It takes three bullets to scare a bear

Washoe Valley couple Vic and Dianne Jordan woke up Saturday night to a bear sitting in their back sunroom, munching on the screen door it had ripped off the hinges.

"Dianne woke up due to the dogs barking, went to the bathroom, remembered that she needed to take a pill, then wondered what was making a racket out in the sunroom about 30 feet away. Meanwhile, I was asleep in the bed," according to Vic.

"She looked out, said, 'Oh my God, it's a bear,' then shut the door. A lot of good that did. We had two other open doors that were closer to the bear. In the meantime, I couldn't find my gun!"

The Jordans tried scaring the bear away from their Maranatha Street home by grunting and clanging pots and pans. That didn't work. Vic finally found his gun, but decided against shooting the bear, for fear of making it angry.

He decided to fire the gun once out of a window then into the ground to scare the bear away.

"The bear looked around to see what was going on. In the panic of the moment, I re-cocked my semi-automatic, which was all ready to fire a second time, due to the fact that it is an automatic, but I didn't realize it, being dazed and half asleep."

After accidentally ejecting two good rounds onto the ground, Jordan got off a second shot. The bear moved onto the back deck, and urinated.

"It must have scared him pretty good," Jordan said. "Well, I had it down now - I knew how to shoot an automatic pistol, so I fired a third round in the ground, and the bear took off for the hills.

"In the meantime, the dogs barked for four hours, and we couldn't find a cat inside the house until the sun rose about four hours later. I couldn't sleep and feel like I've been beaten up, rode hard and put away wet."

Jordan and his wife have not gotten a full night's sleep since the incident, he said, for fear the bear will return.

"This story goes to prove that you need a gun loaded with five bullets so you can get three rounds off to scare the pee out of a bear," Jordan said.