Editor’s note: Longtime retired Manitowoc County Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources warden Jim Aasen, of Two Rivers, passed away Sept. 5 at age 76. In the following, Manitowoc resident Steve Olson shares his favorite memory of Aasen from when Olson was a third-shift Manitowoc police officer.

It’s June of 1992. I was still a third-shift cop in Manitowoc when we got a call of a bear in a tree about 0300 (3 a.m.). About a block south of the Busch plant in the downtown area. Yeah, right, we’re chuckling back and forth on the radio as I respond — that was my beat. Especially in that part of town, immediately adjacent to downtown, some goofus who’s never set foot in the woods probably saw a raccoon or something. But, when I round the corner onto the street where the call came from, I see this fellow flagging me down in the street. Mid-40s, he looks like he grew up in the Upper Peninsula. Holy crap, I think, this guy sure looks like he can tell a bear from a raccoon.

Sure enough — what later weighed in at as a 460-pound bear is sitting in the crotch of a tree hanging over the street.

Turns out the fellow worked second shift, had worked some overtime and got home. Let his dog out when he got home. Dog starts barking at something, he goes outside and finds his dog had treed the bear.

So — I’m standing under the tree with my 00 buck shotgun — all we had back in those days. What to do about it? Dispatcher calls DNR. DNR says just leave it alone and it’ll wander off into the woods somewhere. Except, there’s no woods adjacent to downtown. The nearest woods are several miles south in Silver Creek Park. By this time, the whole neighborhood is awake and milling about in the street. I tell them what the DNR had relayed to us. They’re none too happy. Kids going to be getting up shortly, it’s June, they’re going to be playing in the yards, etc. So finally I tell the fellow that I can’t tell him what to do as I had my orders from our shift commander, but I mention to the fellow that I happen to know then Mayor Kevin Crawford’s telephone number is in the phone book. Half an hour later, I get a radio call that the DNR would be responding to my location with one of their bear trailers, someone was bringing a dart gun (all from Door County, so it’ll be awhile) and our local warden, Jim Aasen, was also on his way.

DNR darts the bear several times, but it doesn’t fall asleep. It finally crawls out of the tree and does look a little groggy, but it’s walking fine. Aasen finally decides he’s going to lasso the critter, but also says he can’t just rope it around the neck as it’s down a hill and pulling it uphill with a rope around its neck would likely choke it to death, or at least cause permanent injury. So, he says he’s got to get the rope around its neck as well as around at least one leg to relieve the pressure on its neck for the uphill pull.

As you might expect, I’m thinking Aasen is stark raving nuts! The fire department is there and happens to have a camera (see photos with this column). I’m not in the photos where Aasen is approaching the bear with the lasso, but closely following Aasen off to the side with but a scattergun in case something goes wrong — hoping to be able to hit the bear without hitting Aasen. We don’t even have any shotgun slugs — just buckshot!

Aasen actually gets the lasso on the bear, including around one leg to not choke it off! With Manitowoc Fire Department muscle, the critter is pulled up the hill, the DNR bear trailer arrives, it’s tagged, blood tested, etc., pulled into the trailer, and the DNR hauls it up north and releases it somewhere around the Marinette County/Florence County line. We later heard that it was taken by a bear hunter the fall of the following year and weighed 575 pounds by then.

Sometime later, I heard a young lad was playing in Red Arrow Park near dusk the night before. As the sun was setting, he came running into his house shouting, “Mommy, mommy, there’s a bear in the park!” Mommy tells him to be quiet and stop fibbing. He tells mommy he really saw a bear in Red Arrow Park. Mommy says be quiet or he’s going straight to bed with no supper. He again shouts, “But Mommy, I really saw a bear in the park.” Mommy sends him to bed.

It was later determined that the bear wandered into the city along the lake from the area of Silver Creek Park, past Red Arrow Park, through the Manitowoc Public Utilities property and to where it was found treed near Sixth and Hamilton. The young fellow was right!

Steve Olson is a Manitowoc resident.