The drive from the environmental camp to the entrance of Cade’s Cove loop road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a curvy 8.61 miles. We lived in a garage at the environmental camp (That’s another story to be told later). With little traffic it takes 18 minutes to drive that 8.61 miles. The Cade’s cove loop road is 11 miles. The entrance to the Abram’s Creek trail is 5.1 miles (halfway) around the Cade’s Cove loop. At 6:30 a.m. it requires a total of approximately 32 minutes to get from Tremont Environmental Camp to the trailhead. That’s the getting to the parking lot.
The hike started with a river crossing that was impossible to rock jump and keep your feet dry. So we either had to remove our boots and socks or just trudge through it knowing our boots would be wet for the day. The trail was an 8 mile round trip back to the trailhead and parking lot. For a hiker at a steady pace (2 miles/hour) it would take approximately 4 hours to complete the hike. But we were not steady hikers because we had tasks interrupting our hike.
Our task was checking snare traps for any black bears that might have wandered toward the scent of sardines which baited them. A snare trap is a cable around a tree with a foot peddle that, once pressed upon, would throw a metal arm like a huge safety pin and tighten the cable around the forefoot of the bear. For the most part, it was effective.
Matt, my closest friend and roommate, and I were working for the University of Tennessee as technicians trapping black bears for research.
This particular day we caught an average size bear (90-120 lbs) in one of the first traps along our trail. Working up a bear meant darting the bear’s rear end with either a long stick with a syringe and dart filled with drug or a dart pistol. If enough drug was administered according to the guessed weight of the bear, you would have a 15 to 30 minute wait for the bear to fall into a deep slumber. At that point a number of things would take place: measuring every part of the animal from it’s head width, total length, girth, and even its private parts if a male; a weighing of the beast to see how far off you were in your guess of drug amount; extracting a small tooth for aging purposes back at the lab; tattooing the lip and groin with a specified number; and piercing an ear tag through the ear. If bear’s were to return home to their parents they would have some ‘splainin’ to do.
At the completion of these various efforts one of us would have to wait around for the bear to wake up to be sure the bear was safe. The other of us would meander up the trail to check the rest of the traps. It was generally a time saver.
We were having an unusually burdensome day as our dart system was not working properly. Our method for the summer was the use of the dart pistol. The pistol required a CO2 cartridge for propulsion of the dart and a small ignition cap for the firing. On this particular bear, we guessed the weight at about 100 pounds. We measured the Ketamine amount to be 2cc’s (cubic centimeters). One cc per 50 pounds tended to cause a bear to doze nicely. But we were having trouble with misfires due to the caps. After several attempts and wasted drug, we finally got a dart successfully into the bear’s rump. We were left with 4 cc’s of Ketamine for any other bears that we might encounter. That amount of drug would put down a 200 pound bear. Not a problem since we had not caught a bear of that size all summer and this trapline had been slow of late.
The bear had just stumbled away from the trap site when Matt came running back breathless. “Another bear. Last trap. Big,” he stammered. The last trap was another three miles out. Strapping on our backpacks we made quick stride up the trail.
When we arrived at the site, the area of the snared bear was cleared of all debris leaving a circular dust bath. He was seemingly trapped recently and thus fresh in his fury. My friend and I looked at each other letting the reality of our predicament settle in. If we didn’t get a dart in this bear correctly, or if the drug amount wasn’t enough, we would need to hike the four miles out, cross the river, drive the now trafficked Cades Cove Loop road all the way down the mountain through curves back to the Environmental Camp and back to cross the river and hike another eight miles out and back. It would be well after dark before this bear could be released.
As said earlier, we had enough drug to put down a 200 pound bear. But Ketamine wasn’t exact in its effectiveness. We guessed that this bear was somewhere over 200 pounds. But what could we do but try and see if it would be enough. We drew out the remaining drug into the syringe and put it in the dart. We put a new cap in the pistol to make sure it fired correctly. Matt got the bear’s attention while I circled to its back end, aimed, and fired. A dart is supposed to move like a bullet train not like a church league softball pitch. But it did. So when it entered the bear it didn’t have enough force to inject the drug. The CO2 cartridge lacked CO2. Now all of our Ketamine was dangling in a cylinder from the rump of the bear.
We were tired and frustrated. About to give up and start our marathon evening of hiking out and back, an idea came to us. It would be a stretch. It would be a McGyver move. But it could work. Maybe.
Finding some fishing line among our pack of odd items we tied a small slipknot loop on the end of a long stick. With Matt at the bear’s angry head keeping it’s attention, I was on the other end attempting to loop the slipknot around the drooping dart. The bear was uncooperative. Apparently he didn’t like having a person in front and behind him. As soon as he saw me leaning out to loop the dart, he would turn ferociously popping his jaws together, huff, and blow snot out his nose in intimidation.
We were about to give up when, in a moment of weakness, the bear miscalculated and I was able to loop the dart and pull it free. Using the stick we were able to slowly drag the dart a few inches at a time closer to the edge of the dust circle and out of the bear’s reach.
As the saying goes, we were not out of the woods yet. Would the pistol work and would there be enough drug to put the bear down? We replaced with CO2 cartridge with an extra, put on a new firing cap, and aimed. The dart hit its mark. Now to wait.
About 20 minutes later the bear fell asleep. We quickly took all measurements and samples and went to lift the bear to weigh it. We could not lift the dead weight of the bear completely off the ground but guessed a good 250 plus pounds. Another hour later and the bear stumbled off into the forest. We slid the pack straps on our shoulders hiked the four miles out, crossed the river, drove the Cove Loop, glided down the 8.61 miles of curves and got back to our garage at the environmental camp exhausted but satisfied in the accomplishment.