Like the grizzly, the black bear varies greatly in size and weight. On Vancouver Island I am inclined to think that the average black bear would not weigh 300 lbs.; but no doubt there are many exceptional bears, even upon the island, which greatly exceed that weight; and I have myself seen an old male upon the mainland which, if I am any judge of weight, was not an ounce less than 500 lbs., and probably weighed more; while there are from time to time black bear skins in the warehouses of Mr. Boscowitz, the principal fur-dealer in Victoria, which would measure nearly 9 ft. from end to end (if allowance were made for the mask beyond the eyes), and 6 ft. from side to side below the arms.
In 1891 I measured in this store a black bear’s skin which did not seem unduly stretched, the length of which was, to the best of my recollection, 8 ft. 6 ins. from eyes to tail, or 8 ft. 10 ins. as measured.
Amongst the skins for sale by Messrs. C. M. Lampson & Co., at their small summer sale, June 12, 1893, at which I was told that the black bear skins were small, I measured one skin 93 ins. from eyes to tail, and one of the employés of the house assured me that a black bear skin measuring 8 ft. 6 ins. was not uncommon.
Before leaving the subject of bears altogether, I should like to refer to an extraordinary skin which I saw among Mr. Boscowitz’s consignments from the upper country last year. In size this skin is considerably larger than the average bear hide; the colour of it is white, with a few straw-coloured patches (little more than a few hairs in each) on the head and about the rump. The paws and claws of the animal were attached to the skin, and from the jaws and skin of the head I should imagine that the beast had a long shallow head like a black bear’s, though the skin is more like the skin of a Polar in summer season, except that whereas other bear hides are of hair, this is distinctly woolly, more like the fleece of a sheep than the hide of a bear.
I am informed that this skin was sent to Mr. Rowland Ward’s. The bear was killed on one of the inlets of the north-west coast, and is the only one of the kind ever seen in our British Columbia fur market.
IV. BISON OR BUFFALO (Bison americanus)
In writing of big game in North America, it is impossible to write for more than the immediate present. That which was ten years ago has already ceased to be, and it is probable that the conditions, both of game and country, will change almost as much in the coming decade as they have done in that which has just passed.
Ten years ago, as I travelled along the Northern Pacific Railway line, the skin-hunters were at work in the neighbourhood of Glendive and Little Missouri, and I had an opportunity of killing my buffalo like my predecessors. Unfortunately for me, I agreed with Colonel Dodge’s plainsmen in ‘scarcely considering the buffalo game.’ Now the herds are gone, and neither I nor any other man will see the prairies again ‘all one vast robe.’ All that remains of the vast herds which used to roam ‘over the whole of the Eastern United States to the Atlantic Ocean, and southward into Florida,’ are two or three half-domesticated herds (one which was Colonel Bedson’s and one in the Kootenay country among the Flat-head Indians), and a small band of wild beasts, protected by the United States, in the Yellowstone Park. ‘Forest and Stream,’ January 29, 1892, puts this last herd at about 400 head, with an increase of 100 head per annum. West of Winnipeg the buffalo paths are still visible, worn deep in the grey prairies by millions of passing feet; but the herds have gone, and the men and beasts who lived upon them. All that is left are a few piles of bleaching bones and a few weather-worn skulls, and even these have almost all been gathered and turned into dollars by the manure manufacturer and the trophy-monger. In this practical money-grubbing age it does not do to lament the good old days, unless you want to be laughed at; but it is hard, nevertheless, to look on the ocean of grassland when the spring flowers are coming, and not regret the great waves of animal life which used to sweep over it. Such evidence as I can offer as to the mode in which the buffalo was hunted must of necessity be hearsay evidence, collected, however, at first hand, principally from an Indian confined, at the time I saw him, at the Stony Mountain Penitentiary, and from a white skin-hunter, whose last hunts were conducted in 1880, 1881 and 1882, in Montana and North Dacota.
A white skin-hunter’s ‘outfit’ of the most modest kind consisted in those days of one hunter carrying a Sharp’s rifle (with bullets weighing 500 grains), two skinners, and an extra man for camp work and odd jobs.
During the rutting season (from July 20 to September 16) the buffaloes all ran together, but during the rest of the year the old bulls kept together, apart from the cows and young bulls. Except during the rutting season, the bands were comparatively small—from 20 to 200—led, if consisting of cows and young beasts, by an old cow. In hot weather the bands would lie quiet during the heat of the day, but in windy weather they would keep travelling all day against the wind, feeding as they went. As soon as the herds had been found the hunter would begin operations, shooting at long ranges, and keeping out of sight as much as possible. The first beast shot was the leader of the band, and as often as the band seemed to have selected another leader he, too, had to be dropped in his tracks. Without a leader, and with no enemy in sight, the remainder of the herd would generally become confused, and allow the hunter to shoot down a large number ‘at a stand,’ as he called it. Having killed as many as he could, the hunter left the carcases where they lay, his assistants coming to skin them the next day. Fifteen head a day was, so my informant stated, a fair average for one man to kill and two to skin, although in the fall of 1880 and spring of 1881 he and his party averaged twenty-four heads per diem.