140 MOOSE HUNTING

days to bear hunting. On the particular day the incident
happened there were three of us together. It wasa perfect
beast of a day: there was fresh snow on the mountains
not far above our camp, it was bitterly cold, fog hung
about in patches, and altogether it was rather hopeless-
looking sort of weather for hunting. Still, sooner than
hang about camp doing nothing except hug a fire and
getting smoke in our eyes, we climbed up almost to timber
line so that we could spy the surrounding country. No
sooner had we got up than a fog settled down on us,
so all we could do was to light a small fire out of any
dry sticks we could find and wait for a change. In an
hour or so it cleared away, and almost immediately I
spotted a black bear about half a mile away. It was all
open country between us and our quarry, and while I
was trying to devise a way of stalking him, he suddenly
bolted as hard as he could lay legs to the ground. What
had frightened him was an unfathomable mystery; he
could not have got our wind, as we were a long way above
him, nor was it possible for him to have seen or heard us.
Now following a scared bear is almost always just waste
of time, but as he had gone the way we wanted to go
I thought we might just as well edge down the hill to
where he had been, and pick up his tracks in hopes of
solving the problem of his flight. This we did, and as
there was snow on the ground, even at the level the bear
had been, it was no trouble to keep on his line. You will
by this time be wondering what on earth this has to do
with moose “calling,” but if you have a little patience
you will find out.

After travelling about two miles, during which time there
was no evidence to account for the bear’s taking fright,
we came to a huge, deep gulch, with a stream running
down through the bottom of it. There was heavy, dense
timber on our side, but on the other the timber was cut
by several open grassy spots with no snow on them.
On one of these openings we spied our friend the bear.
He had recovered from his fright and was busily engaged
in picking berries. Now it chanced that the timber we