Autobiographical 1 1 



have never carried a compass, have never slept away from 

 camp overnight, and have travelled three or four hundred 

 miles across uninhabited districts and come out where I 

 wanted to. I soon found that I had many friends who 

 were anxious to hunt, and who were ready to pay me to 

 take them hunting. These friends had friends. It was not 

 long before I turned what had been my hobby into a busi- 

 ness. Heretofore I had hunted three or four months a year. 

 Henceforward I was seldom that long away from the woods. 

 And soon I was familiar with every range of mountains 

 in which the grizzly bear was found, from Mexico to 

 Alaska. 



In the beginning, I studied the grizzly in order to hunt 

 him. I marked his haunts and his habits, I took notice of 

 his likes and dislikes; I learned his indifferences and his 

 fears; I spied upon the perfection of his senses and the 

 limitations of his instincts, simply that I might the better 

 slay him. For many a year, and in many a fastness of the 

 hills, I pitted my shrewdness against his, and my wariness 

 against his, and my endurance against his; and many a 

 time I came out winner in the game, and many a time I 

 owned myself the loser. And then at last my interest in 

 my opponent grew to overshadow my interest in the game. 

 I had studied the grizzly to hunt him. I came to hunt him 

 in order to study him. I laid aside my rifle. It is twelve 

 years since I have killed a grizzly. Yet in all those years 

 there is not one but what I have spent some months in his 

 company. And then (alas! that it had not been sooner) 

 I undertook to photograph him. And finally I have at- 

 tempted to put into this volume something of the story of 

 the grizzly during the seventy-five years between his dis- 



