Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... Nights with the Grizzlies In this paper I propose to give an account of some experience with the grizzly bear in the summer and fall of 1885. Here let me correct some impressions prevailing among sportsmen from the East as to the proper time to hunt this animal. As detailed in the sporting papers, one sportsman hunting late in the fall finds them at the timber-line, and having some success and basing his opinion upon statements of his guide, is satisfied that is the only place to find them, and that you must stealthily follow the trail through dense timber, as he did. Another sportsman finds them below the foot-hills among the Bad Lands, and thinks that is the proper locality; and so each one is governed by his own particular good luck and experience. This reminds me of the heated controversy that agitated some of the readers of one of the sporting papers a few years since as to the color of the jack-rabbit of the plains: one party contending they were gray and the opposing party that they were white, each party citing his own restricted experience with that fleet-footed animal. To those having more extended observation it was plain that each side was to a certain extent right as well as wrong, for it is well known that the jack-rabbit is gray during summer and fall and turns white in the winter, and then again sheds his white coat in spring: at least this is the case in Wyoming and Montana. So with the grizzly. He is essentially an omnivorous animal: his food varying with each season and the locality where such food is obtained, his habitat varies accordingly. He lies in his winter bed until routed out by the melting of the winter snow, and the ground being still frozen, he has to rustle for his grub. He soon becomes poor from the...