104 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March, 1920 
I did not see him again, although I 
walked up quite near to the place where 
he was last seen, with the full expecta- 
tion of seeing him come into view at any 
moment. My companion saw him later, 
high up on the face of the mountain, al- 
most directly above us. There was a 
very small ravine which ran up the 
mountain side at this point and connected 
with the draw at the bottom. It was by 
this means that he must have made his 
escape. I believe that he did not see us. 
The next day we saw another black 
bear feeding among the bushes high up 
on the mountain, along the base of which 
the river ran. But as we approached 
within range, and came near to a point 
immediately under him, he could not be 
seen for the intervening trees. It would 
have been useless to stalk him, by climb- 
ing straight up, on account of the noise 
one would necessarily make in going 
through the brush. After watching a lit- 
tle while for him to show himself of his 
own accord, which he did not do, we gave 
him up. 
On the morning of our arrival at my 
companion’s home, a black bear appeared 
on the opposite side of the river, but as I 
had taken my gun and was wandering 
about looking for bear elsewhere I did not 
see him. 
We did not grieve over the loss of these 
black bears for black bears were not what 
we were seeking. We were after grizzlies 
and from the nature of the country 
through which we were traveling it 
looked as though we would soon come 
across the object of our search. 
lieve that we could have made him take 
notice had we done so. 
The morning of the third day we spent 
rambling about the bars and sloughs. 
The captain showed me where he had 
trapped a wolverine a few months before. 
In his efforts to break away from the 
trap, the animal had gnawed off saplings 
from two to three inches in diameter 
every where within reach of the six foot 
trap chain. 
The First Grizzly 
A FTER dinner my eyes were feeling 
the effects of the reflection of the 
bright sun on the water, so I laid 
down in the tent to rest a while. But my 
waited for him to approach nearer, for he 
was still about two hundred yards away, 
but after a few steps in our direction he 
turned abruptly to his right. As he was 
about to enter the brush I fired. He 
sank in his tracks, turned partly around 
and laid quiet for a moment. But soon 
he showed enough life to raise half way 
up, facing us. Another shot in the breast 
and he was dead. He turned out to be 
a full grown, finely furred grizzly, of 
about four hundred pounds weight, and 
of an attractive light brown color. The 
distance of the shot was one hundred and 
seventy-eight measured steps. 
In order to avoid the camp work in- 
Beaver cuttings along the Clearwater River 
Another view of the big bear 
W E spent the next two days ascend- 
ing the Clearwater river. I walked 
ahead along the bars where I could 
watch for bears while my companion 
dragged, poled and paddled the canoe up 
the fast water. 
The first day’s work included dragging 
the canoe, with its three hundred and 
fifty pounds of burden, over nine separate 
rapids. These rapids varied in length 
from two hundred yards to a quarter of 
a mile and made the going very hard 
indeed. We saw another black bear feed- 
ing on the side of a hill not far from the 
river. But we did not go out of our way 
to disturb him, although I sincerely be- 
rest was short, for soon my companion 
called to me, “Come quick and look.” A 
grizzly bear was coming down the river 
directly towards the tent but about five 
hundred yards away. We watched him 
and he turned to our left into the head of 
a dry thoroughfare. A patch of cotton 
woods and willows now concealed him so 
we at once took a gun and slipped across 
the bar and through the cotton woods to 
the lower end of the thoroughfare where 
we expected to meet him. 
After a few minutes the bear came in 
sight, walking leisurely along the willows 
which fringed the thoroughfare, on the 
opposite side from us. I took aim and 
cident to properly preserving this skin, 
we dropped down the river during the 
next day to my friend’s home and left 
the skin. The return was made the fol- 
lowing day. We missed nothing by this 
movement, for the hunting was as good 
coming and going on the river as any- 
where. The boat was light and the labor 
was not severe. 
The next two days were spent bucking 
the swift water on the way to our in- 
tended permanent camp and to the site 
we had enjoyed so much a year before. 
This camp was within fourteen miles of 
a lake that is the source of the Clear- 
water and at the foot of the Pacific coast 
divide on the eastern side. It is a most 
beautiful location from every point of 
view. 
Another Black Bear 
A NOTHER chance at a black bear 
presented itself on the way up but, 
as usual, he out-generaled us. He 
was feeding at the water’s edge, on the 
opposite side of the river, and some dis- 
tance up stream. Instead of stopping 
where we were, and taking a shot at him 
from the nearest point of vantage on the 
shore, we tried to cross to the side of the 
river on which he was walking in order 
to make a sure thing of it. While mak- 
ing this move, and when we were about 
two hundred and fifty yards away, the 
bear stepped out of sight. A most un- 
accommodating bear. 
A sand storm kept us at our permanent 
camp during our first day there. The 
winds seemed to come from all directions 
at the same time in this locality. This is 
