Fair Play for Bears

The rifles and shells were packed, the bourbon stashed in car trunks. But the game was off on its own trip. Two black bears were weaving along a road near the town of Florida in western Massachusetts when Conservation Officer William Kulish first spotted them. Next morning, he found the bears asleep near the Deerfield River; when he woke them, they responded with "a pair of silly grins."

The bears got up and "walked with a definite wobble." They had gorged themselves on apples that fermented in their stomachs into hard cider.

The state director of fisheries and game postponed the bear-hunting season for four days to let the bears sober up. He declined comment on a suggestion that only drunken hunters be allowed to hunt drunken bears.