Feb. 26, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
333 
deadfalls with Isidor, and I was present once 
when a bear in a trap played ’possum to perfec¬ 
tion. The unmistakable object of his stratagem 
was to get a chance at us. It was evident that 
he had made a tremendous effort to free him¬ 
self. Birches as large as my wrist and little sap¬ 
lings were torn up, and the place for twenty 
feet around him looked as if a cyclone had 
struck it. But the heavy log to which the trap 
was attached had finally caught securely and 
bruin was now quiet. Isidor fired from a dis¬ 
tance of thirty feet and the bear toppled over 
as if stone dead; not the slightest movement 
was visible. We approached—Isidor in the lead 
—till within about ten feet of the trap, when all 
at once, with a quick backward spring, Isidor 
seized me and hauled me away from the vicinity 
of the bear. The latter had suddenly sprung up 
and was making the most violent and alarming 
efforts to get at us. 
Isidor told me that on approaching the sup¬ 
posed dead bear, he had caught sight of one 
twinkling eye wide open and watching him 
closely, hence the sudden backward spring. We 
found later that the bullet had ripped a furrow 
along the bear’s skull, but had not entered the 
brain between the eye and ear where Isidor had 
aimed. 
Once in a while a bear would break a chain 
and get off with the trap, and the final result of 
such a performance is usually the falling off of 
the bear’s foot at the point where the trap holds 
it, after which release poor bruin finishes his 
earthly pilgrimage more or less on three legs. 
In another part of the province of Quebec, in 
the late fall, we once found an old bear snugly 
ensconced in a hollow fallen pine just after he 
had cabanned for the winter. He had gone in 
and blocked up the end of the pine and we got 
at him by chopping a hole in the side of the 
tree. He refused to come out when we poked 
him and kept trying to back up, so we poured 
a few bullets into him through the hole we had 
made in the tree. This finished him and then 
we chopped him out. 
Now for the incident that has changed my at¬ 
titude toward bears and made me promise very 
seriously that in the future I will always carry 
a rifle during bear time, a precaution which I 
had foolishly neglected in the summer for years 
past. 
The incident in question occurred last June. 
There were two of us, my man Pierre and my¬ 
self, and we were not carrying rifles, nor had 
we one in camp. We were making our head¬ 
quarters in an empty lumber camp some four 
miles from a settlement and had been out for 
the mail and provisions. We were returning 
late to camp and it was about dusk. From long 
habit one gets accustomed to always looking far 
ahead in the woods, so as soon as a bend in 
the portage road brought the camp in view, I 
noticed through the foliage that something black 
was at our door, and I halted to reconnoiter. 
The dark object proved to be a bear. With 
one paw she was turning over the food refuse 
in front of the camp, while beside her a little 
round ball of a cub was sniffing what his mother 
unearthed. It was as one often sees a kitten 
sniffing at a saucer of milk before tasting. 
I had never before met a bear mother with 
a very young cub and was uncertain what to do. 
If I had been alone I most certainly would have 
tried to get back to the settlement in spite of 
the fast coming darkness, for there passed 
through my mind the remembrance of many 
stories regarding the viciousness of she bears 
with cubs. And though I had not much faith 
in these reports, the reflection that in the pro¬ 
tection of their young the feeblest mothers be¬ 
come courageous would obtrude itself. I had 
no fear as yet; it was merely speculation as to 
what this particular bear under—to me—un¬ 
known circumstances was going to do. 
Pierre is a tough, wiry little fellow about fifty 
years of age, with enough grit and determina¬ 
tion for two or three people, and he immediately 
settled the question for me. Said he: “That 
makes the tenth bear I have seen in my life, and 
I’m not afraid of them under any circumstances. 
Just wait till I shout and you will see how 
quickly those two will get out of the way.” 
While I was still hesitating and before I could 
say anything, he shouted, and I have never seen 
anything quicker than the response. There was 
no hesitation on the part of the bears, no wait¬ 
ing; it was as if they had been actuated by a 
spring which the shout uncoiled. The cub wad¬ 
dled to the side of the camp nearest us and in 
a second was as completely lost in the under¬ 
brush as is a young partridge that hides under 
the leaves, while in the same short space of 
time the old bear was half way to us, coming 
along the portage road as I never before had 
any idea a bear could move. I think the same 
idea struck Pierre and myself at about the same 
moment; namely, that it would be a good thing 
to get out of the way. 
