FIGHT WITH BEAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22389, 8 April 1936, Page 16

FIGHT WITH BEAR

DRAMA OF BACKWOODS TRAPPER'S BATTLE FOR LIFE [from our own correspondent] VANCOUVER, March 11 Tho code of the North, to let the grizzly bear go his way, was broken recently by two trappers, who were incensed at the depredation of the fiercest denizen of the British Columbia backwoods. Messrs. Maxwell and Odium had erected a winter cabin on the Hache River and blazed their traplines. With the need to cache a foodsupply, they went hunting. Three days later they were rewarded with a fine young bull moose. They skinned and cut up the carcase, and packed it to their cabin. A blizzard during the night drowned out sounds for which trappers are ever alert. In the morning their carefully-built cache was a wreckage of torn and twisted poles. Tho moose meat was gone.

To the book that tells everything to the woodsman —the snow-covered earth —Maxwell appealed. There was no mistaking the tracks. Grizzly. Tho pair discussed tho situation. A thieving grizzly, they knew, usually meant an old fellow, who found it easier to steal than to hunt and kill for himself. But, dangerous and often belligerent, in the whole of Canada there was nono less welcome on the trail —huge, uglytempered, often victor in many encounters with man.

Knowing tho bear would return, Maxwell set off to intercept it., Ho followed tho tracks until, toward sundown, they turned at a right-angle, and led down tho side of a boulderstrewn gulch. Maxwell, judging the grizzly's lair was here, began to descend. As ho reached the bed of the gulch, he realised that something else had started down the other side. Aware it had been trailed, the grizzly hurtled itself toward the man, with a roar. Maxwell whirled and fired—twice. He heard the bullets thud into the huge bulk, but nothing could stay the brute's infuriated onslaught. Even as Maxwell jammed a third cartridge into his rifle, the animal was on him, the incarnation of savagery. As the bear seized Maxwell's head in its jaws, the trapper, in despair, thrust his hand down its throat. Struggling for a fading shred of life, he miraculously recovered his riflo. He rammed it into the animal'g jaws, and, even as tho brute's teeth clamped on the steel, the man pressed the trigger. Man and beast fell together as the animal died. Binding his wounds by tearing up his sweater, Maxwell set out for camp. Arrived at the cabin his partner bandaged his wounds more effectively, and leaving him stretched out on a bunk, went for help. By dusk Odium was back with an Indian and dog team, which left next morning on a 200-mile journey, bearing the wounded man to hospital. Doctors fought for his life for a month. Operation followed operation. Maxwell matched his indomitable will with their professional skill and his life was saved.