Tom Taylor of Edgartown sat in a tree stand in the British Columbia cold on October 7 holding a simple recurve bow. He was hunting a grizzly bear with claws that made his arrows seem like toothpicks.
You and I — most of the people in the world, probably — would rather burst into flames than be where Tom Taylor was sitting when a nearly 800-pound male grizzly appeared about 30 yards from his stand and walked to less than 10 yards from Mr. Taylor’s perch.
Many modern archery hunters rely on compound bows that can propel an arrow more than 300 feet per second (FPS) using a system of pulleys that help mitigate the amount of strength needed to hold the bow at full draw and which are outfitted with fiber optic sights that provide a degree of precision that William Tell might have envied. Not so Mr. Taylor. Aside from the laminate materials of the recurve bow, its design has changed little since skilled Mongolian horsemen wielded it to great effect. No sights, no pulleys, just draw the string using pure arm strength and aim on instinct. Shot placement is the key to survival.
Mr. Taylor was armed with a Fedora’s Custom Bows bamboo-limbed, 66-inch recurve with a 60-pound draw capable of sending an arrow about 200 FPS. He said that people who have seen photos of the bear, which stood more than eight feet tall, ask him what the moment was like when he drew his bow back.
“I don’t remember taking the shot,” Mr. Taylor recalled recently while sitting in his Edgartown living room. “I think that’s why I like this method so much. Pure instinct takes over. Instantaneous, timed, natural. There’s no aiming. You point, but I don’t remember that moment. You pull the bow back and let the arrow go.”
Was he afraid? “Absolutely, I had a sense of fear,” he said.
A guide armed with a rifle as required by Canadian hunting regulations was nearby in the event of serious trouble. That safety net wouldn’t make most of us feel much better, but it was clearly sufficient for Mr. Taylor, who has encountered grizzlies face to face when he was not in a tree stand and did not have a weapon in readiness.
“Thank God, I was never between a sow and her cubs,” he said. “When that happens, you have a major, major problem.”
Sows protecting cubs are responsible for many bear attacks on humans. A sow’s biggest threat comes from other male bears, which if given the opportunity will kill a female’s cubs in order to breed the sow and produce his own offspring.
“Hunting males keeps the population growing,” Mr. Taylor explained. “If you didn’t, they would prey on the cubs.
“I’ve been hunting that spot for three years, and we were at the end of the season. By October 15, the lakes are frozen and bears have hibernated for the winter. We had seen plenty of signs in the past that a big bear, a big one traveled the area.”
Bears are measured by their skull size for record-keeping purposes. The Boone and Crockett Club, a national hunting organization dedicated to conservation and ethical hunting based in Missoula, Mont. is the most respected record-keeping organization.
Mr. Taylor plans to submit his bear’s measurements to Boone and Crockett. Right now, in excess of 800 pounds, it is thought to be the second largest grizzly taken this year by any method, including bow and arrow.
Mr. Taylor is a dedicated North American big game hunter and passionate about wildlife management and protection. He lauds the efforts of conservation groups like the Boone and Crockett Club. “They spend a lot of money in that work, all hunter-supported, including strict quotas, based on species population,” he said. “There’d be no North American sheep if it weren’t for the hunters and their support of conservation groups. Sheep were never a mountain animal, they were a plains animal. They were pushed up there by development and hunting without controls. Conservation foundations for sheep and elk have done untold good. Protecting habitat is the single most important part of conservation.”
There are 29 species of North American big game. Mr. Taylor has taken 27 of them, most with a simple recurve bow and arrow, a technology as old as man.
Which brings us to why Mr. Taylor chose to be in that tree in October. “There is a primal quality,” he said. “Untamed wilderness. Wild animals. I feel more whole, more natural.” His use of a bow affirms the feeling. “Shooting an arrow is great training for hand, eye and mind coordination,” he said. “Self-control is a prime attribute of it — ties the whole thing together. It’s just a relaxing, very focused activity. You have to remove everything else from your mind. Archery is a martial art.”
Mr. Taylor, 63, has a thriving fine carpentry and cabinet making business, Taylor Woodworking, with state of the art equipment in Edgartown. He is the scion of one of Boston’s most celebrated families and father of two school teachers Rebecca, at the West Tisbury School and Elizabeth, who teaches at the Portland (Maine) School of Art. He restores boats to a state of heartbreaking beauty.
In sum, a big life. Yet, Mr. Taylor’s idea of a hunting trip is elemental and does not include going back to the lodge at night for a few pops and a well-turned steak.
“The only explanation I can give you is that the area I was in — the glacial rivers and streams, the mountains — absolutely supercedes anything else that is in it, including us. If you haven’t been to that area, lived in it for a week or two, there’s nothing I can describe that’s even close to it. Nothing.
“We are comfortable with civilization. I know when I come back here from one of these adventures, I feel extremely claustrophobic. It takes me a good month to get comfortable: not that I’m nervous around people, I just feel boxed in.”
Mr. Taylor remembered the first time he was dropped off in the wilderness. The bush pilot told him, “This is where I want you to be in two weeks. Don’t hurt yourself.”
Mr. Taylor said his love of cabinet-making, boat restoration, surfcasting and big game hunting share a common thread. “I grew up learning how to do things for myself with my hands and that’s always been my reward, and the gratification that comes from doing it myself,” he said. “Especially hunting in the primitive way, the way native Americans would have done it. Getting that close. They were hunting for food. They didn’t trophy-hunt.”
As Mr. Taylor described his life in the wild, it occurred to him that, other than the lousy freeze-dried food, he was living much as man lived hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago. How does that gene come to a man descended from the Taylors of Boston, who have owned both the Boston Red Sox and The Boston Globe?
“Well, maybe from my grandmother’s side,” he said. “Her father was a ’49er, in the gold rush of 1849, and a clipper ship captain. Maybe it comes from there.” He grinned.