If out in the late fall or early spring,it is often possible to follow a bear's trail in the snow;having come upon it either by chance or hard hunting,or else having found where it leads from some carcass on which the beast has been feeding.In the pursuit one must exercise great caution,as at such times the hunter is easily seen a long way off,and game is always especially watchful for any foe that may follow its trail.
Once I killed a grisly in this manner.It was early in the fall,but snow lay on the ground,while the gray weather boded a storm.My camp was in a bleak,wind-swept valley,high among the mountains which form the divide between the head-waters of the Salmon and Clarke's Fork of the Columbia.All night I had lain in my buffalo-bag,under the lea of a windbreak of branches,in the clump of fir-trees,where I had halted the preceding evening.At my feet ran a rapid mountain torrent,its bed choked with ice-covered rocks;I had been lulled to sleep by the stream's splashing murmur,and the loud moaning of the wind along the naked cliffs.At dawn I rose and shook myself free of the buffalo robe,coated with hoar-frost.The ashes of the fire were lifeless;in the dim morning the air was bitter cold.I did not linger a moment,but snatched up my rifle,pulled on my fur cap and gloves,and strode off up a side ravine;as I walked I ate some mouthfuls of venison,left over from supper.
Two hours of toil up the steep mountain brought me to the top of a spur.The sun had risen,but was hidden behind a bank of sullen clouds.On the divide I halted,and gazed out over a vast landscape,inconceivably wild and dismal.Around me towered the stupendous mountain masses which make up the backbone of the Rockies.From my feet,as far as I could see,stretched a rugged and barren chaos of ridges and detached rock masses.Behind me,far below,the stream wound like a silver ribbon,fringed with dark conifers and the changing,dying foliage of poplar and quaking aspen.In front the bottoms of the valleys were filled with the sombre evergreen forest,dotted here and there with black,ice-skimmed tarns;and the dark spruces clustered also in the higher gorges,and were scattered thinly along the mountain sides.The snow which had fallen lay in drifts and streaks,while,where the wind had scope it was blown off,and the ground left bare.
For two hours I walked onwards across the ridges and valleys.Then among some scattered spruces,where the snow lay to the depth of half a foot,I suddenly came on the fresh,broad trail of a grisly.The brute was evidently roaming restlessly about in search of a winter den,but willing,in passing,to pick up any food that lay handy.At once I took the trail,travelling above and to one side,and keeping a sharp look-out ahead.The bear was going across wind,and this made my task easy.I walked rapidly,though cautiously;and it was only in crossing the large patches of bare ground that I had to fear making a noise.Elsewhere the snow muffled my footsteps,and made the trail so plain that I scarcely had to waste a glance upon it,bending my eyes always to the front.
At last,peering cautiously over a ridge crowned with broken rocks,Isaw my quarry,a big,burly bear,with silvered fur.He had halted on an open hillside,and was busily digging up the caches of some rock gophers or squirrels.He seemed absorbed in his work,and the stalk was easy.Slipping quietly back,I ran towards the end of the spur,and in ten minutes struck a ravine,of which one branch ran past within seventy yards of where the bear was working.In this ravine was a rather close growth of stunted evergreens,affording good cover,although in one or two places I had to lie down and crawl through the snow.When I reached the point for which I was aiming,the bear had just finished rooting,and was starting off.A slight whistle brought him to a standstill,and I drew a bead behind his shoulder,and low down,resting the rifle across the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce.
At the crack he ran off at speed,making no sound,but the thick spatter of blood splashes,showing clear on the white snow,betrayed the mortal nature of the wound.For some minutes I followed the trail;and then,topping a ridge,I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in a snow drift at the foot of a low rock-wall,from which he had tumbled.
The usual practice of the still-hunter who is after grisly is to toll it to baits.The hunter either lies in ambush near the carcass,or approaches it stealthily when he thinks the bear is at its meal.
One day while camped near the Bitter Root Mountains in Montana I found that a bear had been feeding on the carcass of a moose which lay some five miles from the little open glade in which my tent was pitched,and I made up my mind to try to get a shot at it that afternoon.Istayed in camp till about three o'clock,lying lazily back on the bed of sweet-smelling evergreen boughs,watching the pack ponies as they stood under the pines on the edge of the open,stamping now and then,and switching their tails.The air was still,the sky a glorious blue;at that hour in the afternoon even the September sun was hot.The smoke from the smouldering logs of the camp fire curled thinly upwards.Little chipmunks scuttled out from their holes to the packs,which lay in a heap on the ground,and then scuttled madly back again.
A couple of drab-colored whisky-jacks,with bold mien and fearless bright eyes,hopped and fluttered round,picking up the scraps,and uttering an extraordinary variety of notes,mostly discordant;so tame were they that one of them lit on my outstretched arm as I half dozed,basking in the sunshine.
