March 15, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
331 
The Bears of Columbia County 
A s the children in school would say, Fish¬ 
ing Creek rises in the North Mountain, 
flows south through Columbia county, and 
empties into the North Branch of the Susque¬ 
hanna at Bloomsburg. Its waters always have 
been, and still are, famous for the size and num¬ 
ber of trout they contain, and the territory 
drained by these waters has been the haunt of 
large and small game since the time of the red 
man. The water of this stream is crystal clear, 
being fed by mountain brooks and by many 
beautiful springs around which still cling legends 
of the Indians. From Benton northward to the 
JUST BEARS. 
foot of the mountains, hills covered with dense 
thickets of trees and underbrush, matted to¬ 
gether at times with laurel, crowd in on the 
stream and confine it to a narrow valley the 
sides of which are at many places high, steep 
and rocky. 
The North Mountain, the source of the 
stream, is a really great mountain. It is a land¬ 
mark that can be distinguished from miles away 
by its height, its broad level top, and its abrupt 
sides and ends. While many crops of timber 
have been taken from its summit and sides, it 
is still densely covered with a smaller growth, 
and is the home of wild beasts and sometimes 
of wilder men. Forty years ago it was made 
famous by a band of men who bought up old 
horses and mules and in the depths of the forest 
converted these animals into dried buffalo meat. 
Such a section of country is bound to de¬ 
velop skillful anglers and noted hunters, and 
this section is no exception. The McHenrys, the 
Laubachs, and scores of others have grown up 
here, and as boys were inspired by the tales of 
their fathers to shoulder rod and gun and take 
to stream and forest for sport and game. The 
story of the catching of a large trout or the 
killing of a bear or deer will even now be told 
by a hundred firesides up and down Fishing 
Creek, and will furnish an incentive for scores 
By CHARLES LOSE 
of anglers or hunters to start out on the follow¬ 
ing day. Lumbering and farming may appear 
to others to be the real vocation of the men of 
this section, but the men themselves know that 
it is hunting and fishing, and that work is an 
avocation, an incidental matter, to be put through 
promptly so as not to interfere with sport. 
While the deer have increased in other 
mountainous sections of Central Pennsylvania, 
they have nearly disappeared in the North 
Mountain district. This is due no doubt to the 
skill of the hunters of this region. But if 
these hunters have lacked something of late 
j’ears in the way of deer hunting, it was abund¬ 
antly made up to them this last fall by the 
greatest supply of bears that the State has prob¬ 
ably ever known in so limited a territory. Be¬ 
tween Jamison at the foot of the mountain and 
Benton; a stretch of some fifteen miles, more 
than fifty bears were seen at one time or an¬ 
other, and hardly a day passed without a story 
of bears being seen and chased, and sometimes 
killed or wounded. These bears came by ones, 
twos and threes, and once or twice in droves, 
and they were of all sizes, from the little bears 
that the boys could kill to the big shaggy brutes 
that drove off the dogs and kept the men at a 
distance. The hunters, like the Minute men of 
the Revolution, slept with their rifles by their 
sides, and the magazines of their guns always 
filled with shells that would shoot far and strong. 
The dogs were worked up to a wild hunting- 
frenzy, and in lonely places women locked the 
doors at nightfall and gathered their children 
close about them. 
The cause of this great invasion of bears 
was probably the lack of mast, or “shack,” as 
the old hunter calls it, in the immense tracts of 
wild land lying north of Columbia county. Tbe 
usual crop of beechnuts, chestnuts and acorns 
was so small as to be practically nothing, and 
the bears were compelled to leave the mountains 
and migrate down the valley of Fishing Creek 
from whence they sallied out at night to forage 
on the farmers’ cornfields and orchards. The 
banks of the stream, being steep and rocky and 
densely covered with trees and brush, made ex¬ 
cellent hiding places, and the bears were only 
dislodged from these places by slow persistent 
drives made by men and dogs. Occasionally the 
bears, because of the close proximity to human 
habitations or because of lack of food, would 
grow restless and would move from place to 
place in broad daylight, and on such occasions 
would be seen by farmers' crossing fields or 
would be encountered in the woods by bird and 
rabbit hunters. But generally they lay hidden 
in the thickets and among the rocks during the 
day and made their appearance only when driven 
out. 
The largest bear killed during the fall was 
shot by Ira McHenry, a hunter of many years’ 
experience, who has killed scores of deer and 
a large number of bears. This bear was located 
in a thick piece of woods on a steep hillside 
within a mile of Benton. Mr. McHenry was 
stationed at the top of the hill on the edge of 
a field, and when the drivers in the woods ap¬ 
proached the field, he saw the bear come out 
from among the trees on the way to another 
strip of woods on the other side of the field. 
But the hunter was on the alert and cool enough 
to plant a bullet back of the shoulder before the 
bear had gone a dozen feet into the field. At 
the crack of the gun the bear wheeled and 
plunged back into the woods. It followed an 
old road for a few feet, and then abruptly turned 
off the road and down the hill, and when found, 
nearly two hours later, was lying huddled in 
against the bottom of an old rail fence. It had 
been dead for some time, and the singular thing 
was that while the bullet had gone entirely 
through the base of the heart, the bear had 
traveled nearly a hundred yards after the shot 
was fired. The experienced hunter always tries 
to hit a bear back of the shoulder and low down. 
He wants to reach the heart, for he knows how 
tenacious of life a bear is. There are stories 
of hunters tracking wounded bears for miles 
and finding that the bears had finally pulled fur 
from their sides and plugged up the bullet holes 
to stop the bleeding. Mr. McHenry’s bear was 
an enormous brute, and when suspended by the 
heels to the roof of the porch, its front paws 
touched the ground. 
But not all the hunters were so lucky as 
IMr. McHenry. There were many days when 
hunters scoured the woods without seeing game; 
there were times when the bears were driven 
out without coming near the hunters; and there 
were good chances missed by poor shooting or 
by bad luck. One of the leading merchants of 
Benton early in the season purchased for him¬ 
self a rifle of the latest pattern, loaded himself 
down with shells, and joined every hunting party 
that left the town. One day a bear ran within 
twenty feet of him, and went awaj' untouched 
by the rain of bullets that fairly slashed the 
limbs from the trees. At another time a bear 
walked up to the man and stood and looked 
him calmly in the face until the hunter began 
to shoot straight up into the sky, when the bear 
shifted its beady little eyes and turned and slowly 
walked away. Soon after this episode the mer¬ 
chant traded his rifle for a calf that he will 
