794 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 20, 1909. 
Bears I Have Met, and Others. 
July 4, 1884, there was gaiety at Indian Cor¬ 
ners, in the Blue Mountain region. Pour stimu¬ 
lants into “natural hunters” and, if there is 
nothing else to hunt, they fire at the stars. Some 
of our hunters had done that until the mothers 
from the City were wild for fear their children 
would be hit. Consequently, when invited to 
address his fellow citizens on the issues of the 
day, “your orator” painted a picture of the 
merits of sobriety, and of the importance of the 
same to the continuance of our form of govern¬ 
ment. It did not work. The proprietor of the 
tavern expressed his disgust. The rest of the 
small audience felt disappointed. 
Walking into the woods a few hundred feet 
away, the speaker met a bear, a 
sizable black bear coming down 
the mountainside, with his tongue 
out of his mouth and an expres¬ 
sion on his face that was more 
cordial than that of the audience. 
This incident turned one life into 
better paths. For twenty-five • 
years the speaker has hunted 
bears. He ran away from that \ 
hillside shouting for a gun. The 
next day he owned two. With¬ 
in a month he had killed that 
bear. That poor orator has hunt¬ 
ed since that day from New¬ 
foundland to the Pacific, in the 
Adirondacks, in North Carolina, 
in Nova Scotia, in New Bruns¬ 
wick up back of Chicoutimi, back 
of the Nepigon, and in British 
Columbia. 
Twenty years ago we had a 
camp by Moose River. Out in 
front were hanging one deer, a 
dozen grouse and a large bunch 
of such trout as you find only 
in the Moose. Our leader was 
Admiral Farragut’s chaplain in 
the Navy and a famous hunter. 
Nobody else could do anything 
with the guide, Arvin Hutchins 
The chaplain had been spiritual 
centurion over a hundred men. 
When he said: “Arvin, fetch me a drink of 
water from the spring,” Arvin marched out for 
the water. Pie went somewhat reluctantly, but 
returned wildly. He cried: “For God’s sake, 
give me your gun!” He grabbed my gun with¬ 
out waiting for it to be given, and ran a few 
feet to the front. There our bank sloped down 
to the little Sumner River. Opposite, the slopes 
mounted up on- the other side through black¬ 
berry bushes into white birches. 
Regardless of his friends, and of the owner¬ 
ship in that rifle, Arvin dropped on his knee 
and fired a long shot over opposite. A bear 
was dancing there, and when the shot was fired, 
the bear loudly cried, “Wah.” It appeared that 
three to five bears, old and young, had been 
attracted by our display of eatables. As they 
marched down the mountainside Arvin alone 
could have reached them with any effect at that 
distance. The bears disappeared. We ran after 
them, wading the river with our guns held high. 
Arriving inside of the birches I slowly prepared 
to fire at a varying glimpse of an old bear ahead. 
Suddenly, with an oath, Arvin said: “Why 
don't you hit that animal right under your feet?” 
So a cub bear died at that point. That is the 
only skin that has ever been saved. 
We had two cocker spaniels in camp, father 
and son. Neither one could by any possibility 
ever have seen a bear before. The father ran 
away howling when Arvin dragged the bear to 
our place. The son also ran away howling, and 
we did not see him again until we found him a 
mile away the following day, on a point and still 
howling. That was good hunting for the Adiron¬ 
dacks. 
One night on Johnny Mack’s Bay no deer 
could be found. The mistake had been made 
of bringing the children along with their teacher 
to the night encampment. That mixture made 
a row. Wandering out around a swamp before 
MR. CUTHBERT S DEER HEAD. 
getting into the boat next morning I discarded 
my rifle and took a shotgun, saying; “Better a 
duck in the hand than a deer in your eye.” 
Reaching the further side of the marsh I turned 
into the woods and within fifty feet, sitting by 
a dead deer, was a black bear. 
Now, to explain what next happened, you 
should know that, on quitting the deer hunt that 
morning, I had loaded one shell for ducks 
and one shell for deer. As I marched, with the 
confidence natural to me, gun pointed toward 
the'breast of that bear, the old one’s paw twitch¬ 
ed and his small eye snapped like a hog’s, as 
if he would say, “My meat.” The gun went 
off, plunk, and near, too. The bear did not roll 
over; it ran up the mountainside. There was 
no noticeable blood to be traced. Perhaps two 
lives were miraculously preserved, for the shot 
was a rash one. Later on, going out on the 
lake and firing at a flock of ducks, it appeared 
that none was hit. 
Meditation and philosophy have convinced me 
that I fired the duck shot at the bear and the 
bear shot at the ducks. Probablv I thought the 
bear would stop on receiving the duck shot and 
the buckshot would be needed then. 
In New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and North 
Carolina the bears passed us by. But one fine 
evening on the edge of the Rockies on the flats 
by the Kootenai in British Columbia, loping 
home at sunset, we passed a gay and straggling 
line of squaws and papooses. Some were sul¬ 
len, some were free, all were dirty, and a more 
picturesque crowd you could hardly imagine. 
They wore bright reds and yellows and rode 
straight ahead on their ponies. The only one that 
was excited was a boy, possibly the chief’s son. 
He hid his eyes and dug his heels into his pony’s 
flanks to get on. They pessed out of sight. 
Their long extended winding line was well worth 
watching and suggested like sights witnessed by 
the early 'Western travelers. 
Thirty-six hours later, in the 
the early morning, with two 
Princeton boys and a celebrated 
guide, I struggled out on top of 
a neighboring peak. The three 
ponies and the two pack horses, 
as well as the young collegians, 
were half dead. Packs were up¬ 
set, hopes of salvation were 
wrecked in profanity, and every¬ 
body was threatened with loss of 
breath or with mountain sickness, 
it being the first of many visits 
to the tops of the Rockies. 
Just as the glory of that 
greatest of all panoramas came 
into view I asked of the cele¬ 
brated guide if I should load my 
gun. “No,” said the guide; “no 
fool would think it worth while 
to load a gun with so many col¬ 
lege boys and cayuses and such 
around.” So, turned away from 
sport, the soul was allowed to ex¬ 
pand in the glorious view of 
snow-capped peaks and rocky 
chasms, with a marvelous spread 
of wild flowers under foot. In 
a second it seemed the celebrated 
guide pulled his unfortunate 
client around sharply with more 
profanity and remarked: “Thar, 
if you want to shoot a grizzly, why in blazes 
don’t you do it?” 
Down below, some miles in the valley, the 
guide pointed out the tepee of the squaws and 
papooses of the second evening previous. From 
that direction, diagonally up the side of the 
mountain to the peak where we stood, a silver- 
tipped grizzly was traveling at trotting horse 
speed, puffing and blowing, scolding about the 
squaws, no doubt. To judge from the line be¬ 
hind him toward the tepee, the squaws had in 
some way irritated him. Probably both wanted 
the same berries. Dizzy but ambitious, cuddled 
on a steep incline at the moment, but quite happy 
and middling cool, I took aim and fired a pretty 
long shot at the animal which was running nearly 
my way. The grizzly stood up on his.hind feet, 
brandishing one forearm in a way to show that 
something was wrong with him, put it to his 
mouth and gave a long, mad cry. Then he saw 
our array of boys, men and ponies and made off 
the other way. The guide fired one shot and I 
fired another, but the grizzly disappeared over 
a big fallen tree. 
