Description and Distribution 195 



It is no doubt due to this remarkable range of coloring 

 that hunters and trappers have so persistently maintained 

 that there are many different kinds of grizzlies throughout 

 the Rocky Mountains; such as the "bald-face," the 

 "roach-back," the "silver-tip," the "range bear," and 

 now and again the real grizzly. These old fellows, good 

 hunters, no doubt, but infrequently discriminating ob- 

 servers, have insisted that there is a difference as to spe- 

 cies in these different colored bears, and that some are 

 more fierce than others; that a roach-back or a bald-face, 

 for example, will give the trail to neither man nor beast. 

 But this, in my experience, is all a myth. I have never 

 found that those of one color were any more ferocious 

 than those of another; or, indeed, that those of one color 

 differed from those of another color in anything but color. 



The size of the grizzly is another mooted question. 

 There seems to be a wide-spread idea that a grizzly must 

 weigh a ton or more. Even in the mountains, among those 

 who ought to know better, I have often heard the state- 

 ment that "it could not have been a grizzly as it was not 

 large enough." Now, to whatever size the grizzly may 

 attain, it is not born weighing a ton. As a matter of fact, 

 as we shall see later on, they weigh only a few ounces at 

 birth, and, so far as my observations go, I am inclined to 

 think that they are rather smaller at birth than the black 

 bear. I have often seen females of both species, with their 

 cubs, in July, and have found that the grizzly cubs were 

 not nearly so large as those of the black bear; although the 

 mother grizzly was fully as large again as the black bear dam. 



Moreover, full-grown grizzlies differ vastly in size. I 

 have myself killed small grizzlies, and have seen such 



