And, sometimes, they come along in broad daylight.

Mrs. Grey was preparing lunch one morn- ing, when she heard a lumbering tread round the back of her cabin. Then she heard sniffs as Bruin scented food in a box that was nailed to the outside of the cabin wall.

Mrs. Grey had lost food from that box before. Several times during the past few weeks it had been robbed.

“Enough’s enough,” she said to herself, and seized the broom. Out of the door she dashed, round to the back of the cabin she ran. “Get out o’ here,” she shouted, as she swung the dirt collector at the broad rear end of a furry mass.

Bruin “Got.” ROBBING THE ORCHARDS

When autumn comes the bears move down to the rivers to feast on the salmon

Still not satisfied he'll proceed to climb the tree to get the apples that grow on the higher branches.

Fruit trees will carry a big load of apples, but they're not designed to stand three or four hundred pounds of bear meat sprawling along the upper branches. The tree breaks, bruin comes down to the ground in a rush, eats his fill and wanders off. The tree is badly damaged; it will take several years of care to get it back in shape again.

Sometimes bears come to town.

Dip He SEE THINGS ?

A few years ago, as a man left a beer parlour an hour before midnight, he almost bumped into a black-coated fellow. The man had only had a couple that night, so he wasn’t seeing things. He shouted, and bruin ambled away to the railway tracks.

Last year another animal came to town. He wandered round the sports field, then moved off towards the local undertaker’s

After the Kill

that are swarming upriver. Here, in the valleys, they find orchards filled with trees of ripening fruit.

It’s a toss up whether they like fish better than fruit. They certainly go after the plums and the pears and apples.

A bear will circle round a tree, moving slowly on all fours, eating every apple that’s within reach of its piggy snout. Then he'll rise on his hind legs, and make another circle; this brings more fruit within reach.

With the Compliments of

Photo by James Hooker, Big

Bend, B. C.

Game Guide,

establishment. That bear must have changed his mind. He didn’t stop to pick out a coffin; he kept on his way and vanished in the bush.

Sometimes, when taken by surprise, a bear becomes angry. Even then, if given a chance, he will move off. To attack is the exception.

Matt Allard, who lived in the forest for nearly 70 years, tells of many such en- counters.

One day, near his trapper’s home, he startled a mother bear as they met on the trail. The old lady had cubs near by; she was inclined to be ugly. ;

Matt stopped. “Look out, old girl, you'd better stop snarling at me. I don’t like it,” he told her.

Lady Bear kept her upper lip curled back and continued to give Matt her ideas of things.

“Now, that’s enough,” chimed in the trapper. “You'd better stop and move off, or you're likely to get hurt.

Matt held his ground. In a minute or two the bear turned aside. The trapper could hear bush crackling as she moved off to join the cubs.

She-bears with cubs are the ones that pro- vide the element of danger.

For a man to get between a mother and her cubs is to court disaster. The old lady, following the universal instinct to guard her young, will sometimes attack.

Men whose business takes them into the deep forests have a variety of ways of guard- ing against such risks.

Some sing as they move along the trails. Many whistle. Others place a few pebbles in a tin can and keep the thing rattling. One mining engineer in the service of the Provincial Government does a lot of shout- ing and yodeling.

The same idea runs through all these stunts. Bears, hearing such noises, move off before the man gets close. The traveller, usually, passes without knowing there is a bear close at hand.

A number of bears are shot each year; but not enough to reduce their numbers.

It’s a matter of live and ‘let live.’ Except for orchard damage and thefts around camps bears don’t do much damage.

And they do add spice to life for men who spend long hours on lonely trails. —The Nottinghamshire Guardian Weekly.

Jim Daley, mentioned in this article, is not a fictitious character. He came to British Columbia from Nottingham in the twenties, returning to England with his family in LOB 22

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