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Updated: May 24, 2025
Hoping to prove something in regard to the weight of the Kadiak bear, I brought a pair of Fairbanks spring scales, weighing up to 300 pounds, and some water-tight canvas bags for weighing blood and the viscera. We selected two good men as hunters for the trip, Vacille and Klampe.
Merriam now decided to return home on the next boat, and after a few days I started off for the north side of Kadiak in an otter boat fitted with sail, picking up on the way a white man, Jack Robinson, and a native hunter, Vacille, at Ozinka, a small village on Spruce Island. My men proved a good combination, but we were all obliged to work hard for two months before a bear was finally secured.
Hardly had we sat down, when Vacille said: "If that brown spot on the hillside were not so large, I would take it for a bear." The brown spot promptly walked into the woods, half a mile away. We were keen enough again, but our watching proved fruitless, as nothing came down on the meadow, showing that there was good fishing well up the stream.
We could not change our position, as we occupied the only anchorage. Vacille, who had turned in, felt the anchor dragging, and we found ourselves being blown out into the large bay, where we could not have lived for any time in the big seas, and, should we continue to drag, our only chance was to try to beach her on a sand shore some half mile away.
Suddenly we heard a sharp screech up the stream, and when it was repeated, Vacille said it must be a young bear crying because its mother would not feed it fast enough. Here Vacille did some good work. We walked rapidly up stream, through the thick brush, and before we had gone 100 yards heard a large animal, just ahead, moving about in the brush, and making a good deal of noise.
There were two hunters, and they were fortunate enough to locate an inhabited den in early spring. Two bears were killed through crevices in the rocks, but the men suspected there was still one inside, and Vacille crawled in to make sure. He found himself in a fair sized chamber with a bear at the other end, and a lucky shot tumbled the animal at his feet.
I started ahead to get a view, thinking we had disturbed the bear, but Vacille held me back. We walked on noiselessly to a little bare point in the stream, and just then the bear appeared, bent on fishing, thirty feet away. She lumbered down into the stream, and when I fired fell into the water, the ball just missing her shoulder.
This was sad and illustrated the fact that it is sometimes best to be alone. We next tried Kaguiac Bay and here spent many days. Two bears had been killed by the natives near the barabara where we camped, and there was plenty of sign. Before sunrise we were watching from a good position, and it was scarcely light when Vacille made out a big bear, two miles or more away.
Bear sign failed, and Afognak Island, where Vacille shot and trapped, had been so much talked about, that I determined to see it for myself, and with a good wind we rowed across the straits and sailed twelve miles into the island by Kofikoski Bay. Scattered along up the bay were small islands, and these furnished us with a good supply of gulls' eggs, which lasted many days.
Once on land, we found the going very bad, and often wallowed in the snow mid-thigh deep. Then was the time for snowshoes, which we had been told were unnecessary. Floundering along in this soft snow began to tell a little on the keenness of the party, when Vacille and Ivan, who were off on one side, suddenly waved, and hunting on to them we were shown the bear far up the valley in some bushes.
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