the edge of a cut bank,
or round the sharp spur of a mountain or the shoulder of a cliff
which walls in a ravine, or else the indistinct game trail he has been
following through the great trees twists sharply to one side to avoid
a rock or a mass of down timber, and behold he surprises old Ephraim
digging for roots, or munching berries, or slouching along the path,
or perhaps rising suddenly from the lush, rank plants amid which he has
been lying. Or it may be that the bear will be spied afar rooting in an
open glade or on a bare hill-side.

In the still-hunt proper it is necessary to find some favorite
feeding-ground, where there are many roots or berry-bearing bushes, or
else to lure the grisly to a carcass. This last method of "baiting" for
bears is under ordinary circumstances the only way which affords even a
moderately fair chance of killing them. They are very cunning, with the
sharpest of noses, and where they have had experience of hunters they
dwell only in cover where it is almost impossible for the best of
still-hunters to approach them.

Nevertheless, in favorable ground a man can often find and kill them by
fair stalking, in berry time, or more especially in the early spring,
before the snow has gone from the mountains, and while the bears are
driven by hunger to roam much abroad and sometimes to seek their food
in the open. In such cases the still-hunter is stirring by the earliest
dawn, and walks with stealthy speed to some high point of observation
from which he can overlook the feeding-grounds where he has previously
discovered sign. From this vantage he scans the country far and near,
either with his own keen eyes or with powerful glasses; and he must
combine patience and good sight with the ability to traverse long
distances noiselessly and yet at speed. He may spend two or three hours
sitting still and looking over a vast tract of country before he will
suddenly spy a bear; or he may see nothing after the most careful search
in a given place, and must then go on half a dozen miles to another,
watching warily as he walks, and continuing this possibly for several
days before getting a glimpse of his game. If the bear are digging
roots, or otherwise procuring their food on the bare hill sides and
table-lands, it is of course comparatively easy to see them; and it is
under such circumstances that this kind of hunting is most successful.
Once seen, the actual stalk may take two or three hours, the natur