July, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
311 
his more lively brother made for the 
woods. 
“She cornered him and to the shore 
coaxed the two, only to again meet de- 
feat. Turning, she saw them make 
their bold escape. This time she was 
hopping mad and catching up with one 
she cuffed him so hard that he rolled 
over and over on the sand and was 
dazed for a second. The other little 
bear came back looking frightened to 
death, while the mother whimpered 
around the little cub she had clouted 
as if to say: ‘I didn’t mean to strike 
you so hard, but you took it out of me.’ 
“When they started for the water the 
fourth time those two little bears 
looked at each other behind their moth- 
er’s back, their little button eyes fair- 
ly hanging out on their cheeks. They 
hated to do it but there wasn’t any way 
out. So they fastened their little claws 
in the fur of their mother’s hips and 
their eyes sought each other in sheer 
desperation as she towed them across 
the river.” Bangs Burgess, Mass. 
BEAR DRAGS LOG EIGHT MILES 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream : 
E ntrapped in a eo-pound No. 6 
trap, anchored to a 24-foot log, a 
grizzly bear weighing 1,000 pounds 
broke away from its moorings and with 
seven feet of the tree trunk trailing be- 
hind fought desperately for his release 
over an expanse of eight miles before 
yielding to an inevitable fate. The cov- 
eted trophy was the reward of a per- 
sistent search of Federal Government 
hunters in the vicinity of Dubois, Wy- 
oming, for a silver-tip bear whose dep- 
redations on cattle had marked him as 
an uncompromising foe to animal life on 
western ranges. 
His unrelenting activities embraced a 
period of years. Other bears, perhaps 
falsely accused, had been ensnared and 
slaughtered for the evil deeds ultimately 
credited to this specimen which so suc- 
cessfully eluded the wary efforts of pri- 
vate and government hunters. 
A reward of $100 was outstanding for 
the capture of this grizzly, but govern- 
ment hunters are not permitted to ac- 
cept bounties. Content, however, with 
the glory of having effected the downfall 
of such a vicious predatory animal, 
Charles J. Bayer, a predatory animal 
inspector of Wyoming, writes the follow- 
ing spirited account to Dr. A. K. Fisher, 
of the Biological Survey, United States 
Department of Agriculture: 
“While reports came in occasionally 
of a large silver tip that was doing a lot 
of killing in the vicinity of Dubois, no 
authentic report was received until the 
spring of 1918, when several cattlemen 
asked that we send a man after the 
bear. A hunter was sent up there and 
reported killing the bear that summer, 
but investigation proved that the bear 
most wanted was still at large. He was 
particularly destructive that summer, 
not only killing cattle, but destroying 
camps and fire boxes belonging to the 
Forest Service and wrecking anything 
that he happened to encounter. A sec- 
ond hunter was sent up there in the 
spring of 1919. He, too, worked to get 
the bear but without success. 
“Hunter Rowley was then recom- 
mended to us as a bear hunter, and we 
put him on the trail of the grizzly in the 
spring of 1920. For a long time he was 
unable to find any fresh sign of the 
bear, or to find any cattle freshly killed 
by him. About July 15, this summer, 
he came upon a cow that had been killed 
a short time before by the bear, and he 
took up the trail. He kept after him 
until he got him, the fore part of Sep- 
tember. During the six weeks that he 
followed the bear, he found fifteen head 
of two and three year old cattle that the 
bear had killed, belonging to the Double 
Diamond outfit, near Dubois. All these 
cattle were killed by a crushing blow 
beneath the eyes from the bear’s open 
paw. In most cases the cattle were not 
eaten upon, except where the bear had 
taken out the liver and eaten that. 
“The trap that finally got the bear 
was a No. 6, and was set about August 
15. The clog used was a log 24 feet 
long and 5 inches through. The clog 
was broken off about 50 yards from 
where the trap was set, and the bear 
carried away seven feet of it, and had 
this fastened to him when he was found. 
He was found 8 miles from where he got 
into the trap. In trailing through the 
timber many trees 6 and 7 inches 
through had been uprooted, and in sev- 
eral places the bear got into windfalls 
and tore out the down logs, almost mak- 
ing a road behind him in doing so. He 
was dead when Mr. Rowley found him, 
and had been dead too long to permit of 
taking his skin. 
