With fearful ingenuity, the Bear, when engaged with a human foe, directs its attack upon the head of its antagonist, and, as previously stated, has been known to strike off the entire scalp with a single blow.
A FAMILY-PARTY.
A hunter who had the misfortune to be struck down by a Bear—and the singular good fortune to afterwards escape from it—says, that when he was lying on the ground at the mercy of the angry beast, the animal, after biting him upon the arms and legs, deliberately settled itself upon his head and began to scarify it in the fiercest manner, leaving wounds eight and nine inches in length.
Bears are the more terrible antagonists from their extreme tenacity of life, and the fearful energy which they compress into the last moment of existence, when they are suffering from a mortal wound. Unless struck in the heart or brain, the mortally-wounded Bear is more to be feared than if it had received no injury whatever, and contrives to wreak more harm in the few minutes that immediately precede its death, than it had achieved while still uninjured.
Many a hunter has received mortal hurts by incautiously approaching a Bear, which lay apparently dead, but was in reality only stunned.
