BEAR HUNTING ON KADIAK ISLAND

Early in April, 1900, I made my first journey to Alaska for the purpose
of searching out for myself the best big-game shooting grounds which
were to be found in that territory. Few people who have not traveled in
that country have any idea of its vastness. Away from the beaten paths,
much of its 700,000 square miles is practically unknown, except to the
wandering prospector and the Indian hunter. Therefore, since I could
obtain but little definite information as to just where to go for the
best shooting, I determined to make the primary object of my journey to
locate the big-game districts of southern and western Alaska.

My first two months were spent in the country adjacent to Fort
Wrangell. Here one may expect to find black bear, brown bear, goats, and
on almost all of the islands along the coast great numbers of the small
Sitka deer, while grizzlies may these are the black, the grizzly, and
the glacier or blue bear.[3] It is claimed that this last species has
never fallen to a white man's rifle. It is found on the glaciers from
the Lynn Canal to the northern range of the St. Elias Alps, and, as its
name implies, is of a bluish color. I should judge from the skins I have
seen that in size it is rather smaller than the black bear. What it
lives upon in its range of eternal ice and snow is entirely a subject of
surmise.

[Footnote 3: The Polar bear is only found on the coast, and never below
61°. It is only found at this latitude when carried down on the ice in
Bering Sea.]

[Illustration: THE HUNTER AND HIS GAME.]