Hunting American Big Game 



Let me say now that the danger and 

 ferocity of the bear are, I think, very much 

 overstated ; yet there is just enough element 

 of danger to make the pursuit of this ani- 

 mal exciting. Naturalists do not now ap- 

 parently recognize more than two varieties 

 of bear in the Rocky Mountains. That 

 is, they class the cinnamon, silver-tip, and 

 grizzly as grizzly bears. The other vari- 

 ety, of course, is the black bear. I am by 

 no means sure that the grizzly bear will 

 not be further subdivided after careful com^ 

 parisons of collections of skulls. 



Much has been said and written about 

 the size and weight of the grizzly bear, 

 and in most instances this has been mere 

 guesswork. Lewis and Clark made fre- 

 quent mention of this animal, and yet their 

 estimate of the weight falls far below that 

 of other writers. Only a few instances 

 have come to my knowledge where the 

 weight has been ascertained absolutely. A 

 good-sized grizzly killed in Yellowstone 

 Park last summer by Wilson, the govern- 

 ment scout, weighed six hundred pounds. 

 Colonel Pickett, who has a neighboring 

 ranch to mine, and who has killed more 

 bears than any man I know of, weighed 

 his largest, which, if I remember rightly, 

 weighed eight hundred pounds. One will, 



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