THE BLACK BEAR 13 1 



which the sheep were standing. The sheep 

 showed no interest in the bear and he none in 

 the sheep. Passing a ram that stood by the 

 trail, the bear, without any warning, and with a 

 terrible bluff, hurled himself at the ram. He 

 purposely fell short and instantly the ram came 

 back with a head-on butt. The bear side- 

 stepped sufficiently to break the force and re- 

 ceived the butt on his hip. Without an in- 

 crease of speed or without looking back the bear 

 shuffled on and thirty feet farther hurled him- 

 self at a stump with blows right and left, as 

 though he expected the stump to be frightened 

 out by the roots. Then on he went without 

 looking back. The black bear is ever bluffing, 

 but even though a bluff be a ludicrous failure, a 

 second later he tries again with uncooled en- 

 thusiasm. 



Often I have had happy hours tracking the 

 black bear. As soon as the sky cleared one 

 morning after a heavy fall of snow, I started for a 

 beaver colony. About a quarter of a mile from 

 the cabin I came upon the tracks of a young 

 black bear evidently a year-old cub. The 

 tracks were almost perfect moulds of bear feet 

 like bare human feet in the wet, fresh snow. 

 And the tracks were fresh, made since snow had 

 stopped falling half an hour before. This was 

 too good to miss, being so close to a cub, so I 



