356 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



mild-mannered gentleman in black will not be slow to do the 

 killing and help himself. 



To furnish an exhaustive or even adequate list of the 

 things upon which bears feed is by no means an easy task, but 

 it is so essential to success that a man should know where to 

 look for his game (game always being where its food is) that 

 this must be attempted. 



Let me begin at the beginning of the bear's year. As most 

 men know, all bears on this continent (except, perhaps, the 

 Polar) lie dormant during the winter. The den, as a rule, is at 

 the head of one of the hundred gulches which seem to radiate 

 from a common source amongst the snow peaks, the grizzly 

 and the cinnamon choosing their lairs at a higher altitude than 

 the black bear. 



The road to a grizzly's den, as I remember it, is generally 

 up a snow-slide, through a dense belt of noisy brush, which the 

 weight of the winter's snow has laid as a thunderstorm lays ripe 

 wheat ; and above this belt, under a sheer bluff, sheltered from 

 the wind and hidden by the snow, lies the den itself. 



Up here, mist and snow, a few stunted pines, and the sleeping 

 bear have the world to themselves from November to April, 

 the exact date of the bear's retirement to winter quarters, 

 as well as of his reappearance above ground, depending some- 

 what upon the seasons. This much, at any rate, seems to be 

 generally admitted amongst mountain men that, some time in 

 November bears begin to ' hole up,' the black bears being first 

 and the grizzlies following a week or two later ; whilst in spring 

 the grizzlies are up and out before their ' softer ' cousins. 



When they first come out of their dens both bears feed 

 entirely upon vegetable matter, even the grizzly being too 

 weak to wander round to look for the carcases of beasts which 

 have perished during the past winter. This he becomes strong 

 enough to do a week or so later, but at first he is every bit as 

 sorry a spectacle as Ursus americanus under similar conditions, 

 being almost too weak to stand, and sitting down to groan and 

 wag his old head from sheer exhaustion after every few yards he 



