The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-11-13
GAME In MONTANA
NATURAL PRESERVE DISCOVERED
By PROSECUTORS IN THE
BELT MOUNTAINS
BROUGHT BACK BEAR HIDES

BROUGHT BACK BEAR HIDES
Until Certificates" to Back Up the
Assertions Were in Evidence-Re-
giOn One Entirely Overlooked by
Travellers in the Past-Adventure
With an Ugly Bruin.
Save in the rank tangles of under
growth on the islands and shore strip of
Southeastern Alaska the grizzly, brown,
black and other bears, which once made
travelling throughout the far West SO
perilous, have now all but disappeared.
Occasionally a sort of belated bruin
struggles into the procession of his pro-
genitors and joins the long train of bear
ghosts which traverse the realms Of the
impaipable, exposing in testimony there
Of his carcass in front of some butcher
shop in San Francisco, where his tallow
and else are sold at a trife Of two bits
a pound. Such animals come from far
back in the Sierras, and they are very
rare. Not only are they rare In Cali
fornia, but throughout the adjacent
states a bear is now as much a curiosity
to a hunter as he would be to a China
man in Central park, New York.
During the days when every other man
who came into the West had his mind
bent upon digging gold, when there were
no stock farms nor grazing ranches,
hear-kIling was pursued as an industry,
and bears body was worth to a butcher
some hundreds OF dollars in gold. The
enterprise of the hunters nearly ex-
terminated the species, and now, as I
have SAID 1t is rarely that one is seen.
When, therefore, James Gurley. Bill and
! Buck Buchanan, David Silliman and Eli
sha Rouse returned to Helena recently
after prospecting tour in the Belt
| mountains east Of the Crow reserve, In
| Southeastern Montana, and told of hav-
| ing been through a district inhabited by
hundreds of bears, their statements were
received with generar disbelief. But 1.-The
boys" had. as they explained, the Ger
tificates" to back up their assertions.
! These certificates" were no less than
forty bear and few mountain lion hides
! or as many as they could conveniently
pack out-which were undoubtedly fresh
! ly stripped from the animals. Upon pre-
senting these the market honored their
credentials to the extent OF $40 per hide,
| and the boys had money with which
! to treat those who believed them, and
with which to bet against those who de-
| MED their stories truth.
NEW GAME PRESERVES.
| 1t developed, however, that the coun-
| try which the men visited had, singularly
! enough, been overlooked by travellers in
the past, and it is likely that no one save
| the Indian had ever been in the region
! before. The mountains they traversed
| rise from the desert plain, and reach
great heights; the Yellowstone river runs
to the north. Yellowstone park, with all
its weird wonders, lies to the southwest,
and off to the east the thin stream Of
the Little Missouri separates the Mon
| tana desert from the Bad Lands, which
blight the country far into the Dakotas
The mountains lie in that locality in
which, on the Little Big: Horn, a few
miles below, Chief Gail and Sitting Bull
met Custer and his command. AS soon
as the men reached the higher areas of
the mountains evidences of the presence
Of wild animals began to appear. The
| slopes were well wooded with pines, and
little parks or clearings in the tree
growths would contain three and four
and as many as six of the beasts; some
rolling about in play, others nosing along
the ground, while still others stood upon
| their hind legs and INDUCED in mock
fights with their forepaws. Visions of
this sort of thing could be obtained oc-
casionally by parties of the men as they
| came suddenly upon one of these clear
! ings and gazed upon the scene through
| vista of trees, unnoticed by the bears.
1t was not until the second day that
| the men were among the knobs and peaks
| that these interesting diversions present
| ed themselves; and 1t did not occur to any
of the party that their visit to the local
ity was likely to be momentous through
the appearance Of wild animals until some
time in the middle of the night, when the
| camp of the party was disturbed through
| the appearance Of a great grizzly bear,
which came crashing over the brush, and
walked snortingly up to the blanketed
| forms Of the men.
MET A GRIZZLY
Gurley was the first to awake and to
recognize the peril of the party. Bear
| in CAMP he cried, rising from the
ground and making for a nearby tree
| Buchanan, hes come for that deer"
| But Gurley did not halt In a moment
| he was secure in a limb of a big pine
| while the bear, as OWNED by Buchanan
went up to a large deer which had been
| killed during the afternoon for camp con-
sumption.
Himself secure in a tree, Gurley was
! seized with a daredevil desire to shoot
| the bear, which he could plainly see
! through the gloom, with it's paws upon
| the suspended deer in the act of drag
! glng It to the ground. The announce
ment by Gurley, however, that he was
going to take a shot at the "varmint'
was met with such a fusillade of pro-
below that he forsook his Intention, and
a great sigh of relief went over the
party when the bear, dragging away the
! deer, went off, and returned no more
The presence of the bear stampeded
the horses, which were picketed close to
! the camp, and all but two of them broke
their lines and made away. In the morn
Ing, therefore, two men, Silliman and
| Rouse, each saddled one of the remain
| Ing animals and started in search of the
| runaWays. Riding down into a valley
| they began to hunt through a thicket
| Of willows which lined either bank of a
| dry stream bed While thus investigat-
| ing, they became separated so that Sill
man was on one side of the bed and
Rouse on the other Presently Silliman
heard a growl, a snarl, and a kind of a
bark and Rouse's horse frightened, and
IN oh