The Black Bear. 261 



clothes — after which he shot it. Bears are shy and have 

 very keen noses ; they are therefore hard to kill by fair 

 hunting, living, as they generally do, in dense forests or 

 thick brush. They are easy enough to trap, however. 

 Thus, these two men, though they trapped so many, 

 never but once killed them in any other way. On this 

 occasion one of them, in the winter, found in a g-reat 

 hollow log a den where a she and two well-grown cubs 

 had taken up their abode, and shot all three with his rifle 

 as they burst out. 



Where they are much hunted, bear become purely 

 nocturnal ; but in the wilder forests I have seen them 

 abroad at all hours, though they do not much relish the 

 intense heat of noon. They are rather comical animals 

 to watch feeding and going about the ordinary business 

 of their lives. Once I spent half an hour lying at the 

 edge of a wood and looking at a black bear some three 

 hundred yards off across an open glade. It was in good 

 stalking country, but the wind was unfavorable and I 

 waited for it to shift — waited too long as it proved, for 

 something frightened the beast and he made off before I 

 could get a shot at him. When I first saw him he was 

 shuffling along and rooting in the ground, so that he 

 looked like a great pig. Then he began to turn over the 

 stones and logs to hunt for insects, small reptiles, and 

 the like. A moderate-sized stone he would turn over 

 with a single clap of his paw, and then plunge his nose 

 down into the hollow to gobble up the small creatures 

 beneath while still dazed by the light. The big logs and 

 rocks he would tug and worry at with both paws ; once, 



