3SE35 
5 
January, 1923 
i 
i 
U: 
two or three minutes and using that 
great organ for protection, his nose, to 
tell him if danger lurked about. I could 
not get a good sight on him as he was 
lying down, so I crept up another 20 
yards where I was a trifle higher, and 
the next time he lowered his head I 
squeezed the trigger. He turned a com¬ 
plete somersault, ran twenty feet and 
dropped, and when we got to him he 
was dead. We were disappointed, how¬ 
ever, as he only measured seven and a 
half feet. It is an extremely hard thing 
when a bear is in the alders or lying 
down to approximately tell within a 
couple of feet just how large he is. 
Our time was now getting short and 
I was extremely anxious to secure an¬ 
other large male, as well as a female 
and cubs for the museum, but the wind 
was always against us, blowing steadily 
from the south, and not giving us a 
chance to work a certain valley which 
ran into the main one, and which we 
had reason to believe would be pro¬ 
ductive of results. Twice we went down 
to it, but-each time we found that the 
wind was drawing right into it. 
On one of those visits we saw an 
extraordinary sight. King had been up 
this valley and had told of seeing a 
female with five offspring, three being 
cubs and two yearlings, but he did not 
get near enough to determine if they 
were all of one litter. 
While we were waiting at the mouth 
of this valley hoping for a change of 
wind we saw the same group, but had 
the good fortune to get within about 300 
yards of it. It certainly was a rare treat 
to see that mother watching over her 
brood. She was a huge beast, by far 
the largest female that Oscar had ever 
scen and if it had not been for her 
family she certainly would have been 
taken for a large male and a good 
The home of the Alaska brown bear 
trophy. With the binoculars we en¬ 
joyed watching them feed, and noticed 
the care the mother gave her cubs. She 
was always coming out of the alders, 
and getting the young ones back in cover 
again. Oscar and I made up our minds 
they were all yearlings, as the two that 
were a trifle larger were probably 
males. We wished her long life and we 
hope that such a good breeder will long 
escape the bullet of too ardent a hunter. 
She was the lightest colored bear of any 
we had seen; one might almost have 
called her color a dirty polar. 
YV7 E now had some rough weather for 
a few days and did not move far 
from camp. One day, after lunch, I took 
a nap but was awakened by Oscar com¬ 
ing to the tent and excitedly calling me, 
to hurry and get my gun, as there was 
a big bear just a short distance from 
camp. He had seen him while he was 
cleaning out the last skull. It did not 
take me long to get into my boots and 
hunting-coat and start up after him, but 
here the unexpected happened. There 
had been a steady wind blowing from 
the south for a week but in the space 
of fifteen minutes after I started for 
the bear it died out completely, and then 
it shifted to the north, but we still had 
a chance to get to the leeward of him. 
We finally came to a place where we 
could get a good view and found there 
were two bears, one a dirty yellow, and 
the other a good brown, the latter the 
larger of the two. 
We worked around until we were 
about opposite them, but they were about 
500 yards above us. We had good cover 
to use in working past them and if the 
wind did not play us false we felt we 
had a good chance to get the larger one. 
We had to pass a small draw, however, 
and as we did so we felt that the wind 
was being sucked up into it. When once 
again we got sight of our bears, they 
were both mushing it for the top of the 
range in the direction of Pavlof volcano, 
as they had got our wind. The large 
brown would stop every 200 yards or so 
and look back; he was, I judged, some 
800 yards away, and I felt it was no use 
trying for him at that distance, so we 
decided to let the bears go and take the 
chance of trailing them the next morn¬ 
ing, as we knew they had not seen us. 
In another half hour the wind was 
coming strong again from the south. 
(Continued on page 36) 
The large bear killed in Head Valley 
