164 THE AMERICAN BLACK BEAR. 



' Are bears so very difficult to kill then ? ' I asked. 



' Stranger, bars don't die easy. No ! It is a bar's 

 natur to live, and a bar is uncommon particular about 

 that. If you shoots a bar with a little trifling bullet, 

 he takes no more heed of it than of a 'skeeter bite. If 

 you wants to stop a bar sixty or a hundred yards off, 

 to roll the animal over right in his tracks, you must 

 use a chunk of lead like this ' — he drew an ounce bullet 

 from his pocket — 'you must have a shootin'-stick like 

 this one of mine, and you must put a man behind it as 

 can bark a branch without knocking the dewdrops off 

 the leaves ! ' 



' I cannot aim so delicately as that at present, though 

 I mean to practise every day,' said I. ' Still, I should 

 fancy a shot-gim would be useful at times ; I should 

 suppose, for instance, you would not think of shooting 

 at a snipe or quail with a rifle ? ' 



' I shouldn't think of doing it ; I should think of half 

 a thousand other things afore I wasted powder on ac- 

 count of such rubbish. Why, my old rifle would knock 

 such trifles as that clean into the middle of last week. 

 I never shoots at anything as isn't game ; and in my 

 opinion nothing is game that has got no marrow in its 

 bones.' 



* Why, don't you consider birds game ? ' 



' Well, stranger, pree-haps they may be — pree-haps 

 such rubbish may be game for city folk — for all human 

 natur naturally takes to hunting. So that shot-guns 



