THE GRIZZLY AND BLACK BEAR 
for the most part a harmless vegetarian, who likes to vary his diet with 
an occasional dinner of meat, whether found or killed. For the greater part 
of his life he rambles in the woods or amongst the crags digging up roots, 
feasting on berries, grass or salmon bush, or tearing old stumps to pieces 
to reach the insects, grubs or ants they hide. In his flesh diet his favourite 
food is the Arctic vole ( microtus ), which he digs out with his powerful 
claws. He catches the small animal with dexterity, and after crushing the 
skull, swallows the body whole. In grizzly haunts it is common to see 
large spaces that have been torn up by the bears in summer when searching 
for voles, and this is particularly the case in its northern range. I have 
seen an extent of two acres in Cassiar so excavated that it looked as if 
men had been at work with spades for some considerable time. In spring, 
voles, grass and salmon berry are the principal food of the grizzly on all 
the islands of the North Pacific. In the autumn, as soon as the salmon begin 
to run, the grizzlies descend from the high mountains and live in the dense 
brakes of willow, salmon berry and devil’s club alongside the rivers. 
In these they make regular roads to the river edges, where they hunt for 
salmon, living, dead or dying, and so lay on an extraordinary amount of 
fat to carry them through the long winter sleep. 
Grizzlies and black bears do often frequent the same rivers and streams 
in the autumn, but more often grizzlies have regular haunts of their own 
where, probably from fear, the black bears do not come. The Indians say 
that the smaller bear is chased off by its larger cousin, and there must be 
some truth in this, for on the Stickine, where both species are numerous, 
the feeding grounds are generally separate. Only in one place (the Little 
Canon), about thirty miles below Telegraph Creek, did I see the fresh 
tracks of both species in numbers together. 
In old days grizzlies hung constantly on the flanks of the great buffalo 
herds, just as the wolves and coyotes did, and frequently killed young 
buffalo and wounded beasts. Some writers affirm that a grizzly could 
master and kill an old bull single-handed, but this, I think, requires 
confirmation which will now never be forthcoming. 
At any rate, a grizzly can kill and drag for a considerable distance a 
full-grown steer, and this would need almost as much strength to over- 
come. When the buffalo went away, grizzlies became confirmed cattle and 
horse killers, and this made them unpopular, so that the habit in some 
way contributed to their destruction. They certainly kill a large number of 
young deer and wapiti, and in their northern range young and cow moose 
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