Wild Beasts and Their Ways, Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa and America — Volume 1Baker, Samuel White, Sir
History
Wild Beasts and Their Ways, Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa and America — Volume 1
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Animal behavior; Hunting
When I was in the Big Horn range in 1881 several shooting parties had
preceded me on the two previous seasons, and the bears had been worried
to such an extent that they were extremely cautious and wary. There was
a small party of professional skin hunters who were camped within a mile
of my position, consisting of two partners, Big Bill and Bob Stewart.
The latter went by the name of Little Bob, in contrast to his enormous
companion. Bob was of Scotch extraction; he was about 5 feet 5 inches in
height, very slight, and as active as a cat. In his knowledge of every
living creature upon the mountains he was perfect; from the smallest
insect to the largest beast he was an infallible authority. Bob was a
trapper and hunter; he followed the different branches of these pursuits
according to the seasons; at one time he would be trapping beavers and
red foxes, at another he would be shooting deer for the value of their
hides. This cruel and wasteful practice I shall speak of in another
portion of this work.
His only weapon was a single-barrelled Sharp's .450 rifle, and he
possessed the most lovely mare, beautifully trained for shooting, and
not exceeding 14 1/2 hands in height. Little Bob, on his little mare,
would have formed a picture. On one occasion I had returned to camp a
little after 5.30 P.M., and as the sun sank low, the deep shadows of the
hills darkened our side of the narrow glen, and by 6 o'clock we were
reduced to a dim twilight. Presently, in this uninhabited region, a
figure halted within 15 paces of our tent, which was evidently Bob
Stewart, mounted upon some peculiar animal of enormous bulk, but with a
very lovely high-bred-looking head. This was Bob's pretty mare, loaded,
and most carefully packed with the trophies of his day's sport, as a
solitary hunter, quite alone and unaided since 8 A.M. His pony carried
the skins of three bears and four black-tail deer, which he had shot,
skinned, and packed upon his sturdy little companion.
The bears consisted of a mother and two half-grown young ones of the
choice variety known as "silver-tipped." He had come across the family
by chance while riding through the forest, and having shot the mother
through the shoulder, she fell struggling between her cubs; these
pugnacious brutes immediately commenced fighting, and a couple of shots
from the rapid breechloading Sharp rifle settled their ill-timed
quarrel.
Bob was the most dexterous skinner I ever saw; he would take off a skin
from a deer or bear as naturally as most persons would take off their
clothes; and the fact of a man, unassisted, flaying seven animals, and
arranging them neatly upon the Mexican saddle, would have been a
tolerable amount of labour without the difficulty of first finding and
then successfully shooting them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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