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Hunting tHe Alaskan Grizzly 
By ANDRE CHAMPOLLION 
A BOUT the middle of July, 1903 . Dr. 
Phelps and myself landed from a canoe 
on the east coast of Admiralty Island, 
Alaska. An inspection of the map of Alaska 
will show Admiralty to be one of the large 
mountainous islands which lie along the coast of 
the southeastern Alaskan strip about eight miles 
as the crow flies from the prosperous town of 
Juneau, which is situated on the mainland. Ad¬ 
miralty is about the same shape and size as 
Long Island. Conditions there may have 
changed somewhat since the above-mentioned 
date, but at that time there was an extraordi¬ 
narily dense population of wild animals. The 
most important of these from our point of view 
were the grizzly bears, tracks of which we saw 
less than ten minutes after landing. The island 
is covered from end to end by a range of moun¬ 
tains, on the summits of which snow lingers 
practically all summer. 
Near the salt water and up to a height of a 
thousand feet are forests of magnificent hem¬ 
lock, fir and balsam trees, which have never yet 
been touched by the lumberman’s destructive ax. 
Creeks and trout streams abound, and at the 
time of year we are speaking of the salmon were 
leaving the salt water and beginning to run up 
these streams by the hundreds of thousands for 
the purpose of spawning. Bald eagles, ravens 
and crows as tame as sparrows sat around on 
the lofty treetops, eyeing us inquisitively as we 
pushed our canoe ashore, while hundreds of 
sea gulls arose from the beach and soared about, 
uttering cries of disturbed quietude. 
There were two other men in our party be¬ 
sides ourselves whom we had hired, the one to 
act as guide, the other to cook and do camp 
chores.' The first three weeks of our residence 
on Admiralty were uneventful because our guide 
soon proved himself to be thoroughly incompe¬ 
tent, although he said that he had killed some 
bears the previous year. We could not get him 
up before nine o'clock in the morning. He was 
a rather heavy, fleshy man, and after walking a 
couple of miles, he would complain of sore 
feet, remove his shoes and lie down to rest for 
an indefinite length of time. An Indian whom 
we hired to take his place, though a good 
hunter, was afraid of the bears, and our impres¬ 
sion was that he rather sought to avoid them; 
in fact, the grizzly bear has a well-deserved 
reputation for irascibility and vindictiveness, not 
only among the aborigine's, but also among the 
white men, most of whom are prospectors and 
therefore continually exposed to danger of at- 
* 
tack from Ursus horribilis. She-bears with cubs 
are especially to be feared. We heard one man 
sum up his feelings in the terse phrase, “You 
may never' need a gun, but when you do, you 
need it badly!” Several western authorities have 
asserted that a grizzly bear will not attack a 
human being unprovoked, and one writer in a 
communication to the New York Sun not 
long ago declared that he never will under any 
circumstances. This is true probably of local¬ 
ities where these animals have been extensively 
hunted and the fear of men and guns has been 
so thoroughly inculcated in them that their 
only idea is to beat a hasty retreat whether 
wounded or not. That this does not hold true 
in Alaska, I think the reputation the grizzly 
has gained there, and the present narrative will 
help to prove. 
In summer the bears are in the habit of com¬ 
ing to the creeks as soon as the salmon begin 
running. They gorge themselves with fish and 
then return to the depths of the forest. The 
best way therefore to get a shot is to lie in wait 
for them where salmon are plentiful, especially 
early in the morning and toward sunset. 
As already stated luck had been against us, 
and the spell was not broken till some prospec¬ 
tors whom we had met in Juneau invited us to 
join them in their hut in the mountains above 
timber line. Being uncertain as to the advis¬ 
ability of such a move, we decided that one of 
us should accept the invitation and the other 
should stay and hunt the creeks for a few more 
days. We drew lots and I followed the miners. 
The country up there was absolutely superb. 
You could look around for a radius of seventy- 
five or a hundred miles at endless chains of 
snow-covered peaks. Way below was the salt 
water cut up into innumerable bays, channels 
and inlets. Nowhere was there a sign of civili¬ 
zation. One might* have thought oneself on 
the earth before the appearance of man. I spent 
three or four days wandering amid these en¬ 
chanting surroundings with gun and field glass. 
Here and there were patches of grass and cow¬ 
slips which had been very recently beaten down 
and bore the marks of bear tracks and beds. 
Some of these beds looked big enough to have 
been made by a cow or a horse, but no bears 
showed themselves till the fifth or sixth day. 
I had been sitting in observation from a point 
of vantage, when away below me half a mile 
distant I observed a curious round speck which 
did not at first appear to me as anything un¬ 
usual, and I gave it little thought. Looking in 
that direction a few minutes later, I noticed that 
the speck from round had assumed an oblong 
shape. On examining it with my field glass, my 
heart leaped into my mouth with excitement, 
when I espied two good-sized grizzlies rolling 
around in the grass playfully “swatting” each 
other with their large paws. It must be con¬ 
fessed that I faced the idea of attacking those 
animals alone with a good deal of apprehension, 
but knew that on returning to camp it would 
be impossible for me to refrain from speaking 
of what I had seen, and that the men would 
then ask me what I had done. I could already 
see myself sheepishly acknowledging that I had 
done nothing, and the whole mining camp roar¬ 
ing, so I chose danger as an evil less to be 
feared than ridicule, and started down the moun¬ 
tain toward the bears. They disappeared from 
view for fully twenty minutes while I circled a 
lofty crag and finally got within five hundred 
yards of the spot where I had first seen them. 
The bears were no longer playing together. 
One of them stood facing in my direction, while 
the other, who was much larger than his com¬ 
panion, lay flat on his belly in the tall grass. 
All that could be seen of him was his head 
bobbing up and down as he fed off a blueberry 
bush. In endeavoring to get nearer I lost my 
footing and slid about fifty yards on a steep 
slope covered with heather. I supposed when I 
looked again that the bears would be in full 
flight, but to my great surprise and relief they 
had seen nothing, the wind blew cross-wise, and 
everything was favorable. 
In order to get a good open shot at cloge 
range, I was obliged to crawl through a growth 
of stunted timber about sixty yards wide, the 
trees of which were not more than four feet 
high. When I arrived on the other side of these 
bushes the bears were about eighty yards from 
me. The smaller one now stood quartering 
away and the other was still nearly entirely 
hidden by shrubs and long grass. I therefore 
decided to dispose of the smaller one first. My 
■45~70 rifle was loaded with ten cartridges, when 
I opened fire. As the bullet struck him, the 
bear reared on his hind legs, viciously pawing 
the air and biting at his wound. He uttered a 
series of low growls, which sounded a good 
deal like two mastiffs fighting. He seemed to 
be trying to get at an enemy which he sup¬ 
posed must be within reach. As I was hidden 
behind one of the small pine bushes, he could not 
see me, and the idea evidently never entered his 
head that something had been hurled at him 
from a distance; the report of the rifle meant 
nothing to him. 
Perceiving that he could not find his enemy, 
he took to his heels and went off diagonally at 
a mad gallop, howling with pain and rage, while 
another one of my bullets hit the face of nature 
somewhere in his vicinity. By this time the 
