278 
WILD NORWAY. 
I have had no luck with bears, though at times 
hunting districts where we knew them to be com¬ 
paratively numerous. True, I have never made the 
bear a special object of pursuit, nor hunted him at 
the seasons which are most favourable for killing him, 
namely, early spring and late autumn ; moreover, it 
must be added that not all elk-hounds will follow the 
spoor of bear, though they know perfectly well what it 
is. Once we dislodged a bear from his morning bed; 
yet, though the scent was actually burning, and 
BengeVs bristles stood on end, the dog refused to 
follow. Other days we have been on fj eld-slopes where 
one or more bears were actually engaged at the time in 
breaking down the berry-laden rowans : yet either the 
dense foliage of those hanging woods or some traitor 
breath of air always deprived us of a shot. 
Two or three years ago, after vainly following 
separate elks for two days, my companion and I 
exchanged bulls, in the hope of thus changing the 
luck. Half-an-hour after we had separated, he came 
on five bears—winded by the hound as they shovelled 
in clawfuls of cranberries on the open fjeld. The 
shot was a long one, and failed. But it is nothing 
more than human nature (that is, vanity) to assume, 
that had we not exchanged elks, the bullet would have 
gone true ? The bears at this season are in family 
parties—the mother with one or more generations of 
cubs, graded in size. Thus, should the mother be killed 
by the first shot, the cubs, even well-grown two-year- 
olds, will sometimes refuse to q uit, and fall an easy prey. 
This happened to one of our hunters, who fell in with 
three bears—mother and two cubs—on the open fjeld, 
