Camp Kelpie: A Seattle Hunting Party in the Last Great Bear Country

It is not generally known that the state of Washington, and particularly that portion of it known as the Puget Sound country, contains more black bear than any other state in the Union. This particular region seems to have been designed and created by nature for the home and habitation of bruin, for there is no other portion of the continent so well adapted to his comfort and safety, and certainly no known part of the world where fish and berries can be obtained so easily. The numerous varieties of toothsome berries indigenous to this section constitute his principal diet. What a feast for an appetite like his! It is one continual round of dessert. Think of the red huckleberry pies, the blue huckleberry puddings, the blackberry rolls, the cranberry and the numerous side dishes of salmon-berries, salal-berries, thimbleberries, bearberries, etc., that surely Mr. B. keeps from the pantry of the busy housewife. Like an epicure that he is, he likes dainties—not such as his two-legged brother can only obtain by an extravagant use of shekels, but ants, bees and hornets. He thinks no more of robbing a hornet's nest than a small boy would of robbing a melon patch when the old man has gone to town with a load of wood. His prodigious strength enables him to procure these delicacies, for with his teeth and claws he can tear a stump or log into slivers and soon reach what an army of the most intelligent insects known thought to be an impregnable fortress. I have seen fir logs, comparatively sound, some two or three feet in diameter, torn asunder by him as though struck by lightning. It is his weakness for these dainties that has given him the name of the great American ant-eater.

But he does not by any means pretend to subsist on so indigestible a diet. I can understand his fondness for fish, for here he enjoys what the world envies—fresh salmon and mountain trout. How does he catch them? It is difficult to make one believe his method unless he has seen a run of salmon or trout. To those who have never witnessed such an interesting spectacle it becomes a delicate subject to handle, since to impart the information of any natural phenomenon we are obliged to rely entirely upon the credulity of human nature. Of course it is a well-known fact that salmon are salt-water fish and that they spawn in fresh water, and that they seek the head of fresh-water streams, or as near it as possible, to deposit their spawn or eggs. An ordinary school of salmon, maybe from 500 to 1,500, ascending a small stream and having reached the stage of the stream favorable for spawning, must be on a riffle at least deep enough for them to keep in the swim. Bruin has discovered down at the foot of the riffle that he can make a meal of them. As he does his own fishing, he wades into the stream and makes a dash at a salmon. When he catches one he just bites it on the back with his teeth, and throws it out on the bank—and thus he makes a meal of him.

His manner of gathering berries is almost human. He can strip a bush of huckleberries as quickly and as scientifically as a "school ma'am," and as for gathering barberries he is an expert. Several summers since, while fishing on one of the finest trout streams in the world and coming down the stream in a canoe manipulated by a Siwash, my attention was called by the wild gesticulations of the Indian to a large bear by the river, which at that moment seemed to be feeding, or rather gathering berries. We had come down with the current so quietly, and being to leeward of him, he had not heard or seen us. I motioned to the Siwash to hold the canoe, which he did by driving his paddle into the bed of the stream, and by obtaining a good purchase in the gravel came to a standstill.

I had a perfect view of the bear and his method of gathering the berry. The tree was about twenty feet high, the berries much scattered and about the size of the wild cherry, sweet and palatable and much sought after by his bruinship. The bear was about midway up the tree, holding on to the trunk with his paws, while his hind feet rested on a good-sized limb. He seemed to be scanning out the limbs most prolific of fruit. Electing a branch a little above the one he was standing upon, he carefully climbed to a secure position and then placed one of his hind feet on it and pushed until he had separated it from the trunk. He watched the branch fall to the ground and then deliberately selected another, which he broke off in the same manner as the first. He probably would have stripped the tree entirely of its branches had I not yelled at him to see him scramble down. He first turned his head quickly, and then, locating the noise, he deliberately backed down and rushed off in the underbrush, leaving a wake that would have done justice to a herd of frightened cattle. Oh, how I wished for my kodak! He was in a splendid position, only a few feet away and in open view.

As is well known, the black bears are the most harmless of any species of the genus ursus. They will never attack a man unless badly wounded, and will run from him in the woods like a scared rabbit. Their noses of smell and hearing are most active, and on this account they are as difficult to kill or trap as any animal that has ever roamed the wilds of nature. Last June I had the pleasure of "whipping" the Skykomish, by courtesy called a river, but more properly a raging torrent, for it rushes down from the mountains over a bed of boulders with such a deafening roar that you can hardly hear yourself think. While spent and weary with fishing, I lay stretched on the mossy bank under the darkening shade of a gigantic cedar, whose drooping branches seemed to be playing "last tag" with the leaping, bounding and tumbling waters, when there emerged from the brush on the opposite side of the river a huge bear, the very largest I had ever seen. It was impossible for him to see me, and as I thought he was about to cross over, and not desiring a closer acquaintance, I jumped up, fired, and gave him the right-of-way. As I stepped upon dry ground, which snapped with a sudden report of warning, he heard the sound and, turning, disappeared.

