250 The Grizzly Bear 



and survive twenty minutes; or that one shot once through 

 the lungs should go a mile, lie up in the woods, and be 

 found "still perfectly alive," an hour later. Every hunter 

 of elks or goats could match these instances with others 

 at least equally remarkable. But these animals run away. 



If one thinks to lose one's life by an ineffectual shot, 

 the refusal of the animal to drop at the first fire is far more 

 impressive than if one only thinks to lose a deer. The 

 difference is psychological, and lies not in the comparative 

 vitalities of the wounded animals, but in the varying ef- 

 fects of this vitality on the man behind the gun. 



After giving due weight, however, to these considera- 

 tions, I am still of the opinion that many old hunters were 

 inclined to draw the long bow when it came to recount- 

 ing their experiences with grizzlies. Take any old hunt- 

 ers, in either America or the Dark Continent, and some 

 stories they tell beget serious and even amused reflection. 

 In some of Gerard's tales of lion hunting in Africa, for 

 instance, the grizzly bear is put completely out of coun- 

 tenance. In one case this writer tells of a lion hunt in 

 which from two to three hundred persons took part. In 

 half a day's shooting five hundred shots were fired, one 

 man was carried away dead, six were crippled, and the 

 lion was still doing business at the old stand. This 

 either means that the hunters were incredibly poor shots, 

 that their ammunition was worthless, or that the pen is 

 mightier than the rifle. 



As already stated, most of my grizzly-bear shooting 

 has been done with a .45 single-shot rifle. I loaded 

 the shells myself and used a hundred grains of powder 

 with swaged lead bullets weighing six hundred grains. 



