THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
11. The Barren -ground Grizzly, Ursus horribilis richardsoni . 
A small grizzly with pelage much the same as the typical race. 
Range: From North Labrador through the northern barren lands to 
the east side of the Mackenzie River. Nearly extinct in Labrador, but 
commoner to the south of Victoria Land and west of Fort Churchill. 
[Ursus horrceus (Baird) seems in no way to differ from Ursus horribilis . ] 
The range of the grizzly bear is now becoming restricted to the north- 
west of the American continent. At the beginning of the last century the 
grizzly was undoubtedly common in Manitoba about the Red River, and 
also existed in North Dakota. In 1820 Richardson saw a grizzly killed at 
Carlton House on the Saskatchewan. Apparently at this time it was not 
known to the Indians further to the east. He gives its range at this date as 
the “ Rocky Mountains and plains lying to the eastward of them as far as 
latitude 61°, and perhaps still further north.” 
Until 1886 grizzlies were common in Colorado, very common in Wyo- 
ming and Montana and throughout British Columbia. Even to-day they are 
still fairly numerous in British Columbia, but only in very rough country 
where man seldom comes. They are still abundant about the Skeena and 
the Stickine Rivers, where a dozen may easily be seen by anyone having 
the patience to wait amidst the everlasting rain and watch the salmon- 
choked rivers and streams. In the ’eighties they were very common in the 
Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, and after a fall of fresh snow the whole 
mountain sides about Cloud Peak in the Big Horns appeared crossed 
and intercrossed with their tracks. Yet even at this date the grizzly was 
becoming nocturnal and crepuscular in its habits. 
A little earlier it was common to see grizzlies, especially in spring, out 
on the open prairies and about the foothills and bad-lands lying below the 
mountains. The cowboys there often shot them with their revolvers, or 
indulged in the more dangerous game of lassoing them and tying them 
up with their ropes. In the ’fifties and ’sixties it was common to see a 
dozen in a day’s march, and earlier old writers speak of finding them in 
droves alongside the buffalo. But now they have been so hunted that 
they are very rare in Colorado and scarce in Wyoming, except about the 
Yellowstone Park. Mr Russell, the admirable artist of western life, tells 
me they are still fairly common in the high mountains in Montana, some 
seventy miles south of the Canadian border. They are, however, still 
quite numerous throughout the northern part of the main range of the 
Rockies, where railways and settlers have not yet penetrated, and when 
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