THE GRIZZLY BEAR. 209 



is wounded or not, he will almost invariably turn downhill 

 and try to get away, and in doing so, often nearly tumbles 

 over his antagonist, who fancies the Bear is charging at 

 him, when his sole intention is to get away as soon as pos- 

 sible. If wounded, he has a peculiarly exasperating way 

 of rolling over and over, like a ball, at great pace, roaring 

 all the time. It is not easy to make a dead-shot at this 

 sort of a bounding foot-ball, so a greenhorn is apt to wait, 

 thinking that his Bear is mortally wounded, whereas, in 

 fact, he may be only slightly scratched, and he will con- 

 tinue his rotary movement till he strikes a bit of more level 

 ground, and then rapidly disappear. I might say here, 

 in passing, that it is always better, and certainly safer, to 

 stalk the Grizzly from above. 



The only Bear that deliberately charged me, charged in 

 the way I have described. I was planted in the middle of 

 the gully as he was coming down, and seeing me in the way, 

 and cutting off his retreat, he charged for all he was worth. 



Still, making, as I do, an allowance for the hereditary 

 growth of timidity in the Bear, his great strength and 

 tenacity of life will always render him an opponent to be 

 attacked carefully. You do not realize what that strength 

 is till you see his magnificent muscular development when 

 stripped of his skin. Remove his skin, and he is start- 

 lingly, horridly, like a dead man. His strength is enor- 

 mous. A splendid short-horned bull, that had been imported, 

 at great cost, by a cattle-raiser on Rock Creek, Montana, 

 a few years ago, was found with its neck broken but a week 

 after its arrival, and the tracks of a large Bear showed who 

 had done the mischief. 



My hunter, in 1868, saw a Grizzly attacking a band of 

 three Buffalo bulls, and assured me that, as one of the bulls 

 charged him, he saw that Bear break his mighty neck with 

 one blow. I believe that story is true. And only four 

 years ago, a large bull Elk, killed by our party, was carried 

 away bodily, horns and all, the night after he was killed, 

 by one monstrous Grizzly — carried over ground so rough 

 and through timber so dense that we lost all track of the 



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