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Former homecoming queen kills her first black bear

By Rose Hooper
bear killas Back at camp, Nola McFalls (front right) displays the 333-pound black bear she helped kill. With her are, from left, are Dennis Luker (front), and (standing) Danny Brown, Mary Brown, Roger Luker, David Luker and Jason Bryson. This black bear, killed in McDowell County, is being shoulder mounted and the meat was shared 13 ways. "We don't just kill a bear for sport," said former homecoming queen Nola McFalls. "We use all parts of the bear." By day she's a customer service representative for Sylva's Wachovia Bank. But for two weeks out of the year this former homecoming queen is a bear hunter.

Nola Powell McFalls was a bear hunter long before she began her banking career. Even though she has been hunting bear since high school, this season marked the first she ever killed one. And it was a big black bear, weighing in at 333 pounds.

"I call it a group bear," she said. "It took more than me to finally bring him down... but we are not a big group. It's just a couple of us.

"The first thing people who are opposed to bear hunting think is that it is not fair for the bear when there is a whole bunch of hunters after him," she said. "But we're not like that. We give the bear a sporting chance."

Bear hunting is hard work, McFalls is quick to point out, and this kill was especially hard.

"When I heard my dogs, I could tell by their bark that they had treed a bear," she said. "It was way up the mountain, straight up, a hard climb that took over an hour and you are fighting laurel thicket and briers all the way.

"There's no other feeling when your dogs tree a bear... all that training, you are so proud of them. It's so exciting; the most exciting thing ever... your adrenaline is just flowing," McFalls said, describing how she and Dennis "Rooster" Luker felt when they came upon the treed bear.

McFalls fired three shots with her .44 magnum. Though severely wounded, the bear managed to climb down the tree and head for a creek.

"All the time it was fighting the dogs," she said.

Joining the chase to the creek were David Luker, Danny Brown and Jason Bryson. In the water it was Bryson's shot that finally felled the bear.

While she also hunts in the Canada and Caney Fork sections of Jackson County, McFalls' first kill occurred in McDowell County.

"I don't feel bad about killing the bear," said this 1994 Smoky Mountain High School homecoming queen. "If we didn't use all the parts I might. But we are shoulder mounting the bear, and we shared the bear meat 13 ways."

McFalls said she is especially fond of bear liver "with lots of onions, potatoes and hot peppers."

Her daddy, George Powell, got her interested in hunting, she said.

"When I was a little girl, my daddy took me squirrel hunting with him. I loved it," said. McFalls, who got her first shotgun - a .12-gauge pump - at age 13. "Then I started dating 'Pudge' McFalls, and he took me coon hunting, and then later, bear hunting. I loved that, too."

In addition to bear hunting, McFalls rides horses and goes on the wagon train.

"I love these mountains I was born and raised in, and I respect nature... so do the others I go hunting with. We never damage the land, and we carry our trash out with us.

"And we respect wildlife. We don't have to kill a bear... look at all the times I've gone bear hunting and never killed one," McFalls said.

Back to Archive: 12/12/02.