THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
attack the grizzly in the open. The courage, ferocity and strength of this 
bear have now for the most part given place to slyness and cunning. The 
least taint or sight of man is sufficient to send him flying to the nearest 
cover if he happens to be in the open, and the male never stops to fight 
unless he is wounded, or the female unless she has cubs. Mr Clifford Little, 
who has had much experience with grizzlies both in British Columbia and 
Alaska, told me that he spied a grizzly one day walking along a ridge 
about a mile and a half away in the Skoot Mountains. He was in the open 
at the moment, but stooped and commenced to crawl so as to reach some 
cover a little ahead. As he essayed the manoeuvre with care, the bear 
suddenly stood up, and although he was lying quite still it saw him at once 
and beat a hasty retreat to the woods. This shows that the grizzly has, 
when he likes to use his eyes, as good sight as any deer. His powers of scent 
are also superb, and he can smell man or a dead carcass at great distances. 
Like the fox, he makes large circles round any dead thing he wishes to 
approach, and so greatly obviates the chance of being surprised by any 
man who may be watching the same as a bait. I once spent two wretched 
nights in a tree over a carcass of a wapiti I had shot, and then found in the 
morning that three grizzlies had circled round my perch for hours without 
ever coming within 200 yards of the bait. The next night I did not watch, 
and the bears nearly finished the deer. 
There is no disputing the fact that the grizzly bear of to-day is not the 
grizzly of the story books of our youth. There is little doubt that he was a 
formidable beast and is, even with the powerful rifles we now possess, by 
no means easy to kill. In fact, he is one of the toughest brutes to knock over 
with a single shot that exist, but that he is really dangerous, except under 
very unusual circumstances, I do not believe. Those books in which the 
grizzly invariably charges are usually full of — let us say in kindly spirit — 
imagination. This bear, like all others, chooses the line of least resistance, 
and, being dazed by a shot and not having located the marksman, is just as 
likely to run in his direction as any other. It is, therefore, most unwise to 
fire at a grizzly when the animal is on a hillside above the shooter, as it 
is nearly sure to come straight down hill in its wounded state, and will 
perhaps attack him in its dying fury. 
Even so long ago as the ’sixties, Bret Harte correctly summarized the 
character of the grizzly in the lines “ Coward of Heroic Size,” etc., and that 
was when the old black grizzlies of California were of immense bulk and 
real ferocity. His nature is not naturally aggressive to man. He is, in fact, 
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