THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
unless frequently disturbed. If the road is blocked by fallen trees they 
make a fresh trail round it and do not repair or cut a way through as 
rodents do. 
The speed of the grizzly is considerable and can be kept up for a long 
distance, and it takes a good horse to come up with one travelling at its 
best pace, wherefore this bear finds it easy to catch and kill ponies and 
cattle in the spring when they are in poor condition. A single blow from the 
paw is said to disable a horse. It is also a good swimmer, but does not seem 
to take to water so readily as the black bear. Its tenacity of life is very 
great, and a bullet that would knock down a lion or tiger is not sufficient 
to render a grizzly hors de combat. Even with modern high power rifles 
the ball must be placed in the head, neck, heart or spine to bring it down, 
and this bear is the only animal I have seen that will walk away if shot 
through the kidneys. If hit in this place any other animal drops at once. 
All the early travellers, from the days of Lewis and Clark, agree that the 
grizzly had little fear of man, but to-day all this is altered, and the great 
bear is now a shy and nervous creature which seems to fear man more 
than anything else and will seldom attack him even when brought face to 
face. We have an interesting instance of the attitude of mind of the grizzly 
towards man when that excellent hunter, Mr Charles Sheldon, actually 
collided by accident with a large grizzly on Montague Island (see “ The 
Wilderness of the North Pacific Coast Islands,” p. 99). The bear knocked 
the hunter over and then ran for its life without stopping to fight. He had 
smelt the man and that was enough. 
The grizzly and the lion have both learnt the inevitable lesson that man 
is the master, and now no longer stop to fight like the African buffalo and 
the elephant, but will only do so when wounded and cornered. 
I shall never forget my first sight of a grizzly in his natural home, and 
what a grizzly he was. I think few larger have ever been seen in the Rockies . 
I was riding along a trail in the Big Horns with my hunter, Rattlesnake 
Jack, when I observed two ravens flying and croaking over some object 
on the edge of a small park. In a moment something moved, and I called 
Jack’s attention to it. His answer was to immediately turn his horse, whilst 
I did the same. 
“ Did you see him ? ” he observed, “ the biggest grizzly on earth.” 
We at once called up my brother Geoff, who was with the pack train 
behind and then got off our horses and stalked carefully to the edge of some 
fallen timber where a good view could be obtained. 
372 
