Hunting with the Bow and Arrow Part 24

We started to skin our quarry. It was a stupendous job, as he weighed nearly one thousand pounds, and lay on the steep canyon side ready to roll on and crush us. But with ropes we lashed him by the neck to a tree and split him up the back, later box-skinning the legs according to the method required by the museum.

By flashlight, acetylene lamp, candle light, fire light and moonlight, we labored. We used up all our knives, and having neglected to bring our whet-stones, sharpened our blades on the volcanic boulders, about us. By a.s.siduous industry for nine straight hours, we finished him after a fas.h.i.+on. His skin was thick and like scar tissue. His meat was all tendons and gristle. The hide was as tight as if glued on.

In the middle of the night we stopped long enough to broil some grizzly cub steaks and brew a pot of tea; then we went at it again.

As we dismembered him we weighed the parts. The veins were absolutely dry of blood, and without this substance, which represents a loss of nearly 10 per cent of his weight, he was nine hundred and sixteen pounds. There was hardly an inch of fat on his back. At the end of the autumn this adipose layer would be nearly six inches thick. He would then have weighed over fourteen hundred pounds. He stood nearly four feet high at the shoulders, while his skull measured eighteen and a half inches long; his entire body length was seven feet four inches.

As we cleaned his bones we hurled great slabs of muscle down the canyon, knowing from experience that this would be a sign for all other bears to leave the vicinity. Only the wolves and jays will eat grizzly meat.

At last we finished him, as the sun rose over the mountain ridges and gilded all the canyon with glory. We cleaned and salted the pelts, packed them on our backs, and, dripping with salt brine and bear grease, staggered to the nearest wagon trail. The hide of the big bear, with unskinned paws and skull, weighed nearly one hundred and fifty pounds.

We cached our trophies, tramped the weary miles back to camp, cleaned up, packed and wandered to the nearest station, from which we ordered a machine. When this arrived we gathered our belongings, turned our various specimens over to a park ranger, to be given the final treatments, and started on our homeward trip.

We were so exhausted from loss of sleep, exertion and excitement, that we sank into a stupor that lasted almost the entire way home.

The California Academy of Sciences now has a handsome representative group of _Ursus Horribilis Imperator_. We have the extremely satisfactory feeling that we killed five of the finest grizzly bear in Wyoming. The sport was fair and clean, and we did it all with the bow and arrow.

XV

ALASKAN ADVENTURES

It seems as if Fate had chosen my hunting companion, Arthur Young, to add to the honor and the legends of the bow. At any rate it fell to his lot to make two trips to Alaska between the years 1922 and 1925.

He and his friend, Jack Robertson, were financed in a project to collect moving-picture scenes of the Northland.

They were instructed to show the country in all its seasonal phases, to depict the rivers, forests, glaciers and mountains, particularly to record the summer beauties of Alaska. The animal life was to be featured in full:--fish, birds, small game, caribou, mountain sheep, moose and bear, all were to be captured on the celluloid film, and with all this a certain amount of hunting with the bow was to be included and the whole woven into a little story of adventure.

Equipped with cameras, camp outfit and archery tackle, they sailed for Seward. From here they ventured into the wilderness as circ.u.mstances directed. Sometimes they went by boat to Kadiac Island, sometimes to the Kenai Peninsula, or they journeyed by dog sleds and packs inland.

They spent the better part of two years in this hard, exacting work, often carrying as much as a hundred pounds on their backs for many miles. Great credit must be given to Art's partner Jack Robertson, for his energy, bravery and fort.i.tude. His work with the camera will make history, but for the time being we shall focus our attention on the man with the bow. Only a small portion of Young's time was devoted to hunting, the exigencies incidental to travel and gathering animal pictures were such that archery was of secondary importance.

He hunted and shot ptarmigan, some on the wing; he added grouse and rabbit meat to the scant larder of their "go light" outfit. He shot graylings and salmon in the streams. He could easily have killed caribou because they operated close to vast herds of these foolish beasts. However, at the time it seemed that there was no hurry about the matter; they had meat in camp, and pictures were of greater interest just then. They expected to see plenty of these animals.

Strangely enough the herd suddenly left the country and no further opportunity presented itself for shooting them. This was no great disappointment because the sport was too easy. What did seem worth while was the killing of the great Alaskan moose. These beasts are the largest game animal on this continent, with the exception of the almost extinct bison.

Young had his first chance at moose while on the Kenai Peninsula. Here the boys were camped and having finished his camera work Art took a day off to hunt.

