384 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



ranch near Chihuahua he at different times kept loose, 

 as pets, a female cougar, three wolves, and several coyotes, 

 all taken when very young. All were exceedingly tame 

 and even affectionate, save at the moment of eating. 



Mr. W. H. Wright, of Spokane, Wash., is a hunter 

 of wide experience, and has probably made as close a life 

 study of the bear particularly the grizzly as anyone 

 now alive. In speaking to me, he dwells on its wide 

 variation in habits, not only as among individuals, but as 

 between all the individuals of one locality when com- 

 pared with those of another. Thus, in the Big Horn or 

 the Teton Mountains if an animal is killed, he has in his 

 experience found that any grizzly within range is almost 

 sure to come to the carcass (and this has been my expe- 

 rience in the same region) . In the Bitter Roots, where 

 the bears live largely on fish, berries and roots, he found 

 the chances just about even whether the bears would or 

 would not come; whereas in the Selkirks, he found that 

 the bears would very rarely pay any attention to a car- 

 cass, this being a place where game is comparatively 

 scarce and where there are no salmon, so that the bears 

 live exclusively as vegetarians, save for eating small mam- 

 mals or insects. In the Bitter Roots Mountains the bears 

 used to live chiefly on fish in the spring and early in the 

 fall; in the summer they fed to a large extent on the 

 shooting star, which grows on all the marshes and is one 

 of the familiar plants of the region, but did not touch 

 either the dog-tooth violet or the spring beauty, both of 

 which have little tubers on the roots. But in the Koote- 

 nay country he found that the bears dug up acres and 



