American Big-Game Hunting 
even with the fleecy covering the rocks were 
still very hard. 
However, it was deep enough for me to 
crawl out, more scared than hurt, and soon 
we had sage-brush and grass under our feet, 
with an easy trail to camp, where a square 
meal inside of a stomach that sorely needed 
it soon made amends for all hardships. Won- 
dering what those bears had been at work at, 
I went back the next day and found that they 
had been tearing up a sheep that had died of 
scab, a disease that wild sheep are subject to. 
To a thorough sportsman, killing bear after 
a successful stalk is by long odds the best and 
most exciting method, but the country must 
be such as permits of this,—as, for instance, 
when there are long stretches of high moun- 
tains, plateaus or ridges above, or devoid of, 
timber, where the bears resort to root, and 
where the hunter from some elevated post can 
look over a large area with the aid of glasses. 
The general procedure, though, is to put out 
bait—that is, to have the carcass of some ani- 
mal to attract the bear, and many a noble 
elk or timorous deer has been thus sacrificed. 
To avoid this needless destruction it has been 
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