In the afternoon he discovered a large old bull lying down in a burnt-over area, where approach by stealth was possible, so he began his stalk with utmost caution, paying particular attention to scent and sound. By crawling on his hands and knees he came within a hundred and fifty yards, when his progress was stopped by a fallen tree. To go around it, would expose him to vision; to climb over, would alarm the animal by snapping twigs; so Young decided to dig under. He worked with his hunting knife and hands for one hour to accomplish this operation.

When he had pa.s.sed this obstacle he continued his crawling till he reached a distance of sixty yards. At this stage Art called the old bull with a birch bark horn, then the moose heard him and stood up. The brush was so thick that he could not shoot immediately, but waited as the old bull circled to catch his wind and answered the challenge. When he presented a fair target at seventy yards or so, Art drove an arrow at him. It struck deep in the flank, up to the feather ranging forward.

The bull was only startled a trifle and trotted off a hundred yards.

Here he stopped to look and listen. Young drew his bow again, and overshooting his mark, his arrow struck one of the broad thick palms of the antlers. The point pierced the two inches of bone and wedged tight, making a sharp report as it hit. This started the animal off at a fast trot. Young followed slowly at some distance and soon had the satisfaction of seeing the moose waver in his course and lie down.

After a reasonable wait the hunter advanced to his quarry and found him dead. The triumph of such an episode is more or less mixed with misery.

The pleasure undoubtedly would have been greater had some other l.u.s.ty bow man been with him, but as it was he had to feast his eyes alone, moreover he had to make his way back to camp, which was some eight miles off, and night rapidly coming on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BULL MOOSE BAGGED ON THE KENAI PENINSULA]

This part of the story was just as thrilling to Art, because he must stumble through the rough land of "little sticks" in the dark with the constant apprehension of meeting some unwelcome Alaska brown bear, which were thick there, and also the extremely unpleasant experience of running into dead trees, tripping over fallen limbs and dropping into gullies. He reached camp ultimately, I believe. Next day he returned with his companion for meat, his antler trophy and the picture, which we present.

This bull weighed approximately sixteen hundred pounds and had a spread of sixty inches across its antlers.

Upon the second expedition a year later, Young bagged another moose.

Here the arrow penetrated both sides of the chest and caused almost instant death, showing that size is not a hindrance to a quick exodus.

It is surprising even to us to see the extreme facility with which an arrow can interrupt the essential physiological processes of life and destroy it. We have come to the belief that no beast is too tough or too large to be slain by an arrow. With especially constructed heads sharpened to the utmost nicety, I have shot through a double thickness of elephant hide, two inches of cardboard, a bag of shaving and gone into an inch of wood. We feel sure that having penetrated the hide of a pachyderm his ribs can easily be severed and the heart or pulmonary cavity entered. Any considerable incision of either of these vital areas must soon cause death. And this is a field experiment which we propose to try in the near future.

There is a legitimate excuse for shooting animals such as moose, where food is a problem and the bow bears an honorable part in the episode.

We feel moreover that by using the bow on this large game we are playing ultimately for game preservation. For by shaming the "mighty hunter" and his unfair methods in the use of powerful destructive agents, we feel that we help to develop better sporting ethics.

It was partly on this account, and partly to answer the dare of those who have said, "You may hunt the tame bears of California and Wyoming, but you cannot fool with the big Kadiac bears of Alaska with your little bow and arrow," that Young determined to go after these monsters and see if they were as fierce and invulnerable as claimed. At the present writing we who shoot the bow have slain more than a dozen bears with our shafts, but the mighty Kadiac brown grizzly has laughed at us from his frozen lair--as the literary nature fakir might say--we have been told that all that is necessary if you wish to meet a brownie, is to give him your address in Alaska and he will look you up. Also we have been told that once insulted he will tear a house down to "get even with you,"--so I shook Art's hand good-bye, when he started on this Kadiac escapade, and told him to "give 'em h.e.l.l."

After a long time he came back to San Francisco, and this is the story he told me--and Art has no guile in his system but is as straight as a bowstring.

"We made a false start in going after our bears. We took a boat from Seward and sailed to Seldie, then to Kenai Peninsula. Here we hunted for two solid weeks and found practically no signs of brownies.

