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 eats year. Asmost — 
men know, all bears on this continent (except, perhaps, the 
Polar) lie dormant during the winter. The den, asa 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 
andthe 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 7 
and the grizzlies following a week or two later ; whilst inspring ~ 
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 7 
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 
mp 
