92 HUNTING THE GRISLY. 



been regularly charged by a grisly. On the 

 whole, the danger of hunting these great bears 

 has been much exaggerated. At the begin- 

 ning of the present century, when white 

 hunters first encountered the grisly, he was 

 doubtless an exceedingly savage beast, prone 

 to attack without provocation, and a redoubt- 

 able foe to persons armed with the clumsy, 

 small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles of the day. 

 But at present bitter experience has taught 

 him caution. He has been hunted for sport, 

 and hunted for his pelt, and hunted for the 

 bounty, and hunted as a dangerous enemy to 

 stock, until, save in the very wildest districts, 

 he has learned to be more wary than a deer, and 

 to avoid man's presence almost as carefully 

 as the most timid kind of game. Except in 

 rare cases he will not attack of his own ac- 

 cord, and, as a rule, even when wounded his 

 object is escape rather than battle. 



Still, when fairly brought to bay, or when 

 moved by a sudden fit of ungovernable anger, 

 the grisly is beyond peradventure a very 

 dangerous antagonist. The first shot, if taken 

 at a bear a good distance off and previously 

 unwounded and unharried, is not usually 

 fraught with much danger, the startled animal 

 being at the outset bent merely on flight. It 

 is always hazardous, however, to track a 

 wounded and worried grisly into thick cover, 

 and the man who habitually follows and kills 

 this chief of American game in dense timber, 

 never abandoning the bloody trail whitherso- 

 ever it leads, must show no small degree oi 



