Post 00450
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One day I saw three men fire from twelve to sixteen shots at a small grizzly bear on a mountain-side only a short distance away. That evening these men sincerely asserted that he must have weighed at least a ton–when he probably did not weigh more than five hundred pounds–and that though they shot him full of lead, he refused to die. I doubt whether a single one of their shots hit the grizzly. Most of the shots went wild, and some of them hit a rocky cliff about two hundred yards distant and fifty or sixty feet higher than the bear. At another time I saw a hunter kill four huge grizzly bears with just four successive shots. Of course he knew the vital point at which to aim, was a good shot, and had perfect self-control during the few seconds of shooting.
As a rule, the grizzly does not kill cattle or big game. There were buffalo-killing grizzlies, and an occasional one now kills cattle. These killers commonly slay right and left, often killing a dozen head in a short time, but they do not often kill big game. I have a number of times seen elk, deer, and mountain sheep feeding near a grizzly without showing the slightest concern.
The grizzly is an omnivorous feeder. He will eat anything that is edible,–fresh meat or carrion, bark, grass, grasshoppers, ants, fruit, grubs, and leaves. He is fond of honey and with it will consume rotten wood, trash, and bees,–stings and all. He is a destroyer of many pests that afflict man, and in the realm of economic biology should be rated high for work in this connection. I doubt whether any dozen cats, hawks, or owls annually catch as many mice as he. But in some localities the grizzly is almost a vegetarian. In western Montana and in the southern Selkirks of Canada he lives almost exclusively on plants and plant-roots, together with berries and bark.