This bear while charging had his head stretched forward, ears flat, and teeth clinched, with his lips drawn well back, and his eyes glaring.  I am convinced that it was only Ivan’s great presence of mind which prevented a most serious accident.

It is a strange fact that a well placed bullet will knock the fight out of such game; but if they are once thoroughly aroused it takes much more lead to kill them.  When they had got more cartridges my friend with two natives proceeded to follow this bear up; but though they tracked him some miles, he was never recovered.

The Aleuts when they follow up a wounded bear in thick cover, strip to the skin, for they claim in this way they are able to move with greater freedom, and at the same time there are no clothes to catch in the brush and make noise.  They go slowly and are most cautious, for frequently when a bear is wounded, if he thinks that he is being pursued, he will swing around on his own trail and spring out from the side upon the hunters.

The next day I started with my two natives to visit a meadow well up the bay.

As we had but a day or two left before the schooner would come to take us away, we headed in the only direction in which the wind was favorable.  We left camp about three o’clock in the afternoon, following the shore with the wind quartering in our faces.  We had gone but a mile from camp when I caught an indistinct outline of a bear feeding on the grass at the edge of the timber, about 125 yards away.  I quickly fired, missing through sheer carelessness.

At the report the bear jumped sideways, unable to locate the sound, and my next bullet struck just above his tail and ranged forward into the lungs.  Fedor now fired, missing, while I ran up with Nikolai, firing another shot as I ran, which knocked the bear over.  Stereke savagely attacked the bear, biting and shaking him, and seeing that he was breathing his last, I refrained from firing again, as the skin was excellent.

This bear had had an encounter with a porcupine.  One of his paws was filled with quills, and in skinning him we found that some quills had worked well up the leg and lodged by the ankle joint, making a most loathsome wound.

This bear was almost as large as the one I had last shot at the head of the bay, and his pelt made a grand trophy.  I was much disgusted with myself that afternoon for missing my first shot.  It is not enough simply to get your bear, but one should always endeavor to kill with the first shot, otherwise much game will be lost, for the first is almost always the easiest shot, hence one should kill or mortally wound at that chance.

This was the last bear that we shot on the Alaska Peninsula.  I had been fortunate in killing seven brown bears, while Blake had killed three brown and one black, and our natives had killed one brown and one black bear, making a total of thirteen between the 7th and 28th of June.