Feb. 12, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
•m 
A Bald-Headed Bear. 
In the spring of 1908 a young man living in 
one of the northernmost counties of Wisconsin 
dragged the carcass of a horse that a neighbor 
had lost off into the woods for bear bait. Then 
he rigged up a scaffold in a nearby tree from 
which he could watch, and also set a trap. Tlie 
snow had all gone and the warmth of spring 
was just beginning to make the buds ready to 
burst forth in foliage. He visited his trap 
nearly every day, and at times climbed up to 
his scaffold and watched. 
After about a week he found that a bear was 
working on the carcass, but each time managed 
to avoid the trap, so he began to watch for a 
time each day in the hope of getting a shot. 
One afternoon while sitting on his scaffold 
with his .25-35 r ifle across his lap he became 
sleepy and finally nearly dozed off. Suddenly 
without consciousness of having heard anything 
he roused with a start and there at the carcass, 
with head in air, sniffing as if to scent any pos¬ 
sible danger, stood a medium sized black bear. 
It stood facing the scaffold. 
Birt raised his rifle, and carefully sighting for 
the center of the bear’s forehead, pressed the 
trigger. At the crack of the gun the bear went 
down in his tracks. It looked to Birt as if his 
legs just crumpled up under him, and he thought 
as he was shooting soft-nose bullets that the 
whole top of bruin’s head was knocked off. 
The bear did not move, so Birt started to 
get down from the scaffold. When part way 
down, where he had to use an arm to clasp the 
trunk of the tree or a hand to grab a limb, the 
bear began to kick around. Before Birt could 
get down to hisi ladder or back to the scaffold 
the bear was on his feet and staggering about. 
Then he began to crawl toward some hazel 
brush not far away. Birt succeeded in getting 
in two shots, but by the time he reached the 
ground the bear was out of sight in the brush. 
He tracked the bear for some distance, as he 
made an easy trail to follow in the wet leaves, 
but did not see him again, and on the track 
found only now and then a speck of blood. 
Back at the carcass where he first shot he found 
some fine black hair. He was quite disgusted, 
first with himself and then with the gun. 
On his return home that evening his father 
told him he had hit where he had aimed, but 
that the bullet being light and soft, the shot 
fired from an angle and the bear standing with 
his head up, the bullet had glanced and only 
stunned the bear for a few moments. Then he 
added: “If anyone ever does get that bear 
he will find your mark on him.” 
In the winter of 1909, after Birt had finished 
cutting wood and clearing up around home, he 
trapped the rest of the winter around some 
lakes about eight miles from his home. He 
occupied a little hunting shack and made one 
or two trips each week between the shanty and 
his home. On one of these trips and about two 
miles from his camp he came upon the body 
of a deer which the wolves had killed and on’y 
partially devoured, so he set a couple of traps 
there, hoping he might get a wolf, but they did 
not come near the place again. Finally he took 
his traps up and did not go through that way 
again for some time. 
One day in the spring of 1909 when the snow 
was almost gone he happened to be near the 
deer carcass and found signs of bears’ work 
around it. He at once made up his mind that 
he would watch there, and so about 2 o’clock 
in the afternoon he started out taking his 
hatchet and a new .35 caliber automatic rifle. 
He found a tree he could climb and by cutting 
off some limbs and putting poles across he im¬ 
provised a scaffold and settled himself down 
for the watch. 
After sitting there for an hour he saw along 
the edge of the swamp a good-sized black bear. 
It was shuffling along, snuffing on the ground 
and occasionally stopping with head raised, snif¬ 
fing the air. Birt raised his gun to his shoulder 
and waited. The bear circled and then came 
up to the carcass of the deer and commenced 
to work at it. He would take hold of it with 
his mouth, place both front feet on it and pull 
out a piece. When he raised his head from 
this operation and stood facing the tree, Birt 
fired, aiming at his chest, and down the bear 
went. Then as quickly as he could shoot and 
take aim the young man emptied his rifle. Re¬ 
loading, he sat still and watched, mindful of 
his experience of just one year before, but the 
bear was in the death struggle. When satisfied 
that bruin was dead, Birt slid down the tree, 
and as he straightened the bear out prepara¬ 
tory to skinning him and caring for the meat, 
the first thing he noticed was a large spot on 
the forehead and extending up between the ears. 
The hair and skin were both gone from this 
spot, showing the bone. It was an old scar. 
The bear was the one Birt had shot in 1905 
and failed to get. Carolus. 
Legislation in Massachusetts. 
