When the shadows began to lengthen, I shouldered my rifle and plunged into the woods.  At first my route lay along a mountain side; then for half a mile over a windfall, the dead timber piled about in crazy confusion.  After that I went up the bottom of a valley by a little brook, the ground being carpeted with a sponge of soaked moss.  At the head of this brook was a pond covered with water-lilies; and a scramble through a rocky pass took me into a high, wet valley, where the thick growth of spruce was broken by occasional strips of meadow.  In this valley the moose carcass lay, well at the upper end.

In moccasined feet I trod softly through the soundless woods.  Under the dark branches it was already dusk, and the air had the cool chill of evening.  As I neared the clump where the body lay, I walked with redoubled caution, watching and listening with strained alertness.  Then I heard a twig snap; and my blood leaped, for I knew the bear was at his supper.  In another moment I saw his shaggy, brown form.  He was working with all his awkward giant strength, trying to bury the carcass, twisting it to one side and the other with wonderful ease.  Once he got angry and suddenly gave it a tremendous cuff with his paw; in his bearing he had something half humorous, half devilish.  I crept up within forty yards; but for several minutes he would not keep his head still.  Then something attracted his attention in the forest, and he stood motionless looking towards it, broadside to me, with his fore-paws planted on the carcass.  This gave me my chance.  I drew a very fine bead between his eye and ear; and pulled trigger.  He dropped like a steer when struck with a pole-axe.

If there is a good hiding-place handy it is better to lie in wait at the carcass.  One day on the head-waters of the Madison, I found that a bear was coming to an elk I had shot some days before; and I at once determined to ambush the beast when he came back that evening.  The carcass lay in the middle of a valley a quarter of a mile broad.  The bottom of this valley was covered by an open forest of tall pines; a thick jungle of smaller evergreens marked where the mountains rose on either hand.  There were a number of large rocks scattered here and there, one, of very convenient shape, being only some seventy or eighty yards from the carcass.  Up this I clambered.  It hid me perfectly, and on its top was a carpet of soft pine needles, on which I could lie at my ease.

Hour after hour passed by.  A little black woodpecker with a yellow crest ran nimbly up and down the tree-trunks for some time and then flitted away with a party of chickadees and nut-hatches.  Occasionally a Clarke’s crow soared about overhead or clung in any position to the swaying end of a pine branch, chattering and screaming.  Flocks of cross-bills, with wavy flight and plaintive calls, flew to a small mineral lick near by, where they scraped the clay with their queer little beaks.