Shooting the First Bear

ELK AND BEAR COUNTRY IN WYOMING Where Langton Shot His Bear Shooting the First Bear By Frank R. Arnold It was Langton's turn at the Boy Scouts' meeting to tell a ptory, and he told them how he got his first bear. "It was only a yearling," he began, "but I've got his skin now, and I'm prouder of it than anything I own. I've got a cousin in Maine that thinks he's some hunter to shoot a deer, but I tell him he ought to come out here in southern Idaho and visit us and go hunting over in Wyoming with father and me some summer. Father goes over to lower Star Valley every summer, and he says it's the best game country in the west, and of course for game the West can beat the East every time, when it comes to a 'show down.' Father knows, because he's been up there hunting every summer for nearly twenty-five years. Thinks he couldn't stick a year out in the bank if he didn't have August to revert in. He means by that, go back to the time when he was a kid. He was brought up with a Shoshone Indian boy that the Utes had captured when he was only two. They were going to kill him but offered to sell him to grandpa and he gave them two sacks of flour and a heifer for him. He was father's chum till he died, and father says he taught him every- thing about hunting. Knew it all just by instinct because he

614 IMPROVEMENT ERA was an Indian. Father says he could hit a sagebrush hen every time he aimed at one, though he never took a running shot. Too careful of his ammunition, and his eyes weren't good. Indians never have good eyes, because they have so much smoke in their wickiups. They can beat a white man, though, on locating game, even if they can't shoot so well as we can." "Get down to the bear," put in a business-like scout. "This isn't an Indian story." "The bear is coming, all right," replied Langton, "but I want to stuff you first with some good scout "dope.' "Well, last August father and I started out. He's always taken me with him since I was seven, and last summer was my ninth trip. It's a long way up to Star Valley, and I knew what we were coming to and was in a hurry to get there. But father said it wasn't any use to hot-foot it. We had all August ahead of us. We'd get there soon enough. First we went eighty miles in the canyon wagon to Soda Springs. Then hit the trail up to the Blackfoot river, then over a low divide, near Caribou Moun- tain, down the Tincup river into the lower part of Star Valley where father and uncle have a cattle ranch. There we got a pack outfit, left the wagon, and took uncle along with us. We went up the south fork of the Snake river, the roughest trail you ever saw. You've got to do it on horseback. Father says the country is just like it was one thousand years ago. There are game trails everywhere, but you can't tell them from a regular trail. Any one of you old scouts would get lost there dead easy. The river is just as clear, and dashes over the rocks, and is packed with trout. Father says it's the cleanest country he knows. You don't see any sheep up there because the govern- ment won't let them go where they want the elk to increase. "After we'd gone twenty-five miles up this rough country we cume to the south entrance to the Jackson Hole country, and there we made a permanent camp. I didn't get my bear the first day by any means. We were too busy with elk and trout. There used to be white and black tailed deer in that country but now there's nothing but elk. They graze on the high peaks where there are no flies to torment them, and the grass is good. They don't move about much and they can't help putting on flesh. Every day we got two or three. We had more than we three could eat and so jerked a lot to take home. It isn't much work to do, and the dry meat goes great in winter. At night we could cut up the meat thin and put it in layers with fine salt between on a piece of tarpaulin. Next morning we would build a rack of willows, put the meat on top in the sun, and build a smudge underneath to keep off the flies and hurry up the drying.

SHOOTING THE FIRST BEAR 615 \ou keep turning your meat and in three days it is completely dried. You can do the same with trout. We dry a lot every summer, but you want to look out and not smudge too much. One day is enough. That puts a glaze over them and keeps the flies off. The sun does the rest. If you smudge too much it makes them bitter. "I was on the lookout all the time for bears. Father had shot one there the year before and it's risky business. A bear will turn and fight you even if you've shot him through the lungs. Father shot at this one five times and hit him each time but the bear rushed on him just the same. Father's magazine carried only five balls and he had to re-load in a hurry because the bear was coming right at him. You have to shoot them right through the brains and that is hard to do because they have two LANGTONS FATHER WITH TWO BEAR SKINS The Smaller on the Right is the one Langton Shot big muscles on the side of the forehead and the bone between them underneath sticks out and is thick. It takes 'some shoot- ing' to kill a bear, I tell you. Their flesh is spongy and tough. When you hit them, the hole just closes up and doesn't bleed much. Father's bear was a brown one. They are not so bad as a grizzly. Uncle has had lots to do with grizzlies and they are mean beasts. He knew of one once that got into a herd of sheep and when the sheep herder shot at him he turned and made for him. The herder managed to get part way up a tree, but before he got way up the grizzly had him with his claws and teeth. He scratched and bit him but he couldn't keep him from climbing up beyond his reach. You know a grizzly can't climb a tree like

616 IMPROVEMENT ERA a brown bear can. Uncle says that a grizzly is used to being humored. The Indians and cattlemen all steer clear of him as much as they can. And when he gets a chance at you he makes up for being allowed to have his own way so long. Father is always reading Lewis and Clark's journal. You know they went right near the Star Valley country and they say they would rather meet five hostile Indians, any time, than a grizzly. "One afternoon my chance came. I was riding along with father and I saw over on the hillside on the other side of the creek a little brown bear. He was probably coming down to get a drink or looking for service berries. Going slow, too, because a bear is awful awkward coming down hill. They are twice as fast going up. "'Father,' I yelled, 'there's a bear.' 'Where?' said he, and that minute his horse shied and he must have thought he was right near for he had his gun up in a second. 'See him? Over there, father.' I let out quick and pointed up on the hill and right away father shot at him twice. Hit him both times, too. First in the foreleg and then in the hind leg, and then that kid bear disappeared in the brush. He was about two hundred yards away when father shot. We couldn't ride through the brush but we made that two hundred yards dash on foot in a way that would have made anyone of you Scouts hustle to keep up with us. It was hard work climbing up over the rocks with the timber so thick most of the time that you couldn't see the sun. Finally we struck his trail. You could see blood on the ground every few feet. Father had on his fishing boots and he isn't much of a sprinter anyway. I had on my ordinary shoes and was rushing ahead. 'If you're going ahead,' he says, 'you take the gun. It's your bear anyway. You saw it first, but you watch out for him when you find him. He'll fight.' "All the same, father kept as near as he could to me. He was scared, though he didn't say anything about it. After we'd followed the blood about a mile I saw the bear about one hun- dred feet away. He saw me, too, and came right toward me. I was ready for him and was just going to shoot when father came up and yelled to me, 'You sight off that log.' He says my hand was trembling but it wasn't. All the same I sighted off a log and perhaps it was lucky I did. He wtis only forty feet away and I Kit him right under the jaw and it must have gone right through his heart. He kept on for a few feet even after he was hit, then he flopped right down in his tracks, put his head down and was nothing but a little rolled up ball of dead bear. "If he had been an old bear that one shot of mine wouldn't have fixed him. Not much. It would have taken eight or nine, and he was so near, he would have had us at his mercy long

SHOOTING THE FIRST BEAR 617 before we could have fired all those shots. We skinned him right there and that night I was too pleased to sleep. It isn't every day you shoot your first bear." Logan, Utah Game Country in Wyoming The