My only armed encounter, so far, was in my backyard, and it wasn't with a bear. Two armed robbers had held up a grocery store in a tiny town a few miles from me. They escaped in a car and were ultimately forced to ditch the car a few hundred yards from my home and hid in the woods across the highway from my house. As the law enforcement all closed in I realized my family and I were literally in the middle of it all. One robber gave up and surrendered when the bloodhounds were released into the woods. The other held out until dusk, then ran out of the woods across the highway towards my house, where my wife, kids and mother were locked in. I was outside with a shotgun loaded with buckshot watching the law enforcement desperately try to handle the "situation". The robber, armed with a pistol, tried unsuccessfully to get into my house, then ran around the opposite side towards the rear. I met him on the opposite corner as he was trying to climb my back fence. I demanded he surrender, or I'd shoot. A (dumb) deputy hollered to me that I wasn't to do that, that was their job, at which time the robber leapt off the fence and proceeded to run across a hayfield behind my house. In an attempt to keep him in sight and not allow him to escape I ran behind him, a few yards away, keeping him in sight. The law enforcement finally decided to do something and opened fire at him from my yard. After some 40-50 rounds were expended someone finally hit him in the leg and he went down. Had he turned his pistol towards me earlier I would have undoubtedly used force on him. There was no way I was going to let him escape, and no way I was going to let him shoot me either.
It ended for the best, I guess, as he spent several years in a penitentiary. A far cry from a bear attack, but an armed encounter nonetheless.
Last edited by Stanton Hillis; 05/23/21 10:38 PM.
