332 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 15, 1913 
have a butcher kill when he needs meat. Even 
Boj'd McHenry, the most noted hunter of all 
this region, came through the season with only 
a wounded bear to his score. It is quite certain 
that Boyd would have killed this bear which 
was running up the road toward him had not 
a boy stepped into the road between him and 
the bear. Even' as it was, the snapshot that he 
got as the bear went plunging through the woods 
knocked the bear off its feet and brought from 
it a great bawl that rang through the woods 
and frightened the boy nearly to death. 
One afternoon a bird hunter, walking in 
the road near the foot of the mountain, saw a 
great brute of a bear leisurely crossing a little 
cornfield on its way to the mountain along which 
the road ran. The hunter exchanged his two 
shells of bird shot for two of buck shot and 
prepared to intercept bruin when he crossed the 
road. When the bear stepped into the road, not 
ten steps away, the hunter took deliberate aim 
and fired. He said that he could as easily have 
missed a cow. When the gun cracked, the bear 
stood up on its hind legs, and with its front 
paws grabbed at itself where the buckshot had 
gone through. Then without even a glance at 
the hunter, it climbed out of the road and hur¬ 
ried up the mountain. For nearly a mile the 
bird hunter tracked it by the blood, but he 
never came up to it, and the bear was never 
seen afterward. For days the hunter mourned 
over this piece of bad luck; he would rather 
have lost a horse. 
Again there were some bears killed in a 
manner that appeared the result of nothing but 
sheer good luck. A boy, squirrel hunting in 
the woods one dark rainy day when the leaves 
were damp and the woods still, saw coming to¬ 
ward him a group of seven bears. The boy 
stood perfectly still, and when the bears had 
approached within a few feet of him, he se¬ 
lected the largest one of the group and poured 
into its side a charge of small shot that killed 
it in its tracks. The boy is still the hero of 
the neighborhood. At another time a man and 
wife husking corn in a field saw an old bear 
and her two cubs working in the edge of the 
field next the woods. While the man kept 
watch of the bears, the wife went to the house 
and brought out the shotgun loaded with two 
shells. With these two shells the farmer killed 
both cubs while the old bear lay on the top 
rail of the fence and watched him. His wife 
had neglected to fetch extra shells, and it cer¬ 
tainly took some courage to face a mother bear 
with an empty gun after killing her cubs. The 
farmer thinks that his escape from attack was 
due to the fact that the cubs were shot dead 
and made no sound when killed. The old bear 
hung around for a few minutes and then uncon¬ 
cernedly started leisurely away through the woods. 
There was but one instance of a wounded 
bear deliberately charging the hunter. George 
Laubach, who was hunting rabbits one morning 
at the foot of some rocky ledges along Fishing 
Creek, met a bear face to face and not ten steps 
away.' George promptly pulled up his gun and 
fired right into the bear’s face. Instantly the 
bear, with mouth open and hair along the back 
standing up as it does on an angry dog, charged 
at him. George waited until he and bear were 
within six feet of each other when he poured 
his second load of shot into the bear’s breast 
and shot it dead. Such occurrences are very un¬ 
usual, and it is possible that the bear was blinded 
by the first shot and did not actually charge the 
hunter, but was trying to get away. 
The only man injured by a bear during the 
season was not a bear hunter, but a ’coon hunter. 
This man’s dogs had treed on a tall lone chest¬ 
nut tree in a swamp what the man took of course 
to be a ’coon. The man, who had no company 
but his dogs and who wanted meat badly, de¬ 
cided to climb the tree and shake off the ’coon 
for his dogs to kill. After swarming up the 
tree some forty feet, he found that the animal 
had not waited for him, but was backing down, 
and on the same side to which he was clinging. 
Then to his horror he discovered that it was 
a bear and not a ’coon that his dogs had treed. 
He was' too high to risk a fall, so he just 
reached around the tree and hung on like grim 
death. The bear went right down over him, 
taking all the clothes and some of the skin off 
the rear part of him. When the man finally 
reached the bottom of the tree, he put out for 
home and closed his hunting for the season. He 
thinks that the bear weighed a ton, as it went 
down over him. 
Another hunter was more lucky in treeing 
a bear. This man, who, by the way, was a big 
strong man and a famous hunter, owned a small 
orchard on top of the mountain. The little 
orchard was surrounded by a great forest, and 
was frequented by bears in the apple season. 
