690 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 2, 1908. 
so near-sighted that he was not in the least 
alarmed. When he resumed his four feet, I 
shot at him, my bullet breaking his hips. We 
immediately paddled ashore, and the wounded 
bear for such a small one (he could not have 
weighed more than 150 pounds) displayed a 
most extraordinary amount of vitality. I shot him 
repeatedly through the body, but my .45-70 bullets 
seemed to have as little effect on him as if they 
had been peas. His hind legs were completely 
paralyzed from the effects of the first shot, and 
yet he made desperate efforts to attack us with 
his teeth and front paws. However, his 
struggles gradually subsided, and Phelps, to 
make sure, drew his hunting knife and stabbed 
him in the ribs. The bear in a last paroxysm of 
agony and rage made a lunge at my com¬ 
panion’s face, and the latter, stupefied with as¬ 
tonishment at this sudden revival of pugnacity 
on the part of an animal he had deemed as good 
as dead, dropped his knife, tripped and fell over 
backward while the res't of us lay on the ground 
splitting our sides with laughter. 
That same evening we had spent two fearful 
hours on the creek, neither seeing nor hearing 
any bears, but being slowly devoured by the 
black flies and mosquitoes. When the sun be¬ 
gan to set we left our post and returned to our 
canoe, which was anchored in the salt water. 
Before flowing into the salt water, this par¬ 
ticular creek ran through a large delta covered 
with long grass yet free from timber. We had 
just emerged from the woods and were walking 
in single file along the right-hand bank of the 
creek, when two hundred yards away on the 
other side, coming out of the forest at a lum¬ 
bering gallop, we saw a large bear. He was 
headed directly our way, and we all crouched 
low and waited. In a minute or so the grass 
and weeds on the opposite side of the creek 
parted and a handsome silver-tip grizzly hove 
in sight. He immediately rose on his hind legs 
and sniffed the air inquiringly, as if to say, 
“Where are they?’’ A bullet in the brain from 
Phelps’ rifle was the reply and bruin fell on his 
side like a sack of potatoes. This bear had got 
our wind and was evidently looking for trouble. 
We had never seen him before, neither had we 
molested nor provoked him in the least, and 
yet he came for us. His motives might not 
have been hostile, some will say. As to that, 
I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. 
On the following evening we shot the biggest 
bear that it was our good fortune to secure. 
We had been hunting the same creek for an 
hour, and we were coming out on the delta, 
when about five hundred yards away we saw 
what appeared to- be an unusually large bear 
standing on a branch of the creek swallowing 
a salmon. We crouched low and jumped into 
the canoe. After paddling along the beach for 
a few minutes we got to within two hundred 
yards of where he stood. It was my turn to 
shoot, and I decided to make sure of him by 
crawling in his direction for another hundred 
yards. My gun had a hair trigger and I very 
carelessly went along with it at full cock. Be¬ 
fore I was aware of what had happened, my 
gun fired off in the grass and the big bear was 
up on his hind legs to see where that queer 
noise came from. I immediately threw in an¬ 
other cartridge and shot at the animal just as 
he dropped on all fours. Pie ran off diagonally 
and I fired again while the other men who were 
watching proceedings from the canoe opened Up 
a regular fusilade. The bear dropped dead after 
running forty yards. My first intentional shot 
had hit him in the he^rt and, ranging back, had 
pierced one lung and the intestines. My second 
shot broke one hind leg. Two or three shots 
from the canoe struck him in the belly and 
haunches and yet he managed to go thirty or 
forty yards. He was a beautiful old silver-tip 
and weighed in the neighborhood of seven hun¬ 
dred pounds. The Indian filled the animal’s 
lungs with air by means of a small reed which 
he stuck into his wind pipe, thus inflating the 
lungs as we would a football. This caused the 
dead animal to float, and we towed him along 
behind the canoe to our camp. In the morning 
we photographed our bears and removed their 
hides, throwing the carcasses into the salt water. 
That night we were aroused by a tremendous 
splashing along the beach in front of our tent. 
There was a bright moon and we could dis¬ 
tinguish the fins of two or three huge sharks 
as they fought for the carcasses. By morning 
everything had disappeared. This was a novel 
sight; grizzly bears being devoured by sharks! 
Our Indian now refused to guide us any 
longer unless we increased his pay, alleging 
that where we had been hunting was a “much 
danger creek.” It must be admitted that some 
of the tracks we had seen were enough to com¬ 
mand the respect of the most hardened bear 
hunter. Besides this the long grass on the 
delta was beaten down as if a herd of buffalo 
had been there. We were using the Indian’s 
canoe, and he imagined that we could not pos¬ 
sibly get along without him or his craft. But 
we refused to be bullied by this petty black¬ 
mailing scheme, which, by the way, is common 
among the Alaska Indians in their dealings 
with white men. We therefore returned to 
Juneau, hired another canoe and started back to 
Admiralty Island the next day without a guide. 
When he saw that we were not going to give 
in, our Indian begged to be taken back at the 
original price, but we refused. We returned to 
“much danger creek,” but hunted there in vain 
for two days. Not a hair did we see because 
the place had been entirely “queered” by our 
shooting. We then christened it No-Danger 
Creek, and moved to a new spot where Phelps 
shot one more silver-tip of moderate propor¬ 
tions, the demise of which was not marked by 
any extraordinary circumstances. 
Our bag now' amounted to three silver-tip 
grizzlies, two bald-face grizzlies, so called be¬ 
cause they are gray-colored in the face as con¬ 
trasted with their bodies, which are a russet 
brown hue, and one cinnamon bear. Our stay 
on the island had covered a period of five weeks, 
during which we saw eight or ten bears besides 
the six we actually bagged. 
Some of the adventures here related may 
seem exaggerated perhaps, but it must be borne 
in mind that we were hunting in a country that 
had practically never been disturbed. Besides 
being numerous, the bears, as already hinted, 
were reckless and courageous in the extreme on 
account of their unfamiliarity with men and 
guns. The animals we hunted were grizzlies 
pure and simple, except the cinnamon bear, 
which is a variety of the black bear. They had 
nothing to do with the famous Kadiak bears 
which inhabit an entirely different section of 
Alaska and are of a different species. 
A Legend of the Esopus. 
The picture printed above shows one of the 
reaches of the Esopus Creek in the Catskills. 
Camp Don’t Hurry was located at the point 
below the pool, among the trees. One day a 
man approached from the left and threw a stick 
of blasting powder toward the pool, intending 
to kill trout. Fortunately his aim was poor and 
the shot exploded on the big boulder shown in 
the foreground. Almost instantly from the 
apparently deserted woods hard by appeared the 
anglers, armed with clubs, stones and axes. But 
the creek was higher then and the dynamiter 
escaped while his pursuers were scrambling 
across. 
WHERE QUALITY IS FIRST. 
Campers and sportsmen who demand the best 
should note that the equipment of every scientific 
and exploring expedition for the past fifty years 
has included a supply of Borden's Eagle Brand 
Condensed Milk Keeps in any climate and 
under all conditions. The original and leading 
brand since 1857.— Adv. 
