A RACKET IN THE ROCKIES. 



A. L. VERMILYA. 



Comanche Joe's hunting story, "A 

 Modest Bag," published in December 

 Recreation, interested me greatly; and 

 while I have never known a sportsman to 

 tell an out and out lie, I am forced to be- 

 lieve Comanche has exaggerated slightly 

 this trip. The account of his adventures 

 seems straight enough save that part 

 wherein he says his partner killed 3 ele- 

 phants simply by snapping a cap pistol at 

 them. This would have sounded reason- 

 able had the pistol gone off, for I once 

 bagged a rhinoceros, 11 ostriches and a 

 spike-horn alligator with one shot from 

 a Roman candle; but Joe's story is pre- 

 posterous and will not hold water. Come 

 now, Joe; hadn't you been putting a new 

 faucet in the cider barrel just before you 

 and your pard went after those elephants? 



But Joe's story leads me to believe that 

 an account of an adventure which Dave 

 Butler and I had last fall, while hunting 

 grizzlies in the Rockies, might be of in 

 terest to the fraternity. Dave is a good 

 chap, with a childish weakness for grizz- 

 lies; and when not engaged in hunt- 

 ing them is chiefly employed in run- 

 ning a hardware store, raising a large 

 family of pretty girls and smoking a 

 doubtful looking cob pipe. Dave had 

 never shot a grizzly; but once, when run- 

 ning away from a jack rabbit, which his 

 fevered imagination had magnified into a 

 mountain lion, he caught his foot in a 

 bunch of" buffalo grass and fell on a 

 prairie chicken, which was setting on 119 

 eggs, smashing the whole outfit. This 

 was not exactly shooting grizzlies, but it 

 was so near it that for some time after 

 Dave was real proud of the exploit. 



But about our hunting trip. Dave and 

 I started out from camp one morning 

 just after sunset, and as the moon was 

 shining brightly we concluded to strike 

 across the plains to a place where we 

 often hunted prairie chickens. We 

 thought we would bag a few chickens, 

 and then shoot our grizzlies on the way 

 back to camp, so as to avoid having to 

 carry them with us all day. A dozen good 

 sized grizzly bears make quite a load, as 

 all old hunters know. 



We were in a beautiful part of Mon- 

 tana, about 300 miles East of the Rockies. 

 There was not a bush nor a tree in sight, 

 and we were looking sharp for chickens 

 when my pard, thinking he saw a prong- 

 horn grizzly, took his corncob from his 

 mouth and, taking careful a^im with the 

 pipe, fired at the supposed bear. Then he 

 climbed a tree and awaited develop- 



ments. His shot knocked a horned toad 

 off from a boulder about 20 feet away, 

 but did no further damage; while his 

 grizzly turned out to be nothing but 

 a sacred cow, which had wandered away 

 from Barnum's circus while that un- 

 paralleled show was giving an exhibition 

 in Yuma, Arizona, the day before. 



We went on, and had traveled about 47 

 miles, when the sun was darkened by the 

 greatest flight of penguins it has ever 

 been my good fortune to see. They were 

 probably on their way to the North Pole 

 to vote, and didn't care for expenses. 

 These birds so completely obscured the 

 sun that the moon rose — though it had 

 set but an hour before. That was the 

 only time I remember having seen this 

 luminary rise more than once in 24 hours. 



Dave got rattled, and stepped behind 

 a tree to light his pipe. He always fills 

 and lights his pipe when he gets rattled; 

 but in his excitement he got the bowl in 

 his mouth, which made him hot. I 

 banged away into the flock, and as I had 

 a pump gun, loaded with a pound and 

 16 ounces of hollow point bullets, I 

 brought down a perfect shower of birds. 

 In falling one of the pelicans lodged in 

 the barrel of my gun, which happened to 

 be pointed upward; and as I had left my 

 ramrod in camp, and so could not re- 

 move the bird, I put a fresh cartridge into 

 my gun, intending to shoot the ostrich 

 out later. 



We picked up 627 penguins and were 

 putting them into our game bags when, 

 chancing to look up, we saw a number 

 of enormous grizzlies coming in a line, 

 along a narrow canyon between the 

 mountains, only a few rods away. Dave 

 grabbed his pipe and, pointing it in the 

 direction of the approaching bears, pulled 

 the trigger; but finding the mainspring 

 broken, he lit out for camp at a gait 

 which allowed him to touch the ground 

 but once in each 27 and y 2 rods. How- 

 ever, I was used to grizzlies, and pro- 

 posed to fight it out on that line if it 

 took all winter. 



About 40 rods from where I was the 

 canyon made a sharp turn, and around 

 this corner, just as I would think the last 

 grizzly had appeared, would come still 

 another. The foremost bear in the line 

 was now only about 20 feet from me and 

 I could delay no longer; so taking a 

 hasty aim, I fired. But I had clean for- 

 gotten about the wild turkey in my gun, 

 and this was mighty lucky; for in the 

 crop of the bird happened to be a smooth, 



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