A COLORADO BEAR HUNT 85 



one hundred and thirty-five pounds apiece. The year- 

 lings weighed from thirty-one to forty pounds. The 

 only other black bears I ever weighed all belonged to the 

 sub-species Luteolus, and were killed on the Little Sun- 

 flower River, in Mississippi, in the late fall of nineteen 

 hundred and two. A big old male, in poor condition, 

 weighed two hundred and eighty-five pounds, and two 

 very fat females weighed two hundred and twenty and 

 two hundred and thirty-five pounds respectively. 



The next few days we spent in hunting perseveringly, 

 but unsuccessfully. Each day we were from six to twelve 

 hours in the saddle, climbing with weary toil up the 

 mountains and slipping and scrambling down them. On 

 the tops and on the north slopes there was much snow, 

 so that we had to pick our trails carefully, and even thus 

 the horses often floundered belly-deep as we worked 

 along in single file; the men on the horses which were 

 best at snow bucking took turns in breaking the trail. 

 In the worst places we had to dismount and lead the 

 horses, often over such bad ground that nothing less sure- 

 footed than the tough mountain ponies could even have 

 kept their legs. The weather was cold, with occasional 

 sharp flurries of snow, and once a regular snow-storm. 

 We found the tracks of one or two bears, but in each case 

 several days old, and it was evident either that the bears 

 had gone back to their dens, finding the season so late, 

 or else that they were lying quiet in sheltered places, and 

 travelling as little as possible. One day, after a long run 

 of certainly five or six miles through very difficult coun- 

 try, the dogs treed a bobcat in a big cedar. It had run so 



