Camping and Hunting in the Shoshone 



is very small. In the first place, for all 

 the sanguinary talk around the stove, there 

 are not a great many men who have made 

 a practice of hunting bears at all. One 

 such incident as that which occurred two 

 years ago in the Big Horn scares a good 

 many. A poor fellow there came on a 

 bear, a small cinnamon, feeding on an elk 

 he had killed. He fired and wounded it ; 

 the bear retreated, and he followed. Com- 

 ing up with it, again he fired, when the 

 bear charged him. Trying to re-load (he 

 used, I heard, a single-shot Sharp rifle), 

 the extractor came off the empty shell, 

 and, of course, he was defenceless. He 

 evidently drew his knife, and used it des- 

 perately ; for when they found him the 

 bear lay near him, dead, with many knife- 

 wounds in it, but it had killed him first. 

 In short, both on account of the danger, 

 and by reason of the great difficulty of 

 seeing them, it scarcely pays to hunt bears 

 alone. 



There are comparatively few men, I 

 say, whose opinion is worth much ; and 

 some of these seem to have an idea that, 

 for the credit of the mountain land they 

 love so well, they are bound to people it 

 with as many different species of bears as 

 they can. Now, as a matter of fact, I be- 



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