During July and August I had the good fortune to spend several weeks camping on Hood Canal, an arm of Puget Sound reaching to the southwest some eighty or ninety miles, and averaging in width about two miles. The country surrounding this arm of the sea has had the reputation for years of being the paradise long sought by sportsmen. It certainly has furnished game and fish stories to the public ever since I have been on the Sound—twelve years. Three weeks' hunting and fishing in this paradise convinced me that it was indeed a veritable paradise for bear, as well as sportsmen.

Our camp was pitched near the west shore of the canal, midway between the Duckabush and Hammahamma rivers. The situation of the camp could not have been more romantic, nor better adapted to an outdoor life. We named the camp, and also the beautiful little mountain stream that ran by our tents, "Kelpie," in honor of the trim yacht Kelpie, on whose masthead fluttered the commodore's pennant of the Seattle Yacht Club, and on whose clean deck and spacious cabin accommodations we had cruised from Seattle to our present location. A beautiful beach lay immediately in front of us, fairly teeming with succulent bivalves—Puget Sound oysters, mussels and little-neck clams galore. These we feasted upon to a proper abatement of our ravenous appetites. Besides being so productive of nutritious shellfish, the beach furnished us a site for bathing purposes unequaled even by Coney Island or Manhattan Beach. The ladies of our party kept the table supplied with crabs, rock cod, sole and salmon trout taken from the canal, which is almost literally alive with fish of all kinds. Back of us some six or eight miles towered the snowcapped Olympics. Between the mountains and the canal is a heavily wooded country, composed almost entirely of a growth of fir, virtually impenetrable except in places where fire and the woodman's ax have let the sunshine in.

Some years since there had been an extensive logging camp located where we had pitched our tents, and judging from the number of old logging roads radiating from the old chute and from the stumps in the woods, old Uncle Sam must have been robbed of many a million feet of good timber. However, but for the builders of these roads, reaching as they do from the beach to the foothills, our hunting would not have amounted to much. As it happened to be, we were never afraid of getting lost, because if at any time we should stray from one road we knew that any other road we should strike, by following it downhill, would take us back to camp.

My first trip to the foothills over one of the many roads proved to my satisfaction that, if at any time I should want to kill a bear before my return, I could do so without much trouble, for I noticed that one had recently gone over the same road. He had evidently been hunting for ants. The skids in the road for a couple of hundred yards had been torn down, but from their appearance very few of them had yielded him anything for his trouble. A little higher up, where the country was more open and where Old Sol had an opportunity of shedding his effulgent rays, the productive soil had put forth a rank growth of vegetation, consisting of ferns and several varieties of wild berries. I came across "bear signs" that would have satisfied the most enthusiastic Nimrod alive. Red huckleberry bushes broken down and stripped of fruit, blackberry vines disarranged and well picked, ferns trampled down and well-defined trails told of the recent presence of several families of surly Mr. B.s—mammy muffs and tiny cubs. In fact, I could not turn on that day without stumbling over bear signs. It seemed to me that I was in a bear corral that extended from the beach to the first spur of mountains. Although I was out for grouse with a ten-gauge shot gun and one of the finest Gordon setters that any man ever shot over, I had a buckshot cartridges and kept a good lookout for his highness or any of his royal family, for I did not want to be taken unawares by any sleeping beauty with such hugging propensities as Mr. B. is known to possess. My vigilance was useless, however, for the first shot from my gun must have warned every boar within its far-reaching jungle or mountain fastness.

After securing a good bag of grouse and locating several patches of berries where bruin was in the habit of breakfasting, I returned to camp fully determined to have bear steak as soon as there were any signs of a deficiency in our larder. Different members of the party, on fishing and hunting jaunts, brought in reports of bear signs, until we all came to the conclusion that we must have a diversity of sport and meat. A bear hunt was decided upon and arranged, and, making up the party, we set out the next day for the hunt. We started up one of the roads, the general and next in command for the center, while I was to be on hand at the first streak of day, bruin being an early bird and away as early as possible. We separated about two miles up the road, two following a road leading to a small swamp, and myself, with the general and the yacht, taking a road leading farther up the foothills to where I had previously discovered a blackberry patch, which was to furnish us our first bear.

Arriving at the very spot I had seen a few days previous, I climbed the stump upon which I intended to watch and wait. I had scarcely done so and was looking down, when I heard a crash in the brush some distance below me. Turning quickly, I was surprised to see a large, majestic fellow upon a large log about a hundred and fifty yards away, and looking in my direction. He had evidently heard me, but had not quite located my position. Before he had time to make up his mind or to appreciate his danger, I had broken his spinal column with a bullet from my .38-55 Marlin. I did not see him for quite a little while after I fired, but I heard him, and from the commotion he was making I judged that I had mortally wounded him. My companions, rushing up, wanted to know what I had fired at and, when I pointed to where the bear was, Cal made a rush for him and it was all we could do to keep him from closing in on the bear with his sailor's knife. On going nearer, we found the bear had dragged himself about thirty yards over logs and through briars until he had become jammed between two logs. The general, getting a good view of him from a stump, fired a .45-70 Sharps rifle at his head, which only stunned him, although the bullet passed through his head barely missing the brain. I then fired again at him, trying for his brain, but the result was no better than that of my companion's shot. Thinking that we had virtually dispatched him, we allowed Cal to finish him, which he did by driving the immense knife to his heart several times.

