CARBINE AND "KADIAK" 



BY" J. ALDEN LORING. 

 Sketches and Photograph by the Writer. 





^LASKA is particularly 

 rich in bears ; and 

 most of them belong 

 to a group known as 

 the Alaskan brown 

 bears, of which the 

 Kodiak bear is one. 

 So wide is his repu- 

 tation that sportsmen 

 from all over the world spend thou- 

 sands of dollars in order to add 

 a skip to their collection of tro- 

 phites. The weight of a full-grown 

 Kodiak bear is not known, although 

 specimens have been killed that were 

 estimated to weigh between fifteen 

 and eighteen hundred pounds, and 

 some hunters claim that they will 

 go as high as twenty-two hundred. 

 While at Kodiak several summers ago 

 I measured the skin of one of these 

 huge animals which stretched the tape 

 nine and a half feet from the nose to the 

 tail, and ten and a half feet across the 

 outstretched front paws. Mr. A. C. 

 Goss, who handles all of the brown bear 

 skins that pass through the hands of 

 the Alaskan Commercial Company at 

 Kodiak, told me that he had seen skins 

 that were three feet longer. 



In the spring of the year when the 

 brown bears emerge from their winter 

 dens, they live upon grass, but as soon 

 as the salmon begin to ascend the 

 streams during the spawning season, 

 they seek the valleys to feed upon fish. 

 Bears are particularly abundant on 

 Admiralty Island, a large mountainous 

 and well-timbered island in the Atlantic 

 Ocean, about twenty miles west of Ju- 

 neau. When I visited this island in 

 1901 the shores at the salmon streams 

 were strewn with decaying salmon that 

 bears had flipped upon the bank and left 

 after tearing out the belly and eating 

 the head. Well-worn paths lead from 

 the timber on every side, and the grass 



and weeds in the open parks at the 

 mouth of the rivulets were matted down 

 as though a herd of cattle had been pas- 

 tured there. 



A few weeks previous to my visit, 

 A. M. Walker, a miner, had an encoun- 

 ter with one of these brown bears, the 

 climax of which was little short of a 

 miracle. The story is best told in Walk- 

 er's own words : 



"With my partner, W. C. Gans, I 

 was camped about three miles from the 

 mouth of a salmon stream which runs 

 into Green Bay. We remained longer 

 than we had expected, and in conse- 

 quence had exhausted our supply of 

 bacon. With the intention of adding to 

 our larder, I took my Colt 44-40 car- 

 bine one afternoon, and started out to 

 get some venison. The grass along the 

 banks of the creek had been trampled 

 down by bears, and knowing that deer 

 are seldom found in a locality that bears 

 frequent, I left the stream and made for 

 the heavily timbered mountain side. I 

 tramped all the afternoon without see- 

 ing even the fresh track of a deer, and 

 was about to abandon the hunt and re- 

 turn to camp, when I discovered a buck 

 lying under a tree on the opposite side 

 of a gully. Suddenly it arose to its feet 

 and walked leisurely up the mountain 

 side. Its dilatory movements were con- 

 vincing that it had neither seen nor 

 scented me, so I started to stalk it. I 

 was picking my way through a mass of 

 fallen timber, when the deer stepped 

 behind a spruce tree top. Hoping to 

 get within rifle shot before it reap- 

 peared, I mounted a prostrate forest 

 monarch, and ran along its trunk to 

 within a few feet of the roots, and then 

 jumped to the ground. 



"With eyes and thoughts concen- 

 trated on the game before me, I hur- 

 ried on and had scarcely passed the up- 

 turned roots when from behind I heard 



28] 



