her the following winter, and continue to follow her until the second
fall, when they leave her and shift for themselves.

For many years these bears have been so persistently hunted by the
natives, who are constantly patrolling the shores in their skin canoes,
that their knowledge of man and their senses of smell and hearing are
developed to an extreme degree. They have, however, like most bears,
but indifferent sight. They range in color from a light tawny lion to a
very dark brown; in fact, I have seen some bears that were almost
black. Many people have asked me about their size, and how they compare
in this respect with other bears. The Kadiak bear is naturally extremely
large. His head is very massive, and he stands high at the shoulders.
This latter characteristic is emphasized by a thick tuft of hair which
stands erect on the dorsal ridge just over the shoulders. The largest
bear of this kind which I shot measured 8 feet in a straight line from
his nose to the end of the vertebrae, and stood 51-1/2 inches in a
straight line at the shoulders, not including between 6 and 7 inches of
hair.

Most people have an exaggerated idea of the number of bears on the
Kadiak Islands. Personally I believe that they are too few ever to make
shooting them popular. In fact, it was only by the hardest kind of
careful and constant work that I was finally successful in bagging my
first bear on Kadiak. When the salmon come it is not so difficult to get
a shot, but this lying in wait at night by a salmon stream cannot
compare with seeking out the game on the hills in the spring, and
stalking it in a sportsmanlike manner.

It was more than a week after our landing at Kadiak before the weather
permitted me to go to Afognak, where my old hunters lived, to make our