Well, we had our bear, and the next question was how to get him to camp. We first cut him open to dispose of his entrails and see where we had struck him. We found that we had broken his back and struck him twice in the head. The first shot was indeed a lucky one, for by breaking his back and four ribs we prevented him from getting away. We proceeded to gather him up, but found we had a cross a little too heavy to "pack." Fortunately, our route was downhill all the way, so we pulled, tugged and dragged, and dragged, tugged and pulled, until we had him in camp before breakfast. The other portion of the party returned in the course of an hour or so, but had nothing to show for their tramp, although one of them reported that the other was so badly frightened that he allowed a bear twice the size of the one we had in camp to walk away from him without even giving him a parting salute. The commodore himself reported as a fact that, while he was standing on a log in the swamp, the bear stepped upon the other end of the log and quietly proceeded to walk toward him. He was so startled that he had great difficulty in realizing that he was bear hunting. By the time he had found his gun and shoulder, the bear had stepped off the log into the swamp and out of view.

Another incident of this kind happened a short while after our first hunt, this time to a visitor to our camp who was exceedingly anxious to kill a bear. He came fully equipped with gun, pistol and knife. All he wanted was to be taken to where there was a good, large-sized bear, and he would do the rest. I knew that such a paraphernalia as he presented himself in, to use the vernacular of the wild and woolly West, was a "hoodoo," and worn only by the "tenderfoot," and I did not care to risk my life in the woods with one of them. I prevailed upon Smith, a careful hunter and dead shot, to take him out. Smith good-naturedly promised him that, if there were any bears in the woods, he would find one for him. Smith was one of our most enthusiastic hunters, had killed a dozen or more bears on the canal, and was thoroughly acquainted with every spur and draw on the eastern slope of the Olympics.

They reached their destination about sunrise. Mr. T. kept up well, to the surprise of Smith, who placed him at the edge of a small swamp in the draw, with instructions to keep still and not to breathe, and by no means to fire at anything until he had made out the object at which he intended to shoot. Smith then left him to go around the head of the draw and approach the swamp from the opposite side. A half hour brought him to where he intended to take his stand, and he had no more than seated himself when he heard a shot and the whiz of a bullet, and while he was scrambling to get to the leeward side of a friendly tree, a succession of shots arose from the center of the swamp that resembled an infantry skirmish. A few pine cones and several small branches from the tree came tumbling down upon him. While he was trying to make out the cause of this most unexpected fusillade, a bear came crashing through the swamp in a direct line toward him. Smith knew what to do under the circumstances—he placed a bullet through old bruin's heart. After a few calls and tremulous answers, Smith succeeded in collecting Mr. T. from the swamp, who, upon seeing the bear writhing in his last agonies, breathlessly exclaimed: "Thank God! I got him!"

It seems that Mr. T. grew impatient and undertook to explore the swamp. Walking quietly over several fallen trees, he stepped from the end of one onto what he thought was the end of a log, but which proved to be only a live bear peacefully sleeping off the previous night's debauch. Bruin, not being a lazy husband, was not accustomed to being kicked out of bed, and, unlike a henpecked man, he sprang up with such a vim that Mr. T. thought he had jumped on a springboard or a bucking cayuse. At any rate, the double back-action, revolving and self-adjusting curvature of bruin's spine, together with the contraction and expansion of his muscles, touched off by this sudden and unexpected "first call for breakfast," threw Mr. T. back upon the log, wrong side up, and gave an impetus to bruin's fright that carried him safely from Mr. T. into the jaws of death. Rattled as Mr. T. was, he succeeded in emptying his magazine in the direction bruin had taken, and actually believed that he had struck him at least four or five times, until Smith picked up the pine cones and branches that came down with almost every shot and showed them to him. He then candidly admitted that he was a little nervous, but this fight made him thirst for more blood and an opportunity to redeem himself.

After a post-mortem over the fallen foe, Smith thought he would accommodate him, and at the same time prospect the country on the west side of the spur and up toward the head of the Duckabush. Well, there was nothing particularly interesting to relate of this part of the trip. Suffice it to say that it was well after dark, and when our camp fire was low, when Smith came in with a saddle of bear on his shoulder, Mr. T. dragging himself along some two hundred yards in the rear. It was high noon before Mr. T. made his appearance the next day. His ardor was materially cooled, his rifle, pistol and knife were cased away, and he pleasantly informed us that he regretted not having yet seen a bear, and that he would see to it that he would not during the summer. We did not kill any more bears on this trip, although we tried for several more. Altogether we had fun and heard many stories.