252 The Grizzly Bear 



think, to kill an animal popularly supposed to pack away 

 anywhere from three to thirty slugs from our modern 

 guns, and then perhaps to climb a tree, wait for the unsus- 

 pecting hunter, pounce down on him, and mangle him 

 to death. 



Adams writes of crawling up within a few yards of 

 several grizzlies and shooting them and then having them 

 run off. In one instance he tells of wounding an old fe- 

 male with two cubs, whereupon the mother left the cubs 

 and ran away. In one or two cases he refers to the vitality 

 of the bears he had shot but he seldom emphasizes it. 

 He does, however, on several occasions, comment upon 

 the general attitude of hunters toward these animals, 

 saying, for instance, of his companion on one trip, "He 

 was a good hunter, but, like most of them, not over fond 

 of a grizzly bear"; and of another (named Wright, I re- 

 gret to say), "He was a good-enough hunter of deer, but, 

 like all other men who have had little experience with 

 them, terribly afraid of a grizzly bear." He does, how- 

 ever, mention one bear as having been shot through the 

 head, the heart, and the bowels, while several balls had 

 taken effect in the sides, but had not gone through the fat. 

 The bear ran seven or eight hundred yards after this 

 much shooting. The ball through the head could not, 

 of course, have hit the brain, and the one through the 

 bowels would not necessarily have stopped her under 

 the distance mentioned, while those sticking in the sides, 

 passing through the hide only, counted for nothing. The 

 only shot that could really have proved effective was the 

 one in the heart, and as Adams does not state that he 

 examined this organ to find just where the ball lodged. 



