BEAR "TRAPS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1938, Page 6

BEAR "TRAPS."

NEW GOLF HAZARDS

ROCKY MOUNTAINS COURSE. Golfers in tlie Canadian Rockies are up against some new hazards, so hazardous, in fact, that the course at the Banff Springs Hotel has to be locked up at night"(saye an article in the "Christian Science Monitor''). Building a golf course in the heart of the Rockies was in itself an adventure, but that it was likelv to test the valour of the golfers as well as the skill of the designer was not at first apparent. Certainly these hazards were not foreseen by the players as they teed off over the Bow River, whistling merrily while the golf balls soared like notes to the tune, and bounced in gay staccato on the green. It was a course to inspire entluisisin from even the most blase of golfers. Then, as quickly as a cloud shadow drops a blot upon the mountainside, tlie whole aspect of things was changed. Dark objects loomed up on the fairway ahead. Xo shadows these! Tliev plodded heavily on four legs, and they g-r-r-uffed to each other ae they glared boldly at the golfers. Clubs were suspended in mid-air. Whistles went dry. Golf balls rolled to a stop like periods at the end of a sentence. There was nothing in tlie book of rules to tell whether to use a wood or an iron in order to avoid such a hazard as this. Sand traps were all in the day's game to the golfer, but a '"bear trap" was something to give him pause. "Fore!" he yelled hopefully. "Fore!" echoed back from the mountains in a warning to those whom it might concern. Why the Bears Came. Perhaps it was not surprising, after all. when you stop to think of it. that the bear should come over the mountain here in the Canadian Rockies, and, having been rewarded at long last with something more than just the other side, that he should proceed to lay claim to Iris discovery. Besides, how should he know but what the bright little flags flntteriin: here and there had been set up especially in honour of his arrival? •' It might nor have been so disconcerting had these e.\|>oditions been confined to a simple promenade of the course, but the bear* took a particular fancy to the flags on the green. In fact they took the flags, poles and all. Things went on like this until the replacement of broken flag posts a ill ; bedraggled flags became quite an item in the budget-. Then, as if tlie bear family did not provide :-uflirient di\cr-ion. the elk and the deer dropped around to sample the course. Now there is nothing tastier from a deer's point of view than a itiiov piece of fairway with a uililile of green for do.-sert. While there is no question that though many golfers heartily 'support the S.P.C.A.. there is still a social distinction between the race of men and beasts, and an elk on the green is just about as |M>pular with a golfer as a moth in his sweater. A Fourteen-mile Fence. So a fence was lmilt. And what a fence it was! On and on it went for fourteen miles before it finally <ame together again and buckled in a. gate across the bridge over the Bow River. But still all was not well. There were almost as many animals on the inside of that fence as there were roaming without. The filial gesture was a sweeping one—a roundnp—and for days there was a hurried exodus of leaping, lumbering, scurrying creatures as every yard of ground was combed. One cannot help but feel a bit sorry for poor bruin, for why should he not be attracted to this magic green carpet that was laid before him in his heretofore rocky front yard? He surely noticed the car loads of soil—some 4000 if he kept count—that went into this process of transformation. And now! Look at it. A perfectly good playground going to waste! The Bow River also makes an occasional sally on the course, and once a year it flounces its full spring skirt around at an expense of about £6*250 to the keepers of the grounds. Having satisfied its wanderlust, it turns back to ite own familiar ways, and gurgles mockingly during the summer time while the 120 sprinkler units whirl out 1000 gallons of water an hoirr to moisten the course.