Merrill,U.S.A.,who has had about as much experience with bears as I have had,informs me that he has been charged with the utmost determination three times.In each case the attack was delivered before the bear was wounded or even shot at,the animal being roused by the approach of the hunter from his day bed,and charging headlong at them from a distance of twenty or thirty paces.All three bears were killed before they could do any damage.There was a very remarkable incident connected with the killing of one of them.It occurred in the northern spurs of the Bighorn range.Dr.Merrill,in company with an old hunter,had climbed down into a deep,narrow canyon.The bottom was threaded with well-beaten elk trails.While following one of these the two men turned a corner of the canyon and were instantly charged by an old she-grisly,so close that it was only by good luck that one of the hurried shots disabled her and caused her to tumble over a cut bank where she was easily finished.They found that she had been lying directly across the game trail,on a smooth well beaten patch of bare earth,which looked as if it had been dug up,refilled,and trampled down.Looking curiously at this patch they saw a bit of hide only partially covered at one end;digging down they found the body of a well grown grisly cub.Its skull had been crushed,and the brains licked out,and there were signs of other injuries.The hunters pondered long over this strange discovery,and hazarded many guesses as to its meaning.At last they decided that probably the cub had been killed,and its brains eaten out,either by some old male-grisly or by a cougar,that the mother had returned and driven away the murderer,and that she had then buried the body and lain above it,waiting to wreak her vengeance on the first passer-by.
Old Tazewell Woody,during his thirty years'life as a hunter in the Rockies and on the great plains,killed very many grislies.He always exercised much caution in dealing with them;and,as it happened,he was by some suitable tree in almost every case when he was charged.He would accordingly climb the tree (a practice of which I do not approve however);and the bear would look up at him and pass on without stopping.Once,when he was hunting in the mountains with a companion,the latter,who was down in a valley,while Woody was on the hill-side,shot at a bear.The first thing Woody knew the wounded grisly,running up-hill,was almost on him from behind.As he turned it seized his rifle in its jaws.He wrenched the rifle round,while the bear still gripped it,and pulled trigger,sending a bullet into its shoulder;whereupon it struck him with its paw,and knocked him over the rocks.By good luck he fell in a snow bank and was not hurt in the least.Meanwhile the bear went on and they never got it.
Once he had an experience with a bear which showed a very curious mixture of rashness and cowardice.He and a companion were camped in a little tepee or wigwam,with a bright fire in front of it,lighting up the night.There was an inch of snow on the ground.Just after they went to bed a grisly came close to camp.Their dog rushed out and they could hear it bark round in the darkness for nearly an hour;then the bear drove it off and came right into camp.It went close to the fire,picking up the scraps of meat and bread,pulled a haunch of venison down from a tree,and passed and repassed in front of the tepee,paying no heed whatever to the two men,who crouched in the doorway talking to one another.Once it passed so close that Woody could almost have touched it.Finally his companion fired into it,and off it ran,badly wounded,without an attempt at retaliation.Next morning they followed its tracks in the snow,and found it a quarter or a mile away.It was near a pine and had buried itself under the loose earth,pine needles,and snow;Woody's companion almost walked over it,and putting his rifle to its ear blew out its brains.
In all his experience Woody had personally seen but four men who were badly mauled by bears.Three of these were merely wounded.One was bitten terribly in the back.Another had an arm partially chewed off.
The third was a man named George Dow,and the accident happened to him on the Yellowstone about the year 1878.He was with a pack animal at the time,leading it on a trail through a wood.Seeing a big she-bear with cubs he yelled at her;whereat she ran away,but only to cache her cubs,and in a minute,having hidden them,came racing back at him.His pack animal being slow he started to climb a tree;but before he could get far enough up she caught him,almost biting a piece out of the calf of his leg,pulled him down,bit and cuffed him two or three times,and then went on her way.
The only time Woody ever saw a man killed by a bear was once when he had given a touch of variety to his life by shipping on a New Bedford whaler which had touched at one of the Puget Sound ports.The whaler went up to a part of Alaska where bears were very plentiful and bold.
One day a couple of boats'crews landed;and the men,who were armed only with an occasional harpoon or lance,scattered over the beach,one of them,a Frenchman,wading into the water after shell-fish.
Suddenly a bear emerged from some bushes and charged among the astonished sailors,who scattered in every direction;but the bear,said Woody,"just had it in for that Frenchman,"and went straight at him.Shrieking with terror he retreated up to his neck in the water;but the bear plunged in after him,caught him,and disembowelled him.
One of the Yankee mates then fired a bomb lance into the bear's hips,and the savage beast hobbled off into the dense cover of the low scrub,where the enraged sailor folk were unable to get at it.
The truth is that while the grisly generally avoids a battle if possible,and often acts with great cowardice,it is never safe to take liberties with him;he usually fights desperately and dies hard when wounded and cornered,and exceptional individuals take the aggressive on small provocation.
