August, 1922 
343 
scared so badly that he turned into a 
Polar bear and hit for the Arctic re- 
gions. They say one’s hair can turn 
white if one is scared badly enough ! 
Now, I do not mean to make light of 
the fact that a grizzly can be a terrible 
antagonist, and I personally know men 
who bear scars inflicted by these brutes; 
but in each and every case the animals 
were provoked at very close ranges and 
in most instances were mothers with 
cubs. Almost any animal will turn and 
fight if cotnered and wounded badly, 
and it is an undisputed fact that a she 
grizzly will fight for her young Only 
last spring I had a very attractive offer 
from an animal dealer as an inducement 
for securing for him two live grizzly 
cubs, but after carefully weighing the 
chances for a successful expedition of 
this character, I came to the conclusion 
that it wouldn't pay. To shoot a mother 
grizzly and abduct her offspring may 
sound easy enough to the layman, but 
not to one who knows aught about the 
“female of the species.” 
A fter such a rare chance as this 
it would seem that Dame Fortune 
would call it quits for the day and pay 
her respects elsewhere. I went up a 
small creek to look at a couple of dead- 
falls, and when I got back it was fairly 
well on toward evening. I cooked sup- 
per and ate in my customary solitude, 
but somehow I couldn’t forget about that 
grizzly, and I kept peering out the door 
toward the distant hillside. You know 
how it is in a case of that kind — one 
doesn’t really expect to see anything in 
the same place after such a short elapse 
of time, but still one is bound to keep 
speculating on what might happen. Con- 
trary to the usual run of things, it did 
happen this time, and just as the sun 
was sinking below the mountain horizon 
I noticed three bears within a few feet 
of each other and not a hundred yards 
distant from the spot where the grizzly 
had stood when I first saw him. They 
were plainly visible and I made out that 
it was a black bear with two yearling 
cubs. 
To get within range of those bears 
was a puzzle ; I was determined to go a 
little slow this time and not make a mess 
of things as before. The sloping hill on 
which the bears were feeding was per- 
haps four hundred feet high at that 
point and they were pretty well up 
toward the top. To approach them from 
directly below was impossible, as the 
wind was in the ^y^ong direction. Now, 
a bear has very poor eyes but remark- 
ably keen nose and ears. My only hope 
lay in making a wide circle to the right 
where I might gain a ravine and climb 
the hill several hundreds yards to the 
right of my quarry. 
After considerable manoeuvering I 
finally gained the top of the hill and 
cautiously approached the spot where I 
had last seen the bears. When within 
a reasonable distance I got down on my 
hands and knees and crept forward. I 
had crawled down a few yards from 
the brow of the hill and was just in the 
act of crossing a small ravine when I 
happened to notice a black head sticking 
out from behind a small clump of wil- 
lows about seventy-five yards below me. 
I stopped dead still and an instant later 
the head and foreshoulder of a bear hove 
in view. In this position the animal 
stopped, as though listening intently. I 
caught her directly on the point of the 
shoulder and the copper-tipped missile 
bowled her over against a small poplar. 
Hastily reloading I ran forward down 
the steep hill. When within a short dis- 
tance of the bear another one came run- 
ning toward me, one of the yearlings, 
evidently so scared that he didn’t know 
where he was going. A hasty shot broke 
his back. That was one instance where 
a bear really charged in my direction, 
but I am satisfied that the poor brute 
didn’t have any more idea of cleaning 
up. on me than he had of flying. 
The third bear scrambled up a small 
poplar and I shot him through the head. 
Now, all this happened so quickly that 
it left me in a sort of daze. The old 
she-bear, after giving a few amazingly 
loud bawls, cashed in her checks. I felt 
sort of ashamed when I viewed the three 
lifeless bodies, lying so close together, 
and couldn’t help thinking how harmless 
those poor brutes were. But at the time 
I was smitten with the lust to kill, and 
held the popular opinion that a bear was 
a terrible creature — to be killed on sight. 
Of course, a professional trapper isn’t 
supposed to have any heart, anyway. 
TT took me a couple of days to attend 
^ to those bear hides, after which I 
went on up the Baptiste to where the 
rancher’s horses had died of starvation 
and cold. Never before or since have I 
seen so much bear sign in any locality 
of a like size ; at first I was somewhat 
alarmed to think there were so many 
about. The first day I was there I saw 
seven bears and never got a single shot. 
There were so many carcasses scattered 
up and down that valley that it was im- 
possible to tell how many bears there 
really were, but I honestly believe there 
were somewhere in the neighborhood of 
a score. 
The second day I shot a small black 
early in the morning and saw a large 
cinnamon late that evening at very close 
{Continued on page 368) 
This Silver-tip was so dark he resembled a black bear 
Courtesy o) F. A. Jackson, Jasper, Alberta. 
A good day’s work with grizzlies 
