266 THE BEAR FAMILY 



Mr. Kidder and his friend, on this trip, bagged four- 

 teen bears, and says of the nine which he shot not one 

 was killed with a single bullet, although all but one 

 were shot through the lungs, and two through the 

 heart as well. " In several cases when I placed a bullet 

 well in a bear, and he continued going away hard, a 

 shot from the .50-calibre would seem to knock all the 

 life out of him, although the bullet might not be so 

 well placed as the first shot from the smaller rifle. 

 The knock-down force of the .45-70, as used by my 

 friend on these bears, was, we both considered, far 

 ahead of the .30-40, while the .50-calibre, with its 450 

 grains of lead, was noticeably more powerful than the 

 .45-70." In conclusion, Mr. Kidder says he regards 

 the .30-40 an ideal gun for hill-shooting, and that he 

 does not believe a more accurate and excellent rifle for 

 all but very heavy game is made, and that he con- 

 tinued to use it even in following up wounded bears in 

 thick alders. He says, however: "This rifle did re- 

 quire proportionately more bullets to accomplish the 

 same results than the .45-70 used by my friend." 



Most of the big-game animals that I have killed, or 

 seen killed, were shot with the large-calibre Winches- 

 ter or the ordinary Springfield rifle used by the United 

 States infantry a few years ago. Those of my readers 

 who have read " Our Feathered Game" are aware that 

 the writer has a decided liking for all of the game- 

 birds. When bird-shooting in the West with officers 

 of the army, we often came upon large game, and 

 passed the guns to our orderlies in exchange for their 

 Springfields, and with these clumsy weapons, which 

 pulled hard on the trigger, I have killed many big- 



