American Big Game in its Haunts 



have asked me about their size, and how they com- 

 pare in this respect with other bears. The Kadiak 

 bear is naturally extremely large. His head is 

 very massive, and he stands high at the shoulders. 

 This latter characteristic is emphasized by a thick 

 tuft of hair which stands erect on the dorsal ridge 

 just over the shoulders. The largest bear of this 

 kind which I shot measured 8 feet in a straight line 

 from his nose to the end of the vertebrae, and stood 

 51^ inches in a straight line at the shoulders, not 

 including between 6 and 7 inches of hair. 



Most people have an exaggerated idea of the 

 number of bears on the Kadiak Islands. Person- 

 ally I believe that they are too few ever to make 

 shooting them popular. In fact, it was only by 

 the hardest kind of careful and constant work that 

 I was finally successful in bagging my first bear 

 on Kadiak. When the salmon come it is not 

 so difficult to get a shot, but this lying in wait at 

 night by a salmon stream cannot compare with 

 seeking out the game on the hills in the spring, 

 and stalking it in a sportsmanlike manner. 



It was more than a week after our landing at 

 Kadiak before the weather permitted me to go to 

 Afognak, where my old hunters lived, to make our 

 final preparations. One winter storm after an- 

 other came in quick succession, but we did not 



no 



