a 
216 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
treed four that week. I began to think it was going to be all foxes, 
but one morning I got up and discovered he was gone, and after listen- 
ing a while, I heard them both, away off up this same canyon where 
he had been treeing the foxes. My first thought was another fox, but 
they were barking furiously and I began to think maybe it might be 
something larger than a fox, so I hurried up, got my gun and lit out. 
There was a wagon road up this creek for quite aways, and they 
sounded like they were close to the road, so I stuck to it, and, sure 
enough, when I got there I found them within fifty steps or less of 
the road, barking up a dead fir tree with hardly a limb on it, and 
there, only about twenty feet up, sat a big mealy nose brown bear. 
Gee, but I was surprised and highly elated, too, and I lost no time in 
shooting him out, which I did by putting a .44 bullet square between 
the eyes. Over he went, and the dogs piled in on him and yanked him 
around until I had to make them quit. I dressed him and went back 
home, ate breakfast and hitched up to a rig and went and loaded him 
in and brought him home, I took a fellow with me by the name of 
Maxon, and we had to take the wheels off and let the hind axle down 
and the bear in, then we put him forward as far as we could and 
raised the hind wheels up and the trick was done. This bear weighed 
several hundred pounds and turned out several cans of oil. The meat 
was fine. 
I will say right now, while I think of it, that Trailer never treed 
another fox in that region, that I recollect of. I think he passed over 
the tracks, feeling they were too insignificant to bother with. 
In a few days more Trailer treed another bear in the same canyon, 
only higher up the creek and farther up the hillside. This, too, was 
a large mealy nose, and I killed him without any trouble or excitement 
either. 
Shortly after that I went up in that part of the country to try 
to kill a deer. I had hunted up to the head of the creek and along on 
the Sterling side and back over on the Griffin Creek side without 
seeing a deer, and was headed down a ridge for home. The ground 
was rather open and, happening to look off to my right about a 
hundred yards, there stood a big black bear under an oak tree. The 
boughs hung down and he had his head towards me, drooped down and 
looking at me. He stood a little quartering, so I pulled down and 
drew a bead on the point of his shoulder and let drive. At the erack 
of the gun, down he went, but was up and out of sight before I 
could shoot again. There was a brushy gulch beyond him, and by the 
time I got over to where he stood, he was down into that. I could 
hear the rustle of the brush at first, then all was quiet. I went down 
a short distance and could see nor hear nothing of him, so I came to 
the conclusion I didn’t want him bad enough to go down in the brush 
after him, so I went back to the ridge and went down until I struck 
a good open place and sat down and commenced to blow the horn. 
By the way, I neglected to say that I had not brought the dogs with 
me, as I did not want Trailer to get any notion in his head of hunting 
deer. I sat there and kept blowing the horn for a long time, and 
finally I had the satisfaction of hearing Trailer answering me away 
off down the hill, coming. Say, my heart leaped for joy and I never 
thought more of Trailer than I did right then. I commenced talking 
to him before he got to me, and he wagged his tail and was awfully 
pleased to get to me. I petted him a few minutes and then I told 
him to come on. I went back up and, say, when he struck that bear 
track and smelled the blood, I think he knew what I had called him for. 
Away he went, straight down the gulch into the brush, and, sure 
enough, there was the bear. He was hurt pretty bad and was lying 
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