"Round Timber Line 
Part IV.—Conclusion 
With Rifle and Pack Train in the Canadian 
Rockies—Bears—The Outfit 
By R. B. HAMILTON 
ARLY morning found us on top of the 
mountain again, having climbed it by 
way of a big slide east , of our camp. 
We worked eastward all morning, spying care¬ 
fully into each of the many little valleys that 
lay between the broken ridges, running down 
from the main backbone of the mountain. 
This whole mountain side was splendid grizzly 
country, and we had high hopes of running 
across one of the monsters. Ever since we had 
entered Grizzly Valley we had been finding fre¬ 
quent bear signs, some old but many quite fresh, 
and we knew that the thick brush in the deep 
little valleys hid game that was even more to 
be desired than the big white billies among the 
rocks. No wonder then that we carefully scan¬ 
ned every open patch of green below us when 
any moment might bring a great brown body 
into the field of our lenses. Of course we had 
talked for many an hour in the short evenings 
of grizzlies and their habits and the hunting of 
them, and Bill had drawn from his store of ex¬ 
periences for my benefit. Manson had killed so. 
many grizzlies himself and assisted or been pres¬ 
ent at the killing of so many others that natu¬ 
rally the subject did not appeal to him in just 
the same way that it did to me. On one point 
he agreed with the opinion of other hear hunters 
I had.met in the West that the ferocity of the 
grizzly was very much over-rated, and that the 
high power rifle made grizzly' hunting a compara¬ 
tively tame and unexciting sport. Bonaparte, like 
nearly all Indians, was afraid of bears, but 
Bill said he had never seen but two charge a 
hunter, and one of these turned off before reach¬ 
ing him. The other was the exception which 
proved the rule, but even in this case the modern 
rifle proved too much for him, and he never lived 
to reach his opponent. 
The season was against us, as the brush at 
that time was so thick that finding one was a mere 
matter of luck. The proper time is from May 
15 to the end of June. Then the snow lies deep 
in the valleys and on the mountain sides, except 
where the avalanches have rushed down the steep 
slopes, leaving a clean-swept path. On these 
slides the first green things of the spring appear, 
and there the bears, fresh from their winter’s 
sleep, betake themselves to feast. Hunting them 
then is comparatively easy and certain, provided 
one knows their favorite valleys. The hunter 
finds a favorable position from which he can 
watch several slides, and there waits until 
a grizzly appears. As the bear almost always 
returns to the same feeding ground day after 
day, this is almost a certain way to get a shot 
at one. According to Bill the grizzly is not espe- 
THROWING THE DIAMOND HITCH. 
daily hard to kill; does not, in fact, take as 
much killing as a goat. Bill himself uses a 
6 mm. magazine rifle, and has more than once 
killed grizzlies by one shot from it. The idea 
of this tiny bullet putting the monarch of the 
mountain down and out seems at first blush 
ridiculous, until one has seen the tremendous 
damage inflicted by it. 
Few of the miners and prospectors are hun¬ 
ters, except as the need of fresh meat makes 
hunting necessary, and almost without exception 
they have an immense respect for the grizzly, 
often amounting to abject fear. I could, how¬ 
ever, nowhere learn of any authentic instance 
of bears attacking men other than a rare case 
or two of a wounded grizzly charging a hunter, 
all ending with the death of the bear before he 
reached the man, or his losing his nerve and 
turning tail. Not long before our trip two pros¬ 
pectors were working near the summit of a high 
peak when they saw a grizzly far below them 
in the valley. Panic stricken, they emptied their 
old .45 rifles at the animal, though it was far out 
of range, and then, not even attempting to re¬ 
load, dropped their tools and fled down the other 
side of the mountain. Their tools are still there. 
Actual grizzly hunting is usually done at very 
short range. Thirty and forty feet are not un¬ 
usual distances, particularly if the bear is found 
late in the afternoon, as is most often the case. 
Even at this range misses are not unknown. 
Bill tells of one Englishman hunting with him 
who missed with both barrels of his double ex¬ 
press at twenty feet in broad daylight. 
As on previous days, our careful spying was 
not rewarded by any vision of a silver tip, and 
we finally reached the easterly end of the main 
ridge without having seen any game. Panther 
tracks were quite common, as they were also on 
the slopes of Mount Penrose, and both Bill and 
Bonaparte declared that the appearance of these 
animals in considerable numbers during the last 
two or three years, probably driven back from 
the coast by advancing civilization, has been the 
cause of the. marked decrease in the number of 
goats. The sheep are apparently better able to 
get away from them, but the goats have suf¬ 
fered, and certainly are not as numerous as they 
were a few years ago, although the number shot 
in that time is comparatively so small as to be 
negligible. Until two or three years ago panthers 
were never known in this district, but latterly 
they have become very numerous; still one could 
hardly say they are often seen, since they are. 
as everyone knows, not easy to see. Their tracks, 
however, they cannot hide, and we came across 
many of them. On our way back to camp we 
halted for a couple of hours to watch a valley 
that looked as if it certainly ought to hold game 
of some kind. 
While we sat there a shrill “Cheep-chee-ee- 
eep’’ attracted our attention, and a careful scru- 
