Hunting with the Bow & Arrow

by Saxton T. Pope

Keen with anticipation of unexpected surprises; wondering, yet willing to take a chance, we prepared to shoot our first bear. We stationed ourselves some thirty yards from the base of the tree. The bear was about seventy-five feet up in the air, facing us, looking down and exposing his chest.

We drew our arrows together and a second later released as one man. Away flew the two shafts, side by side, and struck the beast in the breast, not six inches apart. Like a flash, they melted into his body and disappeared forever. He whirled, turned backward, and began sliding down the tree.

Ripping and tearing the trunk, he descended almost as if falling, a shower of bark preceding him like a cartload of shingles. Tom shouted, "You missed him, run up close and shoot him again!" From his side of the tree he couldn't see that our arrows had hit and gone through, also he was used to seeing bear drop when he hit them with a bullet.

But we were a little diffident about running up close to a wounded bear, for Tom had told us it would fight when it got down. Nevertheless, we nocked an arrow again, and just as he reached the ground we were close by to receive him. We delivered two glancing blows on his rapidly falling body. When he landed, however, he selected the lower side of the tree, away from us, and bounded off down the canyon. We protested that we had hit him and begged Tom to turn his dogs loose. After a moment's deliberation, Tom let old Buck go and off he tore in hot pursuit. The shepherd was a wily old cattle dog and would keep out of harm.

Soon we heard him barking and Murphy exclaimed incredulously, "He's treed again!" Button and Baldy were unleashed and once more we started our cross-country running. Through maple thickets, over rocky sides, down the wooded canyon we galloped. Much sooner than we expected, we came to our bear. Hard pressed, he had climbed a small oak and crouched out on a swaying limb. We could see that he was heaving badly, and was a very sick animal. His gaze was fixed on the howling dogs. Young and I ran in close and shot boldly at his swaying body. Our arrows slipped through him like magic. One was arrested in its course as it buried itself in his shoulder. Savagely he snapped it in two with his teeth, when another driven by Young with terrific force struck him above the eye. He weakened his hold, slipped backward, dropped from the bending limb and rolled over and over down the ravine. The dogs were on him in a rush, and wooled him with a vengeance. But he was dead by the time he reached the creek bottom. We clambered down, looked him over with awe, then Young and I shook hands across the body of our first bear. We took his picture.

Tom opened up the chest and abdominal cavity, explored the wounds and was full of exclamations of surprise at the damage done by our arrows. He agreed that our animal was mortally wounded with our first two shots, and had we let him alone there would have been no necessity for more arrows. But this being our very first bear, we had overdone the killing.

So he gave the liver and lungs to the waiting hounds as a reward for their efforts, and cleaned the carcass for carrying. We found the stomach full of acorn mush, just as clean and sweet as a mess of cornmeal.

Murphy left us to pack the bear up on the pine flat above, while he went around three or four miles to get the horses. After a strenuous half hour, we got our bear up the steep bank and rested on the flat. Here we ate our pocket lunch.

As we sat there quietly eating, we heard a rustle in the woods below us, and looking up, saw another good-sized black bear about forty yards off. I had one arrow left in my quiver, Young only two broken shafts, the rest we had lost in our final scramble. So we passed no insulting remarks to the bear below, who suddenly finding our presence, vanished in the forest. We had had enough bear for one day, anyhow.

Tom came with the horses, and loaded our trophy on one. Ordinarily a horse is greatly frightened at bears, and difficult to manage, but these were long ago accustomed to the business. It interested us to see the method of tying the carcass securely on a common saddle. By placing a clove hitch on the wrists and ankles and cinching these beneath the horse's belly with a sling rope through the bear's crotch and around its neck, the body was held suspended across the saddle and rode easily without shifting until we reached home.