Autobiographical 9 



land well after dark, and Sunday morning started on my 

 first bear hunt. Looking back on it now, I think my idea 

 must have been that hunting grizzly bears was something 

 like "chumming" for fish; that all that was necessary 

 was to go into the hills, let one's scent blow down breeze, 

 and then shoot the ferocious animals that worked their 

 way up wind with the intention of eating you. 



At any rate our inexperience in this kind of hunting, 

 our lack of caution, and our carelessness in making too 

 much noise, prevented us from getting any grizzlies; and 

 it spoke volumes for the number of these animals then 

 roaming the hills that we actually, in spite of our awk- 

 wardness, saw eleven. I did succeed in killing one black 

 bear, wounding another, and scaring several more nearly 

 to death by rolling rocks after them. As a matter of fact 

 it was well on into my second season before I really killed 

 a grizzly, and although I saw a great many in my ex- 

 cursions, it was also about that long before I realized that 

 the bear stories I had heard were just stories. I used to 

 go out the last of every week. 



Later, in the first fall, having saved some money, I 

 bought a half-interest in the shop from Mr. Weeks. This 

 I did really to have more freedom to hunt. After a part- 

 nership of five or six months, the old man gave me the 

 other half of the business to teach one of his boys the 

 trade, and I ran the shop till the next summer, when, the 

 berries and grizzlies being ripe, I took a partner to look 

 after the business while I looked after bear. Judging 

 from the way he ran it, and the number of bear I got that 

 year, I think it would have been cheaper for me to buy my 

 bear. However, except for three or four months in the fall. 



