rs especially dangerous; while others can be turned or driven back
even by a shot which is not mortal. They show the same variability in
their behavior when wounded. Often a big bear, especially if charging,
will receive a bullet in perfect silence, without flinching or seeming
to pay any heed to it; while another will cry out and tumble about, and
if charging, even though it may not abandon the attack, will pause for a
moment to whine or bite at the wound.

Sometimes a single bite causes death. One of the most successful bear
hunters I ever knew, an old fellow whose real name I never heard as he
was always called Old Ike, was killed in this way in the spring or early
summer of 1886 on one of the head-waters of the Salmon. He was a very
good shot, had killed nearly a hundred bears with the rifle, and,
although often charged, had never met with any accident, so that he had
grown somewhat careless. On the day in question he had met a couple of
mining prospectors and was travelling with them, when a grisly crossed
his path. The old hunter immediately ran after it, rapidly gaining, as
the bear did not hurry when it saw itself pursued, but slouched slowly
forwards, occasionally turning its head to grin and growl. It soon went
into a dense grove of young spruce, and as the hunter reached the edge
it charged fiercely out. He fired one hasty shot, evidently wounding the
animal, but not seriously enough to stop or cripple it; and as his two
companions ran forward they saw the bear seize him with its wide-spread
jaws, forcing him to the ground. They shouted and fired, and the beast
abandoned the fallen man on the instant and sullenly retreated into the
spruce thicket, whither they dared not follow it. Their friend was at
his last gasp; for the whole side of the chest had been crushed in by
the one bite, the lungs showing between the rent ribs.

Very often, however, a bear does not kill a man by one bite, but after
throwing him lies on him, biting him to death. Usually, if no assistance
is at hand, such a man is doomed; although if he pretends to be dead,
and has the nerve to lie quiet under very rough treatment, it is just
possible that the bear may leave him alive, perhaps after half burying
what it believes to be the body. In a very few exceptional instances men
of extraordinary prowess with the knife have succeeded in beating off
a bear, and even in mortally wounding it, but in most cases a
single-handed struggle, at close qua