The man who had watched the lick nearest the camp, and quite an old man, said that I could watch the lick that he had watched and he would stay in camp. (The men now acknowledged me as a thoroughbred hunter, you see.) Well, I was getting there pretty lively, I thought, when an old hunter would give up his lick to me, when only the evening before none of the men thought that I was up to watching a lick at any price. I was pleased to again have a place to watch. Taking some punk wood to make a little smoke to keep off the gnats and mosquitoes, I started for the lick and climbed the Indian ladder to the scaffold, built in a hemlock tree. I had barely got fixed in shape to begin to watch when I chanced to look towards a small ravine that came down from the hill a few yards to my left and saw what I took to be a black yearling steer. I will add that the woods in that locality were covered with a rank growth of nettles, cow cabbage and other wood's feed, and people would drive their young cattle off into that locality to run during the summer. I thought I would get down from the scaffold and throw stones at it and drive it off lest it might come into the lick after dark and I might take it for a deer and shoot it. As I started to climb down I again looked in the direction of the steer, and this time I saw what I thought was the largest bear that ever traveled the woods. He had left the ravine and was walking with his head down, going up the hill and past the lick. I cocked both barrels of the gun and raised it carefully to my shoulder, and, breaking a little dry twig I had in my hand caused the bear to stop and turn his head around so as to look down the hill. This was my time so I leveled on his head and shoulders and let go both barrels of the gun at once. The bear went into the air and then began tumbling and rolling down the hill towards the tree that I was in, bawling and snorting like mad. But if the bear made a howl from pain he was in, it was no comparison to the howl that I made for help and it did not cease until the men in camp came on the run thinking that I had accidentally shot myself. Well, this was my first bear and it was the greatest day of my life. We took the bear to camp, skinned and dressed it and then went to bunk for the night, but it was very little I slept for I could only think what a mighty hunter I was (in my mind). The men came in in the morning with no better luck than they had the night before, and they all declared that if I had not been with them they would have had to go without venison.