after the long winter sleep, they are very hungry, and are especially
apt to attack large beasts at this time; although during the very first
days of their appearance, when they are just breaking their fast, they
eat rather sparingly, and by preference the tender shoots of green grass
and other herbs, or frogs and crayfish; it is not for a week or two that
they seem to be overcome by lean, ravenous hunger. They will even attack
and master that formidable fighter the moose, springing at it from an
ambush as it passes--for a bull moose would surely be an overmatch for
one of them if fronted fairly in the open. An old hunter, whom I could
trust, told me that he had seen in the snow in early spring the place
where a bear had sprung at two moose, which were trotting together;
he missed his spring, and the moose got off, their strides after
they settled down into their pace being tremendous, and showing how
thoroughly they were frightened. Another time he saw a bear chase a
moose into a lake, where it waded out a little distance, and then
turned to bay, bidding defiance to his pursuer, the latter not daring to
approach in the water. I have been told--but cannot vouch for it--that
instances have been known where the bear, maddened by hunger, has gone
in on a moose thus standing at bay, only to be beaten down under the
water by the terrible fore-hoofs of the quarry, and to yield its life
in the contest. A lumberman told me that he once saw a moose, evidently
much startled, trot through a swamp, and immediately afterwards a
bear came up following the tracks. He almost ran into the man, and was
evidently not in a good temper, for he growled and blustered, and two or
three times made feints of charging, before he finally concluded to go
off.

Bears will occasionally visit hunters' or lumberman's camps, in the
absence of the owners, and play sad havoc with all that therein is,
devouring everything eatable, especially if sweet, and trampling into