LANSING -It was opening day of bear hunting season and Baldwin, MI resident Tim Dusterwinkle was looking forward to hunting in the Baraga Plains with his five dogs including Cowboy, a 3 1/2-year-old treeing walker.
“We had found some good tracks so I let the dogs go and they took off. After an hour, they treed a bear and I began to walk towards where they were barking,” Dusterwinkle said.
The dogs had treed the bear in a difficult, hilly area of the western Upper Peninsula and it took a while for Dusterwinkle to get to them.
“I was about a quarter mile away from where the dogs were when they stopped barking. I thought maybe the bear had gotten down and ran away. It happens sometimes, and the dogs will then take off and try to tree it again.
“I didn’t know what had happened and came across a few of the dogs who had taken off. I noticed that Cowboy wasn’t there which was unusual — he was a good dog.”
Dusterwinkle walked towards the tree where the dogs had been and made a gruesome discovery.
“I found Cowboy in the woods dead. It wasn’t pretty — his hide had been torn off and it looked like he had been skinned,” he said.
A horse was responsible. » Read the rest of this entry «