288 The Wilderness Hunter. 



Moreover, they are harder to poison than wolves. Most 

 often they are killed in traps, which are sometimes dead- 

 falls, on the principle of the little figure-4 trap familiar to 

 every American country boy, sometimes log-pens in 

 which the animal is taken alive, but generally huge steel 

 gins. In some states there is a bounty for the destruc- 

 tion of grislies ; and in many places their skins have a 

 market price, although much less valuable than those of 

 the black bear. The men who pursue them for the 

 bounty, or for their fur, as well as the ranchmen who 

 regard them as foes to stock, ordinarily use steel traps. 

 The trap is very massive, needing no small strength to 

 set, and it is usually chained to a bar or log of wood, 

 which does not stop the bear's progress outright, but 

 hampers and interferes with it, continually catching in 

 tree stumps and the like. The animal when trapped 

 makes off at once, biting at the trap and the bar ; but it 

 leaves a broad wake and sooner or later is found tangled 

 up by the chain and bar. A bear is by no means so 

 difficult to trap as a wolf or fox although more so than a 

 cougar or a lynx. In wild regions a skilful trapper can 

 often catch a great many with comparative ease. A 

 cunning old grisly however, soon learns the danger, and 

 is then almost impossible to trap, as it either avoids the 

 neighborhood altogether or finds out some way by which 

 to get at the bait without springing the trap, or else 

 deliberately springs it first. I have been told of bears 

 which spring traps by rolling across them, the iron jaws 

 slipping harmlessly off the big round body. An old horse 

 is the most common bait. 



