From cheerleader to record bear hunter

WAKE FOREST -- Heather Jones Shepherd is a former Leesville Road High cheerleader, a Meredith College alumna and a record-setting bear hunter.

Shepherd, 24, has been hunting since she was 16 and has taken seven kinds of game.

"People have always known I was different," said Shepherd, a human resources and finance specialist for Rocky Mount company AvuTox, which produces pain management drug screening. "A cheerleader and a dancer who's also a hunter. They always called me a hillbilly or a redneck."

But she wasn't prepared for what happened in Hyde county on the morning of Nov. 14.

The bear she took down that day was a behemoth. The 678-pounder was the largest bear taken by a female with dogs, and the second-largest by a woman in North Carolina. It was the 12th largest taken since the record book started in 1969, with a "green score" of 21 7/8 inches.

That score put the kill in the Boone and Crockett All-Time Book, which recognizes all green scores over 21 inches.

Shepherd was on her first bear hunt that morning, accompanied by her father, Dicky Jones, of Raleigh and Greg McDonald of Fayetteville.

"We had driven around the previous day and decided where we were going to set up (on LUX Farms, east of Lake Matamuskeet)," she said.

Hours of work

The hunt started on the edge of a duck impoundment at about 5:45 a.m.

"The process of tracking with dogs can take hours," she explained. "The sun was rising at about 6:20. We were trying to get there before to where we had seen bear tracks going in and out of a corn field.

"We were there until about 8 o'clock and didn't see anything. The wind wasn't blowing in our favor."

But then, she said, one of the farm owners decided to call in a friend with dogs and go dog hunting.

"We had released one dog, the trail dog, and it went right to it. Then they released the other dogs. We were following them and Greg decided we needed to go in after the bear. It started off with him and me, because when you get too many people the bear can hear you really well and you don't want to lead them in a different direction.

Father's wish

"Then my dad followed because he wanted to see it. It took about two hours. We had spooked him twice, and then I was about 20 feet from him and the bear had heard us. He got up to go in the opposite direction and that's when I took him (with a 45-70 Marlin lever action). And my dad said, "You don't realize what you've done. This is a record!"

The shot fulfilled a dream of Jones, who had bought Heather and her younger brother Chad lifetime licenses before their first birthdays soon after their Social Security numbers arrived. The state was running a special on hunting licenses for babies in the late '80s, and he was able to get each for $100.

Jones was far more excited about the success than his daughter was, she said.

"He almost had a heart attack when I shot a 21-pound turkey six years ago," she said with a laugh.

He was at point-blank range when his daughter took her shot.

"The man who went in with us said 'if the bear lunges I'm going to shoot it,' " Jones explained. "I said 'I expect you to.' I didn't even have a gun, and I was just standing right behind her.

"When your child can do something like that and you experience it, that's better than doing it yourself. Somebody asked me, 'Didn't you want to shoot the bear?' I said it was a million times better to be with her when she shot it."

Adrenaline rush

Shepherd said it was the best adrenaline rush she has had as a hunter.

"From chasing for an hour on my knees to being up close and personal to the bear - it was by far the best experience I have ever had hunting," she said. "I've taken anything from deer, turkeys, swans, ducks, doves and quail, and nothing was as intense as that bear trip!"

It turned out to be a really big week, as the day after she took the big game she learned she and husband Jonathan Shepherd are expecting their first child.

Jones said hunting skills run in the family and his daughter is just a natural.

"The first time she deer hunted we were near Enfield between Christmas and New Year's," he explained. "And the first day she hunted she killed a deer, the second day she hunted she killed a deer. The first one was probably 130 yards, the second about 120."

The same was true for the third, which she shot at a distance of 240 yards and took until the next morning to find, he said.

Shepherd wants to be an ambassador for hunting, saying a successful shot is the kind of excitement one can't imagine before it happens.

"It's an experience and a chance to get away from everything," she said.