o 



1 8 The Wilderness H^mter. 



doomed ; although if he pretends to be dead, and has the 

 nerve to lie quiet under very rough treatment, it is just 

 possible that the bear may leave him alive, perhaps after 

 half burying what it believes to be the body. In a very 

 few exceptional instances men of extraordinary prowess 

 with the knife have succeeded in beating ofT a bear, and 

 even in mortally wounding it, but in most cases a single- 

 handed struggle, at close quarters, with a grisly bent on 

 mischief, means death. 



Occasionally the bear, although vicious, is also fright- 

 ened, and passes on after giving one or two bites ; and 

 frequently a man who is knocked down is rescued by his 

 friends before he is killed, the big beast mayhap using 

 his weapons with clumsiness. So a bear may kill a foe 

 with a single blow of its mighty fore-arm, either crushing 

 in the head or chest by sheer force of sinew, or else tear- 

 ing open the body with its formidable claws ; and so on 

 the other hand he may, and often does, merely disfigure 

 or maim the foe by a hurried stroke. Hence it is com- 

 mon to see men who have escaped the clutches of a grisly, 

 but only at the cost of features marred beyond recogni- 

 tion, or a body rendered almost helpless for life. Almost 

 every old resident of western Montana or northern Idaho 

 has known two or three unfortunates who have suffered 

 in this manner. I have myself met one such man in 

 Helena, and another in Missoula ; both were living at 

 least as late as 1889, the date at which I last saw them. 

 One had been partially scalped by a bear's teeth ; the 

 animal was very old and so the fangs did not enter the 

 skull. The other had been bitten across the face, and the 



