It took five men to drag the bear out of the woods.

It took five men to drag the bear out of the woods.
By MARALINE KUBIK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
BERLIN CENTER -- Mike Sabol has baited a lot of bears. Only one went for him instead of the honey and doughnuts. He got away thanks to his new titanium knees and lucky pants.
Referring to the worn, camouflage shorts he was wearing, Sabol said, "These used to be long pants." When a 500-pound black bear got a hold of him, though, the fabric of one pant leg was shredded. The bear's razor-sharp claws tore straight through, allowing Sabol just enough time to scramble into his tree stand.
The bear tried to reach into the stand after the hunter, but after awhile gave up and lumbered back into the woods.
Going up
Drenched in sweat and high on adrenaline, Sabol jumped to the ground, thrust his arm through the strap on his rifle, which had been lying on the ground near the bucket of doughnuts he'd been using as bear bait, and climbed to the top of a 40-foot pine tree.
"I thought I could sit up there and cool off," he said, admitting that he can't remember how he got to the top of the tree, only that he hit the ground, grabbed his gun and was gone.
Good thing.
The bear returned, and it went right for the back of the tree stand where Sabol had taken refuge.
Watching from his tree-top perch, Sabol lifted his rifle and fired, the bullet striking the bear in the neck.
Dead weight, the bear dropped to the ground.
It took five men to drag that bear out of the woods, Sabol said, recalling the adventure.
After dragging it to Sabol's boat on the Magpie River in Wawa, Ontario, they got it back to camp, then had 12 more miles by boat to get back to his truck.
The bear now stands in Sabol's living room, along with dozens of other hunting trophies: deer, elk, foxes, squirrels, wild boar, Rocky Mountain goats, but mostly bears.
Many kills
Sabol has killed 29 black bears since 1972, the first year he went to Canada hunting the animals. He's gotten one almost every trip except for the year he had his knees replaced -- arthritis, he said, turned the knees God gave him to powder -- and he didn't bag any bears during the hunting excursions he oversaw. "You want the people you're helping to get one before you do," he explained.
"I'm not a guide," Sabol stressed, but he's been hunting so long and knows Wawa so well that he sometimes oversees a hunting camp for Botham's Bear Guide Service, owned by one of his friends. Botham's specializes in leading hunters and fishermen on deep-woods excursions in Wawa.
Averaging two or three big hunting trips a year, Sabol has stalked a variety of game throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Idaho and Montana, all in addition to his annual bear hunting excursions in Canada.
Last year, in Newfoundland, he bagged a 1,000-pound moose. Its antlers stretch 561/2 inches across and have 21 points, Sabol said. To get it out of the woods, he had to cut it up and haul the meat back to his boat in canvas sacks. It took five trips, he added, and the moose was about a mile away from the boat.
"Moose meat tastes just like an Arby's roast beef sandwich," Sabol said, but his family could never eat all of the meat from a 1,000-pound animal. So, like his bear meat, Sabol kept what he would use and donated the rest to local sportsmen's clubs for their wild game dinners.
"I don't shoot anything I won't eat," he said, though there have been a few exceptions. A groundhog that made a habit of feasting on his neighbor's garden is now a trophy in Sabol's Pricetown Road home, and he didn't eat it, or the crow that is gracefully perched near one of the bears.
He also uses as much of the animals as possible. Heads, and in some cases the animals' entire bodies, are mounted as trophies, hides become rugs, and large bleached collar and rib bones become canvases for his paintings.
Wilderness scenes
Sabol primarily paints wilderness scenes: bears in the bush, a fawn in a grassy clearing, hunters with their rifles, the hunting lodge in Wawa, beavers building a dam, Indian villages, lakes and woodlands.
He took up painting several years after arthritis forced him to retire from driving a tractor-trailer. Before the joint disease froze his wrists and twisted his fingers, Sabol hauled steel using his own rig.
He displays his paintings along with dozens of mounted trophies in his "bear room," which used to be the family living room.
Everything in the room follows the hunting theme. Hunter green sofas are adorned with pillows that feature wolves and bears. The coffee table is a display case for dozens of hunting knives, and Sabol's rifles are displayed in a gun cabinet featuring carvings of a buck in the bush.
Generous wife
"How many women do you know who would let their husbands have all this?" he said, smiling and motioning to the room.
Sabol's 13-year-old granddaughter, Jessica Johannes, of Girard, shares her grandfather's interest in art and paints bears too, but hers, he points out, look like teddy bears with angel wings and friendly faces, not the wild animals that intrigue him.
kubik@vindy.com