120 Hunting the Grisly 



straight; while others first threaten and bully, 

 and even when charging stop to growl, shake 

 the head, and bite at a bush or knock holes 

 in the ground with their fore-paws. Again, 

 some of them charge home with a ferocious 

 resolution which their extreme tenacity of life 

 renders especially dangerous ; while others can 

 be turned or driven back even by a shot which 

 is not mortal. They show the same variabil- 

 ity in their behavior when wounded. Often 

 a big. bear, especially if charging, will receive 

 a bullet in perfect silence, without flinching 

 or seeming to pay any heed to it; while an- 

 other will cry out and tumble about, and if 

 charging, even though it may not abandon the 

 attack, will pause for a moment to whine or 

 bite at the wound. 



Sometimes a single bite causes death. One 

 of the most successful bear hunters I ever 

 knew, an old fellow whose real name I never 

 heard as he was always called Old Ike, was 

 killed in this way in the spring or early sum- 

 mer of 1886 on one of the head-waters of the 

 Salmon. He was a very good shot, had killed 

 nearly a hundred bears with the rifle, and, al- 

 though often charged, had never met with 

 any accident, so that he had grown somewhat 

 careless. On the day in question he had met a 



