Quietly Ted said, "Really didn't have much choice, did we? That bear had already made his mind up to take out whatever was coming into his cache before we even started moving in." He paused a moment and then asked, "Would you have climbed the tree or shot?" I sat there a moment, feeling the shivering start again as I thought of the scene that took place, then answered. "I had made up my mind to shoot, probably couldn't have climbed the tree anyhow. What really scared me was the chance of missing the bear and hitting you, but I'd have shot."
Ted then said, "I figured I had two, possibly three shots before he reached me, and I prayed that they would be good ones. Funny how it works out. The miss was the best shot I took it turned him."
Putting his arm around me he said, "You make a good backup Blondie. I'll take you hunting anytime.
The time went by slowly; then Ted looked at his watch and said, "Let's go get are bear."
We got on the blood trail' tracking it down into the bottom of the canyon and up the other side. It was a good, solid blood trail, easy to follow. When we got into the timber, we found the hillside had turned into a solid mass of blow-down. Trees had been twisted, broken off several feet above the ground, with others over leaving huge root wads and holes in the side-hill climbed over trees following the blood, it began to dwindle into drops that soon became smaller and smaller and farther between. It wasn't long until all sign was gone. We searched through the blow-down, crawling over and under the trees slipping and sliding over slick bark, making it very difficult to follow the trail.
This was the remarkable time when I remembered reading the newspaper about a hunter near Glacier Park who had shot a black bear with a rifle. While the hunter searched, the bear doubled back and crawled into a root wad hole, and when the hunter had gotten near the spot, the bear roared out of the hole mauling him severely before he could kill it.
Why do our minds have to remember these tidbits during such times as this? We gridded the area until daylight began fading and a light snow began to fall. Ted said, "Let's go back to camp and look again in the morning. I Really don't like the idea of being up here when it's starting to get dark." So we left.
Arriving back at camp, we found that our two cowboy friends, their dogs, and horses had arrived. We had shared the campsite with them for several hunting seasons. They were rounding up the range cattle to be driven home some fity miles away in the valley.
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