226 . The Grizzly Bear 



When he comes to a log or other obstruction he pulls, 

 pushes, and boosts until he surmounts it. 



Grizzlies have jaws like iron. In and about old Indian 

 camps, where the old leg and thigh bones of elk and 

 moose have been left, I have seen these crushed into 

 fragments, and even ground into particles, by the vice- 

 like jaws of these bears; this, of course, for the marrow 

 that was to be found in them. Many think that the 

 grizzly is a habitual hunter and killer of wild game; and 

 in certain localities, and in times past, this may possibly 

 have been true. This we will discuss farther on. I 

 have never, however, in all my experience, found a single 

 wild animal of any kind whatsoever, except the little fel- 

 lows before mentioned, that I had any reason to think 

 had been killed by a grizzly. 



That the grizzly can, and that easily, kill an elk or a 

 moose, there is no sort of doubt. Nor do I deny that 

 such killings have taken place. But I am firmly per- 

 suaded that he never attempts it unless it be in cases of 

 emergency or where some exceptional circumstances 

 lead up to it. Should a grizzly happen, for example, to 

 be near a water lick where these animals come to drink, 

 he might, in one of his impatient rushes, strike down one 

 of them, but the animals that might be destroyed in this 

 way are a negligible quantity. 



Strangely enough, however, individual grizzlies do, 

 now and again, turn "bad" and take to killing the cattle 

 of the ranchmen. How they acquire the habit it would 

 be hard to say. Probably through some accident, or 

 by a more than usual gift of putting two and two together 

 and arguing from a stolen quarter of beef, to a walking 



