NOTES ON THE GRIZZLY BEAR 177 



and porcupines. According to the needs of the hour, he 

 feeds upon the best or the worst. Beyond doubt, he pre- 

 fers an elk, fat, fresh and filling; but when hunger plucks 

 vulture-like at his vitals, he will not disdain to pick a 

 dead and bloated pack-rat out of a snowslide and put 

 it where he thinks it will do the most good. 



The carrion state does not bother him in the least, if 

 he is hungry. Most impartially he cleans up the car- 

 casses of big game left by the hunter. He has been 

 known to eat the flesh of his own kind, which surely is 

 in very bad taste, ethically, but otherwise it is not so bad 

 in him as in the hunters who sometimes devour his hams, 

 regardless of their origin. 



Occasionally a grizzly will feed on a carcass in the 

 daytime, but the majority wisely defer their visits until 

 nightfall, and retire before dawn. Many a hunter has 

 tried to kill a grizzly over the remains of a horse spe- 

 cially slaughtered as a bait, but none of my bear-hunting 

 friends ever have succeeded in killing a grizzly by that 

 plan. Usually the bear comes only in the darkness, or 

 else remains away altogether. 



I believe that nearly every time the weight of a griz- 

 zly bear is estimated, it is greatly over-estimated. The 

 size of a stretched skin, and the length of the pelage in 

 the winter season, always suggests an animal larger and 

 heavier than the reality. Trim down every " estimate " 

 fully one-third, and you will have something near the 

 proper figure. In bear-guessing errors, the writer is no 

 exception. Bears always have seemed to me much larger 

 than the cold and unimaginative scales show them to be. 



