A SPRING BEAR HUNT IN CASSIAR 
UP THE STIKINE INTO A REGION OF GREAT MOUNTAINS. BLUE GLACIERS 
AND LONELY VALLEYS AT THE TIME OF THE NORTHLAND’S AWAKENING 
M any big game hunters have hunted 
the mountain ranges of Cassiar in 
the vicinity of Telegraph Creek 
during the month of September and early 
in October. Very few hunters have 
undertaken a spring bear hunt in that 
vicinity. Examine a map showing the 
course of the Stikine river in western 
British Columbia and it will be seen that 
this river empties 
into the Pacific 
near W r a n g e 1 1, 
Alaska. About one 
hundred and forty 
miles up the river 
the Clearwater 
flows into the Sti- 
kine and about 
twenty-five miles 
farther up the Sti- 
kine is the village 
of Telegraph 
Creek. It was 
along the Clear- 
water and the Sti- 
kine that I deter- 
mined to take a 
short spring bear 
hunt because I 
knew that the 
bears were there 
and because little 
is known of that 
territory as a game 
range. 
In 1891 Messrs. 
Clive Phillips-Wol- 
ley and Arnold Pike hunted bear along 
the Stikine in October. Unfortunately 
they selected the rainy season for their 
hunt and obtained a most unfavorable 
impression. In the first volume upon Big 
Game Shooting in the Badminton Libra- 
ry Mr. Wolley thus describes the gloom 
that surrounded them : 
“The part of Alaska in which we were 
hunting in 1891 appears to have escaped 
from that process described in Genesis 
by which the waters which were above 
the firmament were divided from the 
waters which were under the firmament. 
BY ARTHUR H. BANNON 
On the Stikine river there is no firma- 
ment. As a rule, a damp darkness 
broods upon the face of the deep, and 
the waters which should be above touch 
and mingle with the waters which should 
be below. There is no dry belt between 
the bottom of the sea and the roof of 
heaven, at least in that district which 
lies between Wrangell and Telegraph 
Creek, in the month of October.” 
During May and early June I found 
the weather conditions just the reverse. 
But, of course, in the autumn the 
weather conditions along the Stikine in 
the vicinity of the Coast Range where 
Messrs. Pike and Wolley were hunting, 
are just as described by them. Though 
farther to the east in the Telegraph 
Creek region the September weather is 
usually pleasant. 
Ordinarily one can go up the Stikine 
in the spring early in May after the ice 
has run out, but the winter of 1917-18 was 
unusually severe in Cassiar so the ice 
was not out of the river until May fif- 
teenth and when the channel was finally 
cleared I was ready to go for I had been 
waiting at Wrangell four days. 
With the last of the ice came the man 
with whom I hunted, Mr. A. B. Conover. 
He is one of the best companions of the 
many men with whom I have associated. 
He had drifted 
down behind the 
ice in a Peterboro 
canoe, and as we 
went up the river 
I could see by the 
floes still gorged in 
places that he had 
taken some risk in 
coming so close be- 
hind the ice. With 
him was a Stikine 
river trapper 
whose supply of 
white man’s food 
had given out a 
month before the 
river ice broke up, 
so he had nothing 
to eat except 
beaver meat dur- 
ing that time. But 
he lost nothing in 
the way of white 
man’s food as he 
soon made up for 
lost time. 
Up the Stikine 
T he Stikine being clear of ice, the 
first gasoline boat of the season 
soon started for Telegraph Creek 
and we were on board. This boat car- 
ried the first supplies tak^n to that re- 
gion since October. I had been over the 
route in the fall of the year and thought 
it a beautiful trip in spite of rains and 
mists that prevail during the autumn; 
but this time we had perfect weather. 
From the shore lines up to the highest 
peaks the snow was from three to twenty 
feet deep. Everything was white except 
Is this a Glacier Bear? 
Contents Copyright, 1919, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
