Post 24957
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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.
All grizzlies are fond of fish and in some sections they become successful fishermen. Sometimes they capture fish by wading along a brook, and catching, with claws or teeth, the fish that conceal themselves beneath banks or roots. Commonly the bear makes a stand in driftwood on a bank, or on a log that has fallen into or across a stream. From this stand he knocks fish entirely out of the water with a lightning-like stroke of his paw. The bears that range along the water-sheds of the Columbia and its tributaries feed largely on fish, mostly salmon.