232 Tue Aroostook Woops. 
« 

sun, they hardly wish for, yet it takes a pretty cold one to 
cause them to hump up and scud away forcamp. Every new 
storm sees them right off the next morning after, on their 
snow-shoes with rifle, axe and knapsack of eatables, on and 
away over the line in the same old road. Tramping down the 
new snow, the one behind éreaking joints as they term it, 
which means stepping just where the head one did not step,” 
leaving the road beautifully smooth again, and as easy travelling 
for them as on‘a house floor. Why? Well, the land varies 
just enough, often rolling, with occasionally a rise, and then 
the down hill grade is gay; it is not monotonous at all, and 
from a well made snow-shoe (from the hide of a caribou) 
after one gets agoing, the spring of them lifts him so lively on. 
Some of the fattest and best dressed old bears are every win- 
ter, and even in the fall of the year, wearing overcoats so large, 
fine and shiny, that we often envy them their possession; and 
these big fellows are many of them wary and grow cunning 
from having been pinched by too light a dead fall, or from 
being at some time caught in an old and worthless steel trap. 
From such a trap they soon slip out from, or smash it against 
a tree, smiling the while to think how little their strength is 
known, and ever after taking care to avoid all trappish looking 
places. A thorough trapper and renowned bear hunter once 
gave us a recipe to cure such old, keen scented and wide-awake 
fellows of this complaint. He says: ‘* Cunning as old Gen- 
tleman Bruin is, he mostly follows the same path. Finding 
this, and at a place where the bushes grow pretty close to it, 
place the trap in his path. A little from the trap, before and 
beyond (as you cannot tell from which direction he may ap- 
proach) push down some fir or spruce boughs, their tops tip- 
ping over the path just right to brush his eyes, as he trots 
through them by moonlight.” 