One October afternoon the man took his horse, 
wagon and gun and drove up to the orchard to 
bring back a wagon load of apples. Just before 
reaching the orchard he stopped, tied his horse, 
and with his gun slipped up and looked over 
the fence. He was not greatly surprised to see 
what he took to be a cub with its head down 
in the long grass eating apples. The man wanted 
a cub, and he decided to take this one alive. So 
he set his gun down, quietly sneaked up behind 
the little bear, and grabbed with both hands in 
the thick hair on the rump. Then when too 
late he found that he was holding fast to a very 
active, much frightened bear that would weigh 
a hundred pounds. But he was game and hung 
on. The bear tried to get over the fence and 
into the woods, but the man could readily pre¬ 
vent this. Finally, as the bear grew somewhat 
exhausted, the man found that he could direct 
its course, and he steered it toward a tree up 
the trunk of which he sent it with a mighty kick. 
Then leaving his coat and hat at the foot of 
the tree to keep the bear from descending, he 
went for his gun and later brought home a dead 
bear instead of a live one. 
These old hunters sometimes have a supreme 
contempt for a bear. There was once one in 
this region who was willing at any time, for a 
share of the meat, to enter a hole into which 
a bear had been driven or into which it had 
retired to hibernate during the winter, and drive 
it out so that the hunters might kill it. He 
was a small man, as full of grit as a bull terrier. 
He claimed that a bear never attacked a man 
in a hole. But one day just as he was crawling 
through a narrow passage that led to a bear’s 
den, the occupant, a very large bear, decided to 
come out, and did come out right over the 
hunter. This man, like the ’coon hunter, was 
compelled to buy a new suit of clothes and to 
sleep on his stomach for several months. It is 
said that after this adventure he walked away 
around when he came near a bear’s den. 
Several amusing things occurred during the 
great bear season of Columbia county. When 
the season was in its height, everybody talked 
and even dreamed of bears. One dark night 
Jim Brown, a young man living in Benton, was 
awakened by the fierce barking of dogs and the 
terrible snarling of bears. Jim hoisted his bed 
room window and listened. Across the creek 
in a wooded hillside he could hear the dogs 
evidently worrying bears. He could even hear 
the snap of teeth and the terrific snarling as 
bears and dogs came together. It was a fierce 
encounter and in the still dark night it made 
one’s blood run cold and one's scalp tingle. Jim 
listened a minute or two and then he raised a 
mighty shout of “Bears, bears across the creek!” 
Soon lanterns twinkled and the streets resounded 
with the tramp of marching feet. Within fif¬ 
teen minutes more than a score of hunters with 
rifles ready had crossed the bridge and hurried 
through the woods, guided by the barking of 
the dogs, only to find two bulldogs worrying 
several calves. At another time a miller, sev¬ 
eral miles below Benton, ’phoned to town that 
an enormous bear was coming straight up the 
main road. Then there was a gathering of 
hunters and dogs, the like of which could be 
matched in but few States. And then again 
there was disappointment, for it was a dancing 
bear led by an Italian who kept exclaiming as 
the hunters surrounded him, “No shoot my bear, 
good bear.” The miller had hoaxed them. And 
yet it was not an entirely profitless trip, for it 
resulted in the trying out of a bear dog for 
which the owner had recently refused fifty doF 
lars. This dog crowded in between the legs of 
the men surrounding the bear until the bear 
caught sight of the dog and made one wicked 
pass at him with his huge fore paw. The dog 
knocked down five men getting away, and then 
retreated under a barn where he stayed for 
three days. 
But it was a great bear season, and Columbia 
county will not soon forget it. 
Horns Twelve Feet from Tip to Tip. 
The caribou, or water-buffaloes, of the 
Philippines often attain to great length of 
horn, one specimen, it is believed, standing 
quite without a rival in that respect. Meas¬ 
ured along the curve of the horns, it is over 
twelve feet from one tip to the other. The 
spread of this animal’s horns, says Wide 
World magazine, is greater than the width of 
several of the narrow lanes of the town-—• 
Iloilo—where his owner lives, and in conse¬ 
quence a brown line of scarred bark on the 
thick-set bamboo hedges often marks the roads 
which this splendid old giant has traversed. 
