312 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



enough; but unfortunately the bears were still for the 

 most part hibernating. We saw two or three tracks, but 

 the animals themselves had not yet begun to come about 

 the hotels. Nor were the hotels open. No visitors had 

 previously entered the Park in the winter or early spring, 

 the scouts and other employees being the only ones who 

 occasionally traverse it. I was sorry not to see the bears, 

 for the effect of protection upon bear life in the Yellow- 

 stone has been one of the phenomena of natural history. 

 Not only have they grown to realize that they are safe, 

 but, being natural scavengers and foul feeders, they have 

 come to recognize the garbage heaps of the hotels as their 

 special sources of food supply. Throughout the summer 

 months they come to all the hotels in numbers, usually 

 appearing in the late afternoon or evening, and they have 

 become as indifferent to the presence of men as the deer 

 themselves some of them very much more indifferent. 

 They have now taken their place among the recognized 

 sights of the Park, and the tourists are nearly as much 

 interested in them as in the geysers. In mussing over 

 the garbage heaps they sometimes get tin cans stuck on 

 their paws, and the result is painful. Buffalo Jones and 

 some of the other scouts in extreme cases rope the bear, 

 tie him up, cut the tin can off his paw, and let him go 

 again. It is not an easy feat, but the astonishing thing 

 is that it should be performed at all. 



It was amusing to read the proclamations addressed 

 to the tourists by the Park management, in which they 

 were solemnly warned that the bears were really wild 

 animals, and that they must on no account be either fed 



