasing her tail.  I called, ‘Come here!’  That dog looked at me and took off again.  I zapped her a second time.  She repeated her dance.  Threw that shock collar in the trash.”

I have little tolerance for yappy dogs.  I would hate to live nearby, feel for those who do, yet owner’s who apologize for dogs being dogs is, to me, like nuisance apologizing.  I should know, I nuisance apologize when my gregarious, thirty pounds of black silk greets a stranger with a leap as they turn away, small white paws tagging their butt.  She’s so cute, I don’t really mean it.

***

That distressed barking that Cheryl had heard from Ruben, was it the thrill of a worked-up hound, or the electrified anguish of a dog gone hunting?

The woman’s musculature and bony face give her the look of an ultra-marathoner.  She steps lightly into the Escalade.  Before shutting the door she makes eye contact for the first time, “My parents own the dog.  They live on the lake.” Not much, but it feels like an apology. I picture an old man in plaid reading a newspaper, trusty beagle curled at his slippered feet, rifle hanging in a glass cabinet.

***

Bear hunting has only been legal in Georgia since 1979.  Bear hunting with dogs is illegal in north Georgia except by permit in Wildlife Management Areas, Chattahoochee WMA, and Chestatee WMA. Blue Ridge has a WMA too, but I can’t tell if or when bear hunting is allowed.

On the deck later that night, Cheryl sees a knot in the nearest pine, about thirty feet up, asks, “Is that a bear cam, baby?”

In a five year old story in the Smoky Mountain News, a man was sentenced to twenty months in prison for bear poaching.  Part of the evidence used against him, he stole a government, DNR wildlife camera mounted on a tree.

The owner never reached out to share her bear cam footage and we didn’t ask.