By H. L. DILLAWAY
For twenty years I have been hunting some of the biggest game in America, though I have never carried a gun in all that time. For two decades I have photographed bears and written about them.
And still the most frequent question asked me is whether bears are dangerous. The answer is that neither bears nor any other wild game in America is dangerous when you are letting them alone, or when something else has not happened to disturb them. But bears are individualists, just as much as human beings, and they respond to life in much the same way. We don't regard the human race as being dangerous because some people occasionally kill, and the same is true of bears.
In twenty years of hunting with a camera. I have chased bears and been chased by them, but I think it is easier to make a bear run away than to get him to run toward you. Bears may attack under certain circumstances, mother bears, for example, defending their cubs, but not all mother bears will do that, and quite a few of them will run away and desert their offspring. They really are as scared by man as he is of them.
I recall one day when a friend and I were walking along a mountainside and unwittingly passed by a mother bear's den. We heard her come out and dash away through the brush, so we turned back, located the den, entered and brought out three young cubs. They squalled and bawled terribly, but the mother did not come back, that day or any other, for we watched the den frequently to see if she would return. Had she kept quiet, we never would have known there was a bear den near. but as it was, our passing along apparently ran her clear out of the country.
She got her revenge, though, for we paid dearly for the capture of those cubs. Every night for weeks they would wake up and squall until the nursing bottle was forthcoming, and never did all three get hungry at the same hour.
I have seen hundreds of bears, photographed them, studied them and tracked them. but I have never been scratched or mauled by one. I would rather take my chances, however, with any wild animal than a semi-wild one which, through captivity, has lost most of its fear of man.
A bear's eyesight is not good, and the best system when you meet one unexpectedly, is to remain perfectly still—or else charge. I have charged several bears, jerking off my coat and waving it wildly in their faces, and they have promptly turned tail and fled. Climbing a tree, if the bear belongs to the black or brown species, is useless, for they are both good tree climbers. A grizzly, on the other hand, is not, so a tree offers a safe refuge from "old Silver Tip."
