44 



"OA, Ranger!" 



never have recognized him. His fur was thick and soft, he was sleek 

 and fat, his disposition was made over. He was a changed animal. That 

 literally is what happens to the bears of the mountains in the summer. 

 They eat enough to replace the exhausted tissues, they grow new fur, 

 they are almost new bears by the time the tourist season closes. Folks 

 who want to see the bears at their best should see them during the late 

 summer or the early autumn. 



The greatest collection of bears in any national park is in Yellow 

 stone, where we have both the grizzly and the black bear. Both can be 

 seen easily. In Glacier National Park there are grizzlies and blacks, but 

 the grizzlies are not so easily seen. Yosemite National Park has a great 

 many black bears, and they are very tame and easily seen and photo 

 graphed. Sequoia National Park has some fine black bears and possibly 

 a few grizzlies, one having been seen recently. Rainier National Park 

 has black bears, as have Crater Lake, Lassen, and Rocky Mountain Na 

 tional parks. There are no bears at Grand Canyon, Bryce, or Zion parks. 

 One of the early bear stories that caught the fancy of folks was the 

 story of Buffalo Jones and the bad grizzly. Buffalo Jones was one of 

 our early scouts, a genuine man of the mountains, later appointed chief 

 gamekeeper of Yellowstone. He was annoyed by a certain big grizzly 

 that persisted in robbing camps. Buffalo Jones was authorized to dis 

 cipline the grizzly, but was admonished not to injure the animal. It 

 puzzled the old scout considerably. He scratched his head and tried 

 to think how he could punish the bear and still not hurt him. Finally, 

 he rigged up a noose, caught the grizzly on one of his prowling expedi 

 tions, drew the rope tight under the bear's fore paws and around his 

 shoulders, and pulled the rope over the limb of a tree. With the grizzly 

 suspended a few inches off the ground, in a helpless position, Buffalo 

 Jones proceeded to spank the bear as one would spank a bad boy. The 

 grizzly yelped and whined until he was let down to the ground. Then 

 he made a bee-line for the woods and was never seen around camp again. 

 We have often thought of offering complaining Dudes the oppor 

 tunity to spank the bears that they wanted 

 shot, on condition that they capture the 

 bears as did Buffalo Jones. Not long ago, 

 when the man who dumped the "salad" at 

 the Canyon complained that a bear had bit 

 ten him and insisted that the animal be 

 punished, the rangers said, "Point out the 

 guilty bear and we'll punish him." 



Just then a bear came out of the woods. 

 "There he is," said the man. "That's the 

 one that chewed me." 



