Taking our stand, we waited, watching with much interest the great ungainly creature as she kept nibbling the young grass and digging up roots.  At times she would seem to be heading in our direction, and then again would turn and slowly feed away.  Suddenly something seemed to alarm her, for she made a dash of some fifty yards down the valley, and then, seeming to recover her composure, began to feed again, all the while working nearer and nearer.  The bear was now well down in the bottom of the valley, which was at this point covered with alders and intersected by a small stream.  There were open patches in the underbrush, and it was my intention to shoot when she passed through one of these, for the ground was covered with over a foot of snow, which would offer a very tempting background.

While all this was passing quickly through my mind, she suddenly made another bolt down the valley, and, when directly opposite our position, turned at right angles, crossed the brook, and came straight through the alders into the open, not eighty yards away from us.  As she made her appearance I could not help being greatly impressed by the massive head and high shoulders on which stood the pronounced tuft of hair.  I had most carefully seen to my sights long before, for I knew how much would probably depend on my first shot.  It surely seemed as if fortune was with me that day, as at last I had a fair chance at the game I had come so far to seek.  Aiming with the greatest care for the lungs and heart, I slowly pressed the trigger.  The bear gave a deep, angry growl, and bit for the wound,[4] which told me my bullet was well placed; but she kept her feet and made a dash for the thicket.  I was well above, and so commanded a fairly clear view as she crashed through the leafless alders.  Twice more I fired, and each time with the most careful aim.  At the last shot she dropped with an angry moan.  My hunters shook my hand, and their faces told me how glad they were at my final success after so many long weeks of persistent work.  Including the time spent last year and this year, this bear represented eighty-seven days of actual hunting.

[Footnote 4:  When a bullet strikes a Kadiak bear, he will always bite for the wound and utter a deep and angry growl; whereas of the eleven bears which my friend and I shot on the Alaska peninsula, although they, too, bit for the wound, not one uttered a sound.]

I at once started down to look at the bear, when out upon the mountain opposite the bull was seen.  He had heard the shots and was now once more but a moving black speck on the snow, but it will always be a mystery to me how he could have heard the three reports of my small-bore rifle so far away and against a strong wind.  My natives suggested that the shots must have echoed, and in this I think they were right; but even then it shows how abnormally the sense of hearing has been developed in these bears.

I was sorry to find that the small-bore rifle did not give as great a shock as I had expected, for my first two bullets had gone through the bear’s lungs and heart without knocking her off her feet.