e, while the deer tracks led away
below the tree. All of a sudden I heard the report of Mr. Dingman's
rifle, so I stood still for a minute, and hearing nothing more I went
to see the cause of the shooting. The doe had gone beyond the fallen
tree, then turned back and went about midway of the tree, on the
upper side and lay down. Mr. Dingman caught a glimpse of the old lady
as she went out, but did not catch her.

We did not follow the doe far from where she lay behind the fallen
tree, for we crossed the trail of a bear going west, and partly in
the direction of that of the wounded deer, which continued to work
her cards on us all afternoon without our getting sight of her. At
dusk we trailed her into a small thicket at the edge of the farm
owned by a man by the name of Foster, at the extreme head of the run.

As it was too late in the day to do any more with the old doe, we
concluded to go to Mr. Foster's and stay over night, and take the
trail early in the morning. It was snowing a little and we thought
that the thicket would be an easy place to find our game, should it
snow enough to cover the tracks. In the morning when we got up, we
found six or eight inches of snow on the ground, that had fallen
during the night. We had an early breakfast, and started out to again
play the game with the broken legged doe.

Before we got to the edge of the woods, we struck the trail of some
animal, that had gone across the field in the early part of the night
before it had snowed much. We were not positive what sort of an
animal it was, whether man or beast. The trail was leading straight
across the field without a curve in it, and was making straight to a
laurel patch that was one and a half miles away on the Taggart farm,
less than a mile below Coudersport.

Mr. Dingman said that it was a bear. I admitted that it was a bear
all right, but replied that I would say it was making for the
Adirondack Mountains in New York, rather than the laurel patch on the
Taggert farm. We did not have far to go to make sure, and a good part
of the distance was across farms, so we concluded to hunt bear a
while, and give the old doe a rest for a short time. As Mr. Dingman
said, the bear made straight for the laurel patch.

There was not more than 15 or 20 acres in the patch, so we thought
that we would circle it and make sure that the bear was still in the
laurel. We found that the bear was there all right, so Mr. Dingman
selected a place where