My take on it is that Sealion Murphy was rousting bears from their dens to get them out and "legal" for being hunted. Think about rousting a sleeping bear from its den. Once that bear has been roused and annoyed enough to come out of the den, it is not going to simply look around and wonder who had come calling. A pissed off bear is not a critter you can reason with or get away from easily. A charging pissed off bear is the likely outcome of "bear thumping". Bears, like most animals, are territorial and do not like having anyone or anything get in their space. Assuming Sealion Murphy got clear of the bear, when it came out of the den, pardon the pun, that bear was "loaded for bear" and looking to get rid of whomever had invaded its space, and was not asking questions as to who had rousted it. My guess is Sealion Murphy had his sons standing by with guns ready. When the "thumped" bear came out of its den, pissed off and looking to take care of whomever had bothered it, Murphy's sons were also -pardon the pun- literally loaded for bear. The bear succumbed to lead poisoning with a likely side order of copper. Murphy and his sons likely field dressed the bear, called it their meat supply and probably skinned the bear to sell the pelt for people wanting a rug.
There was no humor in this business of "bear thumping", unlike "cow tipping". A pissed off bear coming out of its den to settle the score with whomever was handy is a whole lot different than tipping dairy cows. Sealion Murphy, aside from having his own private death wish borne out of his grief, probably had a screw or two loose and justified the "bear thumping" by saying it was one way to lay in a supply of meat and realize some cash money from the sale of the pelt and claws (or maybe the gall bladder to the Chinese traditional remedy makers). Obviously, Mr. Sealion Murphy came damned close to getting all of his just deserts from a pissed off bear, and got plenty enough as it were. I have this vision of Mr. Sealion Murphy crawling headfirst into a bear den, with one of his sons holding onto his legs outside the den. The other son has a rifle at the ready. Timing is everything. Murphy gets the bear roused and as soon as the bruin begins to move out of the den, Murphy likely hollered to his son to pull him out and be quick about it. The son hauls Murphy out, feet first, followed by the bear. As soon as enough of the bear is out of the den to "be legal" or give some kind of shot to the other son, that son shoots the bear. Of course, the son doing the shooting has to have a heavy enough rifle and a good enough shot to put the bear right down or Murphy and his sons would be history. Putting down a bear of the size and type found in Alaska takes a heavy caliber firearm and a well placed shot. A wounded bear is more likely, and a wounded bear is probably worse yet than a bear simply roused from its slumbers. Murphy got what he had coming to him from the bears, and if he thumped and was responsible for the killing of any number of bears previously, he got off easy.
The image I have of the whole bear thumping thing is kind of like a cartoon. Murphy schemes to kill a bear, and rather than do it during the hunting season in a more normal manner, schemes to do it by rousting a bear in its den. This is something he can't do alone, so enlists his two sons. He tells one son: "When I go into the den, you grab onto my legs. When I holler, pull me out as quick as you can." He then tells the other son: "You stand off to this side of the entrance to the den. As soon as your brother pulls me clear, that bear is gonna come out of the den. You make damned sure to shoot the bear and not me or your brother." So, Murphy wriggles into the bear den, pokes, prods, and makes enough of an annoyance that the slumbering bear rouses. Timing is everything. Murphy has to be sure the bear is sufficiently roused and pissed off enough to come out of the den. If he bails out of the den too soon, the bear is apt to turn over and keep on sleeping. If he hangs around the den too long in rousting the bear, he winds up the worse for wear or dead. Similarly, Murphy's sons have to have their act choreographed so Murphy comes out of the den unscathed and the bear winds up dead instead of the other way round.
Murphy proved that Karma works- the bears caught up with him and left him alive and walking proof of what happens when you enter a bear den and piss off the bear. It brings back a memory of a local fellow and how karma caught up with him. This guy seemed to be perpetually angry, kind of like a coiled spring. He made plenty of money in his business, so every couple of years, would take his wife and go on what he called a "safari" in Africa. In actuality, it was more of a "canned hunt" or a "feed and shoot" deal. This guy would pay large sums of money to shoot various animals for no other reason than a trophy for his wall- if he could bring home a head. His culminating hunt was when he paid quite a sum of money to kill an elephant. I remember asking him why he found it necessary to travel halfway around the world to kill an elephant, an animal with a highly developed social structure that did no harm. He gave me some half assed BS answer, and all he took home were photos, since it was illegal to import ivory or much else from the elephant into the US. That guy proved that karma works. A few years after his killing the elephant, along with all the other trophy animals he'd killed, he met his own end in a similar manner. He was mowing his property on a tractor with a trailing mower driven by a PTO shaft. It was a nice new tractor and mower. When the fellow failed to come in for lunch, his wife sent their boy to see what was up. The boy found his father sitting in a slumped position on a tree stump, dead. The whole back of his head had been blown off. It turned out a universal joint on the PTO driveshaft had blown apart. Whether he had nailed a rock of stump cut off close to the ground is unknown. The plastic guard on the U joint did nothing to stop the shrapnel when that joint let go. A chunk of the U joint nailed the guy in the back of his head as he sat on the tractor. He apparently shut off the tractor and made it to the stump to sit down, where he died.
Some of us called it karma. This fellow had gone into the habitat of animals on another continent, probably paid for a canned hunt where the animals were lured in with food, and shot them with high powered rifles in ways that left him with a trophy head. He got his in a very similar manner, mowing his property and unsuspecting, got the back of his head blown away. As some of us put it: he learned what the animals he shot had experienced and died in a like manner. Most of us who hunt do so only to take an animal we are going to eat and make use of such as deer, or to put down animals doing damage such as coyotes. The idea of trophy hunting and canned hunts is something repugnant to most of us, so when that fellow got his from the U joint, we called it karma.
Murphy may well have been hunting bears for survival, laying in a meat supply rather than being a trophy hunter like the guy in my area. However, there are safer ways to hunt bears than rousting them out of a deep sleep in their dens. Murphy had some other motive beyond simple subsistence hunting and karma caught up with him.
