Bear Traits 



" If you had only had that gun last fall ! " 

 The foregoing cases, taken as examples, 

 show how dangerous it is to generalize too 

 much about the conduct of bears at a bait. 

 Individual bears vary in their character, just 

 as human beings do. And even the same 

 bear may act very differently at different 

 times. I remember one bear stealing up so 

 quietly, that two of us, listening with all our 

 ears, never heard him until he reached the 

 bait. And the next night, after having been 

 shot at and well scared, he came back over 

 the same course, and made noise enough to 

 rouse the dead. 



So much do individuals vary, that it is quite 

 hard to recognize regular characteristic differ- 

 ences between even the grizzly and the black. 

 The grizzlies that I have seen seemed to be 

 bolder, and to come earlier to bait, than their 

 black cousins in the West ; but friends have 

 told me of cases where an old grizzly was as 

 shy and cautious as a fox. In the East, as I 

 said before, I have several times seen black 

 bears feeding at midday. In nearly every 

 case that I have seen, the grizzly, too, tried to 

 bury or cache his bait. Sometimes this at- 

 tempt was very perfunctory — merely a few 



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