326 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



of its movements, and its apparently sharper senses. 

 Still, after all is said, the man should have a thor- 

 oughly trustworthy weapon and a fairly cool head 

 who would follow into his own haunts and slay grim 

 Old Ephraim. 



A grisly will only fight if wounded or cornered, 

 or, at least, if he thinks himself cornered. If a man 

 by accident stumbles on to one close up, he is almost 

 certain to be attacked really more from fear than 

 from any other motive ; exactly the same reason that 

 makes a rattlesnake strike at a passerby. I have 

 personally known of but one instance of a grisly 

 turning on a hunter before being wounded. This 

 happened to a friend of mine, a Calif ornian ranch- 

 man, who, with two or three of his men, was fol- 

 lowing a bear that had carried off one of his sheep. 

 They got the bear into a cleft in the mountain from 

 which there was no escape, and he suddenly charged 

 back through the line of his pursuers, struck down 

 one of the horsemen, seized the arm of the man in 

 his jaws and broke it as if it had been a pipe-stem, 

 and was only killed after a most lively fight, in 

 which, by repeated charges, he at one time drove 

 every one of his assailants off the field. 



But two instances have come to my personal 

 knowledge where a man has been killed by a grisly. 

 One was that of a hunter at the foot of the Bighorn 

 Mountains who had chased a large bear and finally 

 wounded him. The animal turned at once and 

 came straight at the man, whose second shot missed. 

 The bear then closed and passed on, after striking 