There was an old logging road off the portage 
right at the place where we were standing, and 
we had time to get about eight feet up this side 
road'and to turn around, when the bear went 
by on the portage at a speed that seemed to me 
as fast as that of an express train. She saw 
us and turned her head in passing, but did not 
slacken her speed in the least. Her mouth was 
open and frothing and she was panting in short, 
quick breaths, much as an excited dog breathes 
while he impatiently waits when you are pre¬ 
paring to throw the stick which he is to go and 
fetch. 
Whether she could not stop or did not want 
to stop one can only guess, but she must have 
gone some distance before she came to a halt. 
I think it probably surprised her to see two of 
us, and she may have taken time to collect her 
ideas. As soon as she had passed we moved a 
little further up the logging road. This move 
placed us as it were at one corner of a triangle, 
with the camp as the apex and the junction of 
the logging road and the portage, which we had 
just left, as the third corner. We decided for 
the camp in a straight line at all hazards, even 
though to reach it meant to pass through fallen 
brush and obliged us to cross the path which the 
cub had taken. We had hardly started when 
the old brute appeared on the logging road just 
vacated, and from this point to the camp she 
kept step for step with us, sometimes at one 
side, sometimes behind, but never more than 
eight or ten feet away; sometimes lifting a paw 
as if to strike, but not standing up to actually 
do it. While we were floundering through the 
underbrush she seemed to pass over fallen trees 
and branches as if she were traveling on solid 
ground. It was a revelation of quickness and 
agility in a brute that one usually associates 
with lumbering awkwardness and slow move¬ 
ment. The way she pirouetted around on her 
hind legs without, however, raising herself was 
marvelous. 
I never before had such a hard time keeping 
myself in hand, for the impulse to turn my back 
and bolt for the camp was almost irresistible. 
Our principal danger of course lay in the possi¬ 
bility of stumbling over the cub, and I suppose 
the bear’s dread of this contingency equalled our 
own fear. 
Pierre acted splendidly and was more cool and 
collected than I. He had a light sack on his 
back and this he slipped off into his left hand 
so as to throw it at the bear with the idea of 
diverting her attention if she attacked. In his 
right hand he had a little axe weighing a pound 
and a half, and this weapon he kept shaking at 
the bear and shouting. But axe or no axe, one 
or the other of us would certainly have been 
mauled had we stumbled on the cub. In any 
case I think the only thing which restrained the 
bear was the fact that two people were together 
facing her. I know of an instance where a 
North Shore Indian who was defending him¬ 
self from a bear with a cub had an axe brushed 
from his hand as if it was a straw. After this 
the bear grappled him. 
You have often seen a very definite expres¬ 
sion on the face of a dog or some other animal, 
and our bear’s physiognomy denoted angry de¬ 
termination just as plainly as your face or mine 
could express it. A good deal of it perhaps 
was in the attitude of the head and the redness 
of the eyes, but it all meant just determination 
to get at us if we came anywhere near that 
precious cub. She followed us right to the camp 
door which we fairly shut in her face, and even 
then she would not go away, but kept wheeling 
around, turning first toward where the cub had 
evidently gone and then toward the camp. This 
latter performance we saw through the window, 
but by this time I also had an axe and we felt 
secure. Finally, with her nose to the ground, 
she took up the trail of the cub and shortly dis¬ 
appeared. 
Since this adventure I know the meaning of 
the expression with regard to having one’s hair 
stand on end, and to say the least it is a very 
tight and unpleasant contraction of the scalp. 
Pierre and I together kept a fire going at the 
door till midnight, by which time my nerves got 
settled down, and I went to bed and to sleep, 
thinking as I went off into dreamland of the 
many hot nights we had gone to bed in that 
camp with the door wide open and no fire burn¬ 
ing, and wondering if a bear had ever looked 
in on us without our knowledge. I think Pierre 
kept the fire going till 2 o’clock, at which time 
he turned in also. 
Next morning he awoke me at about six and 
said: “Did you see enough of that bear last 
night, or would you like to have another look 
at her?” 
“What are you trying to get at?” I asked. 
“Well,” he answered, “if you will get up and 
come outside you can see her prowling around 
about two acres behind the camp.” 
By the time I got outside she was no longer 
to be seen, and I made some uncomplimentary 
remarks to Pierre, among others I think that 
he had bears on the brain. He was highly in¬ 
sulted, called loudly for a Bible and assured me 
that he had seen enough of the bear the night 
before to know her again. This reappearance 