"I decided at the end of this period to waste no more time, but to pull out of the country and sail back to Seward. We had but a short time to complete our picture before the last boat left the Arctic waters, but hearing of good bear signs on Kadiac Island we hit out for this place and landed in Uganik Bay. Here in the Long Arm, we found a country with many streams flowing down from the mountains which const.i.tute this Island, and much small timber in combination with open gra.s.sy glades. A type of country that is particularly suited for photographic work and bow hunting.

"After several days' exploring we discovered that the bears were catching salmon in the streams and we were successful in photographing as many as seven grizzlies at once. We took pictures of the bears wading in the water looking for fish. Usually the bear slaps the salmon out of the stream, then goes up on the bank and eats it. The "humpies"

were so plentiful here, however, that they were tossed out on the bank, but not eaten, the bear preferring to capture one while in the water then wade about on his hind legs while he held the fish in his arms and devoured it.

"We got all this and many comic antics of young bears climbing trees and playing about by using a telephoto lens. After the camera man was satisfied I proposed that we 'pull off' a 'stunt' with the bow.

"By good fortune we saw four bears coming down the mountain side to fish. They were making their way slowly through an open valley. The camera was stationed at a commanding point and I ran up a dry wash thickly grown with willow and alder to head off the bears. I was able to get within a hundred yards by use of the willow cover, then the brush became too thin to hide me, so I walked boldly out into the open to meet the bears. I practically invited them to charge since they were reputed to be so easily insulted. At first they paid little attention to me, then the two in advance sat up on their haunches in astonishment and curiosity. I approached to a distance of fifty yards, then the largest brownie began champing his jaws and growling; then he 'pinned back his ears' preparing to come at me. Just as he was about to lunge forward I shot him in the chest. The arrow went deep and stuck out a foot beyond his shoulder. He dropped on all fours and before he could make up his mind what hit him, I shot him again in the flank. This turned him and feeling himself badly wounded he wheeled about and ran.

While this was going on an old female also stood in a menacing att.i.tude, but as the wounded bear galloped past her, she came to the ground and ran diagonally from us. All of them followed suit, and as they swept out of the field of vision the wounded bear weakened and fell less than a hundred yards from the camera.

"True to his standards the camera man continued to grind out the film to the very last, so the whole picture is complete. You will see it some day for yourself and it will answer all doubts about the invulnerable status of the Kadiac bears."

Young himself was not particularly elated over this conquest. He knew long ago that the Kadiac bear was no more formidable than the grizzlies we had slain and he only undertook this adventure for show purposes.

Moreover though he used his heavy osage orange bow and usual broad-heads, he declares that he believes he can kill the largest bear in Alaska with a fifty pound weapon and proportionately adjusted arrows. Both Young and I are convinced of the necessity of very sharp broad-heads, and trust more to a keen blade and a quick flight than to power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT KADIAK BEAR BROUGHT LOW]

During his Alaskan travels Art preferred his Osage bows to the yew.

They stood being dragged over rocks and falling down mountain sides better than the softer yew wood. His three bows were under five feet six inches in length, short for convenience and each pulled over eighty-five pounds. The country in which he worked was so rocky that it was most disastrous on arrows, and every shot that missed meant a shattered shaft.

Possibly his roughest trip was one taken to picture mountain goats.

Here a funny incident occurred. Jack and Art were stalking a herd of these wary creatures with the camera when suddenly around a point of rock the whole band of goats appeared. Art was ahead and had only just time enough to duck down on his hands and knees and hide his face close to the ground. He stayed so still that the entire flock pa.s.sed close by him almost touching his body, while the camera man did his work from a concealed ledge higher up. Though Young counts it little to his credit, he shot one of these male goats, which was poised on so precipitous a point that it fell over and over down the mountain side and was lost as a trophy and as camp meat. Humiliating as such an episode may be, it serves, however, to add a coup to the archer's count. And there we let the matter rest.

But what is of greater interest is his outwitting a Rocky Mountain Big Horn. This animal is considered the greatest game trophy in America. It is an extremely alert sheep, all eyes and wisdom. If you expose yourself but a second, though you be a mile away from the ram, probably you will be seen. And though the sheep may not move while you look at him, he is gone when you have completed your toilsome climb and peer over the last ledge of rock preparatory to shooting. Ned Frost used to say that when he hunted Big Horns he paid no attention to hearing or smell, but he was so careful about sight, that when he raised his head cautiously over a ridge to observe the sheep, he always lifted a stone and peered underneath it, or picked up a bunch of gra.s.s and gazed through it.

Most hunters are content to stalk this game within three or four hundred yards, then aim at it with telescopic sights. It is the last word in good hunting.