530 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



first concern when we know there is a bear around is to restrain the 

 dogs and if possible to prevent their knowing about the bear until 

 he has been killed. I have argued a great deal about bear-hunting 

 methods with those used to employing dogs and have usually failed 

 to convince them that any method can be so good as setting a lot 

 of dogs on a bear to "hold" him till you get near enough to shoot. 

 But it sometimes happens as it did with MacMillan that the bear 

 is not the only animal to get killed. I have known Eskimos to hit 

 their own dogs. In one case on the north coast of Alaska a man 

 shot his favorite dog and never wounded the bear. Though our 

 method of one man only going after the bear has no fuss nor 

 danger to dogs, we have failed to kill only a small percentage of 

 the bears we have tried to kill. 



But if you want excitement, or what is sometimes called sport, 

 there can be no comparison between the two methods. I have 

 only once seen dogs follow a bear and that was unintentionally 

 and with disastrous results, as will appear later in this narrative. 

 But I have read of many such hunts. There is a scramble and 

 uproar and excitement. The dogs bark while unhurt and howl 

 with pain if the bear gets a blow at one of them that does not dis- 

 embowel or otherwise kill him instantly. The men scramble after 

 and there is a fusillade of shots. In a book for boys this method 

 is infinitely to be preferred and for the movies I should think it 

 would be admirable. Certainly our method is very tame. Some- 

 times the bear walks into camp and we lie in wait for him, shoot- 

 ing him when he is in a convenient spot for skinning. At other 

 times we have to go afield to get him, but he either never sees us 

 or else sees us without recognizing that we are dangerous. When 

 one man does the hunting one bullet is frequently enough, and three 

 are an excessive expenditure of ammunition. In the two or three 

 cases where the killing of a bear has been exciting it has been the 

 method of the bear's attack and not of ours that has made the 

 excitement. 



MacMillan's game list made us envious, for his chief items were 

 animals that did not exist in the territory we had been exploring. 

 Evidently his country was a hunter's paradise. He had killed 

 thirty ovibos to the east and was hoping to find more in North 

 Cornwall on his way back. I have not learned whether he did but 

 he could have found others in southern Axel Heiberg Land and 

 Ellesmere Land, both of which were within a week or ten days' 

 travel from his monument. He had killed thirteen bears where 

 we had never seen one, six^teen hares where we had not seen a 



