Jan. 8, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
59 
New Publications. 
The Grizzly Bear, by William H. Wright. 
Illustrated, cloth, 274 pages, $1.50 net. New 
York, Charles Scribner’s Sons. 
This is the narrative of a hunter-naturalist, 
who deals with a single animal as he has found 
it in the Western mountains. It is the best book 
that has ever been written about any of the 
bears—one of the best books that has ever been 
written, from the popular standpoint, about a 
single species of animal. It deserves far more 
extended notice than it can receive here and will 
be read carefully and thoughtfully by naturalists 
and big-game hunters who may learn 
much from it. 
Mr. Wright divides his book into 
three parts, each of which possesses a 
special interest. In the first part he 
gives briefly his own history, tells the 
story of Lewis and Clark and some 
later explorers, and of James Capen 
Adams, the well - known “Grizzly 
Adams” of our boyhood days. All 
this, of course, with special reference 
to the grizzly bear. The second part 
deals with Mr. Wright’s experiences 
and adventures, is full of hunting lore, 
tells of the first grizzly he killed, of 
the celebrated feat of killing five in 
five shots, and the more extraordinary 
one of killing a grizzly bear with a 
jack knife, as well as of photographing 
bears. The third part deals with the 
character and habits of the grizzly, and 
these chapters—especially the one on 
Food and Feeding and the one on 
Fierceness—are particularly well worth 
reading and pondering. 
Mr. Wright gives experiences—the 
things he did and saw—but he is wisely 
slow to generalize from them. Rarely 
he states that bears do not act in cer- 
* 
tain ways, but he is everywhere so cau¬ 
tious that we understand clearly that 
when he makes such a general state¬ 
ment he means that the bears do not 
so act in the region where he has seen 
them. Fie especially warns hunter and 
naturalist alike to be careful how they 
generalize from local observations. 
To our mind the most interesting—- 
one might almost say the most aston¬ 
ishing—thing about this book is the 
way in which it agrees with and confirms ob¬ 
servations made by other men whose observa¬ 
tions, if not so extended as those of Mr. Wright, 
have been not less careful. 
The local differences of habit in these bears 
are very fully treated by Mr. Wright, but can 
only be alluded to here. In the Clear Water 
country in Idaho the bear’s first food after he 
comes out in spring is the early grass on the 
southern slopes, then he fishes for salmon on 
the first run, hunts mice and insects until berries 
are ripe, then turns to the autumn run of sal¬ 
mon. Only a few hundred miles away in 
Northern Wyoming the grizzly feeds largely on 
the carcasses of wild game which dies during 
the winter, but does not greatly indulge in roots, 
grass and fish. 
In the Kootenai and Selkirk Mountain coun¬ 
try not one grizzly in a hundred will touch 
a carcass, though in autumn they dig out ground 
squirrels and whistlers, and work at this so 
much that they wear their claws down till they 
are no longer than those of the black bear. In 
certain localities particular plants form a large 
part of their food. 
While, so far as Mr. Wright’s observations go, 
the grizzly does not hunt for wild game, it is 
the fact that thirty or forty years ago in the 
plains country the grizzly did hunt for and killed 
large wild animals such as buffalo and elk. This 
perhaps we do not know from the testimony of 
white men, but we do know it from the testi¬ 
mony of Indian eye witnesses whose good faith 
and carefulness of observations may not be 
A Turkey Hunt. 
Camp Stotsenburc., P. I., Nov. 30. —Editor 
Forest and Stream: In 1896 we were stationed 
at Fort Apache, Arizona, in the heart of the 
White Mountain Indian Reservation. One 
morning, eight days before thanksgiving Day, 
I said to my bun'kie, “Chimmie, let's go hunt¬ 
ing for seven days.” 
“All right,” said he, so we requested the 
Colonel to give us permission. When this had 
been granted, we took our kits and horses and 
one pack mule from the troop and started for 
Willow Creek, twenty miles southeast of the 
post, arriving there that evening and go¬ 
ing into camp. 
The first and second days we scouted 
the foothills for deer. We did not see 
a flag, but saw many turkey signs. On 
the third day, about 4 p. m. I happened 
to look toward a mesa 200 yards in 
front of us, and saw three or four dark 
objects bobbing up in the grass. I asked 
Jimmie if he thought they were turkeys, 
and just then they disappeared. I told 
Jimmie to follow them around a hog¬ 
back covered with scrub oak and cedars, 
and that I would stay in the hollow 
among the tall pines. 
In about thirty minutes I heard Jim¬ 
mie shoot and then the turkeys began to 
run and fly about me like a lot of grass¬ 
hoppers, and I went to pieces. I got as 
bad a case of buck fever as any man 
ever had. I was armed with a .30 cali¬ 
ber army rifle with six cartridges in 
chamber and magazine. These were 
soon gone, and I forgot that I had any 
more, so I tried to knock them down 
as they flew past me. I got none, but 
I broke one’s wing, and tried to run 
him down, but had to give it up. 
Jimmie came around in a few minutes 
?.nd wanted to know how many I got. 
He said he did not have much of a 
chance; he had to take cover, as my 
promiscuous shooting had trimmed the 
brush all around him. We sat down 
and were talking the matter over, when 
the turkeys began calling all around us 
in the brush and grass, and pretty soon 
they began flying into the pines to roost, 
as it was nearing sunset by that time. 
We concealed ourselves under some 
bushes and began picking them off. We had 
about three miles to go to camp over rough 
country, so we decided that three apiece were 
all we wanted to carry. 
In conclusion I want to mention an acci¬ 
dental shot made by myself a couple of days 
later. We left camp about 2 A. M., thinking 
that we could get a turkey or two before they 
left their roosts, but we did not understand 
that kind of hunting, and as we went down 
the draw the turkeys flew out before we could 
get a shot. At last I got disgusted, and for a 
joke I looked up in a pine and said, “Chimmie, 
look at that turkey,” firing my rifle at the same 
time. As I did not sight or expect to hit any¬ 
thing, imagine my surprise when the largest 
turkey we had seen came tumbling down. 
Seven days slipped by all too fast, and we 
arrived the evening before Thanksgiving with 
our turkeys. Oliver Enochs. 
GRIZZLY ADAMS. 
Reproduced from Life by T. H. Hittel. 
doubted. The grizzly's diet was mixed in that 
region and a part of the summer was devoted 
to the digging of pomme blanche ( Psoralea ) and 
artichokes ( Helianlhus ). For berries, of course, 
they were always ready, and the cowboys of the 
early cattle days in Montana always expected 
to rope an occasional grizzly bear on the round¬ 
up, the bears being then at the edge of the foot¬ 
hills gathering berries and digging various 
roots. 
Mr. Wright’s volume must be a part of the 
library of every big-game hunter. Besides what 
it tells about our largest and most dangerous 
game animal it may form a model for other 
writers of books on popular natural history, for 
it is simple, direct, deals with fact and lets 
theories largely alone. It is a good book. 
It is illustrated by about twenty-four photo¬ 
graphs of bears, but not all of these pictures are 
equally interesting. 
