A BEAR HUNT IN MONTANA 



By Arthur Alvord Stiles 



Topographer, U. S. Geological Survey 



WITH the end of the hunting 

 season in the Far West there 

 comes to light a true and ex- 

 citing bear story — one that well might 

 have made the bravest hunter look to his 

 safety, or even have thrilled the sports- 

 man spirit of President Roosevelt himself. 

 The incident occurred last September 

 in the forest of northwestern Montana. 

 The party consisted of Dr Charles B. 

 Penrose, a well-known physician of Phil- 

 adelphia, the victim of bruin's ferocious 

 attack, and his two brothers, Spencer 

 Penrose, of Colorado Springs, and Sen- 

 ator Bois Penrose, of Pennsylvania, now 

 in Washington. The party had spent the 

 early part of the season exploring a sec- 

 tion of the Lewis and Clark Forest Re- 

 serve, where trails were to be found and 

 where travel with the pack-horses was 

 comparatively easy. Toward the end of 

 the summer, however, Senator. Penrose 

 desired to see a part of the coutifey- hith- 

 erto unsurveyed and without trails or 

 passways of any kind. It is a section of 

 high and rugged mountain peaks, snow- 

 fields, and living glaciers, wholly unin- 

 habited except by the wild animals, and 

 wellnigh inaccessible save in the dead of 

 winter, when some adventurous soul of 

 doubtful judgment might makediis way. 

 thither on snowshoes. 



As it happened, a small party of topo- 

 graphical surveyors of the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey was then penetrating into 

 this God-forsaken region, carrying with 

 them their pack-train of mules, camp 

 equipment, and map-making instruments. 

 This was the first pack outfit of any kind 

 to enter into the territory. Senator Pen- 

 rose and his brothers joined the govern- 

 ment party, and by them were conducted 

 well up among the snow-capped peaks of 

 the range. 



Continued bad weather having stopped 

 the work of the surveyors and made all 

 mapping impossible, the writer, who was 

 chief of the government party, offered to 



take Senator Penrose out for a hunt. 

 The Senator and his younger brother, 

 however, were tired out with the long and 

 difficult journey to the government camp, 

 so Dr Penrose, who had endured the hard 

 climb better than his brothers, volun- 

 teered to accompany me to a distant gla- 

 cier basin, where they expected to find 

 big game. The saddle horses were left 

 at the head of this basin, and, little know- 

 ing of the fate that awaited them, the two 

 men separated. 



I had just sighted a fine buck deer and 

 was on the point of creeping away from 

 it so that Dr Penrose might come and 

 kill it, when I heard three shots in rapid 

 succession. I gave no special heed to the 

 reports, which came from the other side 

 of the ridge, and was about turning to 

 shoot the deer myself, when I heard two 

 more shots ; a moment more and another 

 report rang out. Immediately becoming- 

 alarmed, I ran back in the- direction from 

 whence the shots came. I suppose I 

 reached the doctor in Jabout five or ten 

 minutes. As I came; ' -around a mass of 

 broken boulders I saw Dr Penrose 

 wandering aimlessly around in the canyon 

 bed. Tie had no gun. His hat was gone, 

 his coat r torn off, and his trousers rent. 

 Blood poured from his head and neck, 

 and he gripped his left arm, in his crim- 

 son right hand. When I reached him he 

 murmured piteously, "Water, water." I 

 ran and brought water in my big som- 

 brero from the other side of the rocks. 

 He drank it like a thirsty horse, and I 

 thought I saw part of it run out through 

 a gash in his cheek. Then he said : 

 "Stiles, I am all in ; I have had a fight 

 with a bear." 



With signal cloth I hurriedly began to 

 tie. up the wofst of his wounds, and as I 

 did so the picture and the bleeding man 

 told me the $to#y. A few "rods down the 

 gulch lay a grizzly cub, so large as to ap- 

 pear full-grown, except to the careful 

 observer. Near by was the huge carcass 