“Mr. Rowley said the bear would 
weigh about 1,000 pounds, the front feet 
measure about 8% inches across, and 
the hind feet about 12 inches in length. 
The fact that other hunters were after 
the grizzly to get the $100 bounty made 
Mr. Rowley’s work harder.” 
S. R. Winters, Washington, D. C. 
ON STRIKING BASS 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
D R. C. A. ROARK’S query in your 
columns as to the proper time to 
strike a bass in still-fishing will no 
doubt start others on the subject. 
One day last summer the writer sat 
on the bank of the Upper Shenandoah 
quite near another angler, a novice, and 
wias troubled by the following events: 
This novice was using small shiners 
for bait and hooked them just back of 
the dorsal fin. The tip joint of his 
bamboo rod was loose and on three 
strikes became disjointed as he played 
(?) his fish, yet he landed three bass 
out of three strikes, setting his hook 
on the first run and dragging the bass 
through the willows lining the bank. 
If that fellow overlooked anything in 
the matter of slack line, collapsible rod, 
or general messing up of tackle, it was 
not apparent. About a half hour was 
usually necessary to collect the compo- 
nent parts of his tackle after the bass 
was landed. Yet he landed every one. 
The writer was using mad-toms for 
bait, hooking them through the lips. 
Four strikes he had and played every 
one “like the book says,” striking on 
what he considered the second run. He 
hooked one bass and his only consola- 
tion was that he didn’t pull up all the 
vegetation on that side of the stream 
in making his catch, and that after it 
was over his tackle was fairly intact. 
It is not with the desire of raising 
the question of ethics or sportsman- 
ship that the writer claims that any- 
one employing the methods of the Doc- 
tor’s three friends (hooking the bait 
about either dorsal or anal fin), can 
hook a greater percentage of their 
strikes by striking on the first run. 
But do those anglers, so hooking 
their bait, striking on the first run, and 
especially if their catch be a small one, 
dragging him the short distance to 
landing, enjoy to the full the charm 
of angling for bass? 
Though he will land fewer fish, does 
not the angler who humanely hooks his 
bait through the lips, strikes on the 
second run, and tries always to lead his 
bass skilfully to net, really get more 
out of angling? 
The greater the distance when the 
hook is set into our bass the greater 
•should be our anticipation of real sport. 
Though scorning the method, the 
writer has used the hook about the dor- 
salfin in the last moments on the river 
when the creel was still empty and the 
bass in a playful mood. 
While wading one day at the edge 
of a pool, in late afternoon, I must have 
had twenty near-strikes with never a 
chance at a bass. Those bass would 
mull with the bait all over the river 
without ever getting their mouths 
higher than the dorsal fin. They would 
take the bait six inches from the knee 
and play with it until it was dead and 
if one started fooling fifty feet away 
he could be led right up under the rod 
by gently tugging and slowly reeling. 
Just before leaving this pool a mad- 
tom was hooked through the tail and 
the hook was set on the first run and 
a two pound bass was the result. (My 
fishing companion will chuckle over 
this for the hook was set squarely in 
the eye socket of the bass and the com- 
panion has since declared it was the 
dirtiest trick he ever saw done to a 
playful bass.) 
But as to the best moment to hook 
our fish, assuming our bait is hooked 
in the orthodox manner, the vagaries 
of the fish, as well as the kind of bait 
used, must be considered. When bass 
are striking hard and making good 
runs we will seldom miss on the sec- 
ond run. When bass are playful a 
series of little spasmodic jerks does not 
constitute a run and judgment must be 
used. You must sense real action on 
the other end of the line before start- 
ing any on your own. 
The ease with which the bass may 
swallow, or at least handle the bait, 
must be also considered, for he will 
surely take longer on a mad -tom than 
a small minnow. 
I love to give this advice to the Doc- 
tor, it is the best thing we anglers do, 
yet if we were on a stream tomorrow 
I wonder if he couldn’t hook a few more 
th an I ? 
W. A. Hodgkin, D.D.S., 
Virginia. 
