”I’m not cutting my hair or shaving a whisker until I get a bear,” my cousin Neil told me. ”I don’t like looking scruffy, but I’m serious about this.”

That was in November of 2005, with the fall bear season all but over and little chance of seeing a bruin until spring.

”Well you’re going to look pretty shaggy by April,” I told him.

At that point, Neil had invested every spare minute of the previous two years hunting bears. He’d spent countless hours driving to remote locations, walking ridge tops and glassing clear cuts. In his quest, he’d tagged a turkey and began to pattern the local elk herds, but his dreams of a bear were unrealized. And, with fuel costs over $3.00 a gallon, his monthly gasoline bill was through the roof.

”I’m going broke, and I’m discouraged,” he told me once. ”But I’m going to do it.”

Neil’s bear-hunting vow was not without precedent. Perhaps he drew inspiration from the story of Samson, who swore not to touch a razor to his head. The biblical figure Samson, whose extraordinary strength stemmed from his long, uncut hair. Samson’s strength grew, and he felled a lion with his bare hands while he prepared for battles to come.

Neil’s aspirations ran more to the use of a bolt-action rifle and a well-constructed bullet than to hand-to-paw combat, but his appearance took on a primitive unkemptness as the months passed.

Neil lived, at the time, on the southern Oregon coast, where he ran a one-man excavation company, installing drain fields, digging ditches and scraping out driveways. If his beard and sandy blond hair grew a little long, it probably helped him fit in to the community.

Meanwhile, he took every opportunity to talk to hunters and landowners about bear they had seen. He bought his spring tag and, in April, began driving the roads and glassing clear cuts as the longer days brought new growth to the hillsides. He called me mid-month to say that this season was shaping up like all the rest.

April 19 was his wedding anniversary, and he took his wife, Angie, on a short hunt that evening after work. A half an hour before dark they spotted a big black boar on a far hillside. Neil made the stalk and the shot. After two years of single-minded dedication to his goal, now he had bear steaks, bear sausage, and an appointment with the barber.

In August he bought a fall tag and put another bear in the freezer.

His first bear will end up as a rug to go on the floor, and the second, with a brown-phase pelt, is being crafted into a life-size mount to remind him of his Oregon black-bear odyssey.

”It was all I thought about for two years,” Neil said. ”I wondered: What do they eat? When do they sleep? When do they wake up? I would have dreams at night about sitting next to a bear and smiling, having put my tag on it.”

Bear thrive in many parts of the state, and spring bear hunting has grown in popularity. Oregon’s bear population is thought to number about 30,000 animals, spread over approximately 40,000 square miles of habitat.

Spring hunts are controlled by a lottery that limits the number of hunters. Bag limit is one bear, except that it is unlawful to take cubs less than a year old, or a sow with cubs. The application deadline for the spring hunt is Feb. 10. The hunts begin in April.

”Time,” Neil said. ”You’ve got to put your time in. After all the days I spent – hiking, following tracks and trails – I go up and see one in a half-hour.”

It’s called being in the right place at the right time. Like Neil says: ”You’re not going to do it if you’re sitting on the couch.”

Cousin Neil has his hair trimmed tight, the way he likes it, and keeps his beard neatly cropped. He’s turned his excavation attentions once again to the sandy soils of Arizona, but he’ll never forget his two-year quest for a bear in southwest Oregon.