ROD 6- CREEL 



105 



hugging him to death (bears do not do this sort of thing), and 

 perhaps eating him afterwards; he told me some vision of this 

 sort flashed through his mind. Well, nothing of the sort hap- 

 pened, nor was there the welcome crack of a rifle and the death 

 of the bear at the hands of some unexpected rescuer ! The story 

 has a very tame ending instead. The bear came almost up to him, 

 pulled up suddenly, gave a "woof" and plunged off sideways 

 into the woods as hard as he could go. 



Now, while this is a book on fish and not "bears" (I hope 

 to talk about bears in my next book), it may ease the mind 

 of some nervous fisherman if I say that this is the way of 

 bears, and 'all the bloodcurdling stories of chases by bears have 

 come about in much the same way. A person meets a bear and 

 stops dead in his tracks, the bear hears him and is scared, but 

 as he has not located him owing to poor eyesight and the per- 

 son standing still and not having got his wind, he starts to 

 run in the direction he is pointed. As soon as he gets close 

 enough h^ either sees plainly or gets a scent of the human 

 body and then turns away and goes as hard as he can. 



