The Education of a Bear Hunter

While camping about 10 years ago I stopped by a little store in Quinault, WA for some reading material and came upon this book. I read most of it on that trip and I have read it at least once a year ever since. Flowers wrote in a style that reflected the times he lived in. As a hunter he has skill and adoration for the outdoors and as a Govt. hunter he learns compassion for his quarry. As an avid outdoorsman and family man, this book takes you through the many phases of his life from the time he moved to the NW, to getting lost in the woods, to being attacked by a bear, to his realisation that killing the bears was not the way to go in protecting the forests. For those that think he is barbaric and cruel, you need to read the second book in this series, Bears and Flowers. It will tell you how he developed and implemented the feeding program still used today to supplement the bears diet and deter them from damaging timber. Flowers was also instrumental in many bears studies in the Pacific NW as well as abroad. His books (3) are still available brand new from Everybodies grocery in Elma, WA.

This man was my uncle. He is not long dead. He died only recently. And as for him being a sadistic butcher, he loved bears so much that he is the primary reason bears are no longer hunted for killing trees. You see, he researched and developed a food that when put out in areas where the bears are a nuisance, it keeps them from harming the trees because they are full due to his food. He is only telling how things were back in his day when he was a professional bear hunter. This is how he clothed and fed his family. He was also an artist who loved to paint beautiful paintings of animals and also sculpted them out of wood. He traveled the world as an older man finding ways of conserving bears. I found his book very interesting for me because this is where I was raised and hearing about the early days of his hunting was very enlightening for me. It is early pioneers who pave the way for others to follow. If not for this gentle and extremely talented man, Weyerhauser would still be paying professional bear hunters to hunt them down and kill them. This book is very educational as to these methods that were used, but is also told very straight forward. He does not sugar coat anything. This is how he brought attention to the plight of the North American Black Bear.

This book is 277 pages jam packed with interesting bear hunting stories. Mr. Flowers personally killed over 1,000 bears in his life as a bear hunter. Now before we condemn him as a game hog or some form of reprehensible market hunter we must understand the circumstances under which he lived and worked. He lived on the southwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula in the State of Washington. Washington has more black bears than any other State except Alaska, and in Washington Ralph Flower's is called the Bear man. Mr. Flower's has had "bear-hunting fever" ever since his first encounter with a bruin, in 1948. For twenty years he worked as a forest protection agent, he was a hired professional hunter: he has spent more than 2,000 working days - in addition to much of his own time - hunting for bear, and he probably is better at it than any other man alive. His quarry is the black bear, which, unlike the grizzly, is thriving in most regions and continues to thrive in the areas he hunted. There are many parts of the country where black bears are abundant enough to allow good hunting without any danger to their population. There are some areas where they do considerable damage to the woods, girdling and killing trees and reducing the habitat's ability to support other wildlife. In Mr. Flower's part of Washington, the bears subsist principally on the cambium layer of trees during certain times of the year. One bear can destroy as many as 60 trees a day. Thus it became Mr. Flower's job to take as many bears in the endangered area as he could. Some of his time was necessarily devoted to snaring bears with cable foot snares that, unlike conventional steel traps, do not wound the animal. However, Mr. Flower's still managed to take dozens of bears each year by sport-hunting methods. He preferred still-hunting and tracking with dogs the very skills the recreational hunter must master. In The Education Of A Bear Hunter, Mr. Flower's shares what his unique career in the woods has taught him. Not just a consummate skill as a hunter, but a keen and sensitive awareness of the environment and a true respect for the wildlife he shares it with. He is a thoughtful man with and uncommon gift for expression, and anyone who has ever hunter bears, or dreamed of the adventure, will want this book not only for is wealth of hunting lore and woodcraft but for it's gripping narrative.

The education of a bear hunter is far and away the most captive book of it's kind.Written by the equally gifted hunter and author,Ralph Flowers.Any true hunter will be captivated by his autobiographical accounts of his many years of hunting both for pleasure and for hire.A true education that will enlighten and mesmerize any sportsman,or bear enthusiast.