I've never tasted bear. The SC DNR has two bear seasons -one for the Mountain Bear and one for the Coastal Bear. For the Coastal Bear, they issue 100 permits for a 3 county area. There are two seasons, each a week or so long.
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You mention never having eaten Bear and that got me to thinking about all the weird and wonderful critters I have eaten over the years all over the world. Best I can recollect, I've eaten or at least tasted 3 types of Snake, to include Diamondback Rattler, Python and one other, and I'm not sure what kind it was, and they were all edible, and not bad, especially the ribs, and just about most kinds of mammal if others were eating it. Some of them were really good and I can't say that any of them were really bad, just that some of them liked my taste buds more than others. One meal, more so than most of the others though has stood out in my mind over the years.
Charlie Company, 1st of the 12th Infantry was the company I was attached to as an Artillery Forward Observer (I was actually the Recon Sgt, but didn't have a LT since the first one hadn't been replaced) and we had been on Patrol out near the Cambodian border for several weeks and were due for a resupply by chopper. The normal way of doing this is that the choppers would land, we'd unload them and then they take off after bringing in Ammo, water, "C" rations, replacement troops and maybe if we were lucky what we called Red Cross boxes which were filled with Candy, Cigarettes,( Usually about 5-6 cartons of L&M's) and all kinds of other goodies to include extra toilet paper. (If you've ever had to wipe with just the 2 rolled up sheets they give you in a ration pack, well extra Toilet paper is a luxury) if we were REAL lucky, they'd bring in enough donated Beer and soft drinks to give us each a can or two. The Beer was donated and was all of the top of the line name brands like Blitz, Black Label, Schlitz, Papp's Blue Ribbon and was all 3.2 beer and hot, but hot Beer was better than no Beer! There is another story related to this beer, but will tell it another time.
Well, anyway we couldn't find a LZ where the choppers could set down so rather than just hover over triple canopy jungle and kick it all out the door, (watch your head) the Infantry Battalion Commander got a little 3 person Bell Bubble Helicopter and was flying over our position and told Capt. N. that there was a LZ about 2 Kilometers north of our position even though our maps just showed it as raw jungle. We walked out of the jungle into a clearing that was about ¼ Mile by a half mile and was just grass about 1 ½' high. One of those anomalies that you sometimes run into in the jungle. We moved up to the North side of the clearing about 150 meters from the north edge of the clearing and set up a perimeter. When we first pulled into a position like this, one of my first jobs was to get all friendly Artillery in range Registered before sending the listening posts out so that in case of attack, we could adjust artillery onto the attacker from these registration points! Well, while the troops were digging in, the Battalion Commander decided to set his helicopter down inside our perimeter and talk to the Company Commander. Since I couldn't call in fire, because I didn't know when he was leaving and trust me you do not want a helicopter in the air while artillery is coming in. After about 10 -15 minutes I finally walked over and asked him how long he thought it would be and he said in just a few minutes so I called, put the Artillery on hold and explained the situation on the radio. No problem.
I had two Batteries of Artillery within range of our position, a 105 mm Howitzer battery SE of where we were and a 155 mm battery almost due East of where we were which meant that I could put a 105 mm Registration point almost due west of us and another one almost due East and a 155 mm registration point due North and another almost due south. With these points I wasn't shooting either over our position or directly at our position in case of long or short rounds. With these points preregistered, I could direct fire as needed if attacked. After the Battalion Commander left, I re-contacted the Artillery batteries and we put in the East and West registration points with the 105's and had gotten the South one from the 155's and had fired maybe 2 rounds and was adjusting the North registration point when a Feral Water Buffalo came running out of the woods from the North. At first I don't think he even saw us and was just running away from the rounds I had dropped and was adjusting. As he approached the perimeter, he apparently caught our smell and then he attacked. Now I've seen 3 and 4 year old Vietnamese and Montagnard kids leading Water Buffalo around and no problem, but for some reason, Water Buffalo hated the smell of American soldiers. This was second instance where I had seen them attack Americans and the first attack had come from a domesticated Water buffalo outside of a small village just west of Pleiku. That one had to be put down with a .50 cal. mounted on a APC. They just go nuts and are hard to kill!
Anyway my last round had landed about 250 - 300 meters North of our positions and I had called for a 50 meter adjustment back towards our position and it was to be my last round and I had it all registered. In the meantime, while the FDC (Fire Direction Control) boys were calculating everything, this **** Water Buffalo attacked the perimeter and the troops were scattering or diving into foxholes and trying to get away from this thing and when one soldier started running, the WB ran him down breaking his leg and had knocked a couple more around and cracked some ribs and other damage. An Infantry Sgt on the other side of the perimeter saw what was happening, picked up a M-60 MG and as the WB turned around to go back to attack the line of foxholes, once the area was clear of troops, blasted it in the *** with about 6 rounds of 7.62. He must have hit something sensitive since the Water Buffalo bellowed and started running for the tree line. While this is all going on, I was on the radio and heard "Shot, over", to which I replied "Shot, out" letting me know that my last correction had been calculated, fed to the guns and the gun had fired. I heard "Splash, over" and replied "Splash, out" which was my 5 second warning of the rounds impact. BUT we could hear the round coming in way too loud and I yelled "Incoming" and everyone hit the dirt. In the meantime, the Water Buffalo, ignoring my warning, is hauling *** for the tree line and about 20 meters before he hit the tree line, the round impacted about 5 meters in front of him. Now a 155 mm round has a kill radius of about 100 meters and 25 lbs of TNT in a 100# shell and the Capt. had been watching me make my corrections so he and I both knew that the round had supposed to hit about 200 – 250 meters out, instead of barely 150 meters, just barely putting us out of the kill zone.
Now I didn't see it happen, because from the sound it was going to be fairly close and I was trying to crawl into my steel pot and make like an earthworm, but was told that the about 1800 lb Water buffalo had done a triple backflip from the explosion and landed part way back to our lines which means it came back about 10 -20 meters or 30 – 60' before landing. Anyway while I'm on the horn with the Artillery, trying to find out what had happened to bring the shell in so close, about 120 young American soldiers were moving out to get the first fresh meat they'd had in about a month. Looked like an anthill around that Water Buffalo. Capt. N. looked over at me and asked "you going to get you some buffalo, Sgt?" I thought about it for a minute and told him something to the equivalent of "Sir, I killed it and tenderized it, I think the least you guys could do, is do the butchering", which got us both to laughing. Anyway sent my RTO over for both us and the Capt. and his RTO and since it was still daylight, the Infantry built a fire and everyone was over there roasting up chunks of Water Buffalo. Really tough meat, and hard to get your teeth through, but it tasted delicious, even half raw. One of my more memorable meals in RVN.
Was kind of disappointed in the Infantry though, cause if I'd a been in Mexico, I know I would have been awarded both ears and the tail and after a month in the jungle, could have used a little tail.
Finally found out that because they were reloading, gun by gun, the # 3 gun, which we had been firing, stopped to reload and they switched to the # 1 gun without re-computing the azimuth and fired the #1 gun with data that had been computed for the # 3 gun. Since they were about 100 meters apart, it brought the shell in a lot closer. Politely asked them not to do that again, seeing as how the FDC chief outranked me, but the Battery Commander did call and said it wouldn't happen again….EVER!....He was pretty PO'd that they hadn't recomputed the data.
Packrat