Boston, Mass., Feb. 5. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: The Middlesex Sportsman’s Associa¬ 
tion has decided to depart from the practice of 
the last few years of holding its annual ban¬ 
quet in some Boston hotel and to return to the 
custom of former years by combining its annual 
meeting with an exhibition of trophies. The 
dinner will be served in the town hall at Ar¬ 
lington and the trophies will be shown in the 
exhibition building on Mystic street. Some of 
the exhibits by this club in former years have 
been very extensive and have attracted visitors 
from the whole eastern section of the State. The 
banquet will be held on Thursday evening, Feb. 
17. The club numbers about 400 members. Dr. 
A. H. fl little, of Cambridge, its President, and 
C. B. Seagrave, Secretary, are doing all in their 
power to keep up the interest of its members. 
Our State Legislature is getting down to busi¬ 
ness in real earnest. The appointment of the 
Committee on Fisheries and Game has brought 
out a vigorous protest from the secretary of a 
vigorous and influential sportsman’s club in the 
western part of the State; not against any of 
the men appointed on that committee, but against 
the neglect, in his view, to properly distribute 
them over different sections. This is what he 
writes: “Look over the committee of the Senate 
and House this winter, made up of men from 
Plymouth, Bristol, Barnstable, Dukes, Martha's 
Vineyard and the little town of Prescott, in 
Hampshire county. What do these men know 
or care about Western Massachusetts?” 
Two members of the committee, Mr. Keith, of 
Bridgewater, and Mr. Gifford, of Westport, 
served on the committee last year and hail from 
-l _i- 
the southeastern part of the State. It might 
have been reasonably ’ expected that the four 
western counties should have been represented by 
at least three members, but it may be that none 
of the members from those counties requested to 
be placed on the fish and game committee. The 
sportsmen of Western Massachusetts have some 
rights that the men of the other sections are 
bound to respect. Song and insectivorous birds, 
game birds, wild animals and game fish are found 
m all parts of our State and they need as much 
attention as scallops and quahaugs. 
Hearings before the committee on fisheries and 
game commenced on Feb. 2. A bill for a close 
time at all seasons on loons was urged by State 
Ornithologist E. H. Forbush on Feb. 4. On 
Feb. 9 a bill to prohibit the taking of rabbits 
by tearing down walls or digging them out of 
their holes will come up for a hearing. 
On the same day hearings will be given on 
bills in reference to the disposition of fees for 
registration of hunters, and on the nth the bill 
of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective 
Association for establishment of game and fish 
sanctuaries, drawn by President Charles. - 
Henry H. Kimball. 
African Game Preservation. 
Among persons abroad to whom the Wild Life 
Preservation number of the New York Zoologi¬ 
cal Society Bulletin was sent was Major J. 
Stewart Hamilton, Warden of the Transvaal 
Government Game Reserves. The number was 
acknowledged to Madison Grant, Secretary of 
the Zoological Society in the following letter: 
Government Game Reserves, Komatipoort, 
Transvaal, S. A., July 22, 1909 .—Dear Sir: 
Relative to the Wild Life Preservation num¬ 
ber of the Bulletin, which you were kind enough 
to have forwarded to me, I desire to thank you 
extremely for giving me the opportunity for 
perusing perhaps the most complete exposition 
of the subject in existence. Each one of the 
articles in it seems to exactly touch the vital 
points in game preservation, and with a mere 
alteration of names and places the subject mat¬ 
ter applies in every way to Africa. 
We have been struggling with the same ques¬ 
tions and against the same difficulties here in 
the Transvaal during the last seven years, and 
the conclusion which we have arrived at are of 
precisely similar nature. It is impossible to ade¬ 
quately preserve big game outside special sanc¬ 
tuaries, wherein a special staff is maintained to 
look after their welfare, and special regulations 
are framed for the regulation of traffic and pro¬ 
hibition of firearms. 
I may add that we have recently promulgated 
a statute forbidding the sale of the flesh of wild 
animals except under a special permit, to cer¬ 
tain authorized dealers, and in a strictly limited 
quantity. Pending the further education of pub¬ 
lic opinion in the country, this is as much as 
we can at present undertake. 
In conclusion might I suggest that in order 
to further assist what is an international and 
world-wide interest, you should forward copies 
of the Bulletin to certain quarters where it 
would do much good, and give assistance to 
many of those who are striving toward the 
same commendable goal as yourself. Perhaps 
to some of them the Bulletin may have already 
been sent. 
J. Stewart Hamilton. 
