Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and its Chase with Horse, Hound, and RifleRoosevelt, Theodore
History
Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle
Roosevelt, Theodore
Hunting -- United States
Quite near my ranch, once, a cowboy in my employ found unmistakable
evidence of the discomfiture of a bear by a long-horned range cow. It
was in the early spring, and the cow with her new-born calf was in a
brush-bordered valley. The footprints in the damp soil were very plain,
and showed all that had happened. The bear had evidently come out of the
bushes with a rush, probably bent merely on seizing the calf; and had
slowed up when the cow instead of flying faced him. He had then begun
to walk round his expected dinner in a circle, the cow fronting him
and moving nervously back and forth, so that her sharp hoofs cut and
trampled the ground. Finally she had charged savagely; whereupon the
bear had bolted; and, whether frightened at the charge, or at the
approach of some one, he had not returned.
The grisly is even fonder of sheep and pigs than is its smaller black
brother. Lurking round the settler's house until after nightfall,
it will vault into the fold or sty, grasp a helpless, bleating
fleece-bearer, or a shrieking, struggling member of the bristly
brotherhood, and bundle it out over the fence to its death. In carrying
its prey a bear sometimes holds the body in its teeth, walking along on
all-fours and dragging it as a wolf does. Sometimes, however, it seizes
an animal in its forearms or in one of them, and walks awkwardly on
three legs or two, adopting this method in lifting and pushing the body
over rocks and down timber.
When a grisly can get at domestic animals it rarely seeks to molest
game, the former being far less wary and more helpless. Its heaviness
and clumsiness do not fit it well for a life of rapine against shy
woodland creatures. Its vast strength and determined temper, however,
more than make amends for lack of agility in the actual struggle with
the stricken prey; its difficulty lies in seizing, not in killing, the
game. Hence, when a grisly does take to game-killing, it is likely to
attack bison, moose, and elk; it is rarely able to catch deer, still
less sheep or antelope. In fact these smaller game animals often show
but little dread of its neighborhood, and, though careful not to let
it come too near, go on grazing when a bear is in full sight. Whitetail
deer are frequently found at home in the same thicket in which a bear
has its den, while they immediately desert the temporary abiding place
of a wolf or cougar. Nevertheless, they sometimes presume too much on
this confidence. A couple of years before the occurrence of the feats
of cattle-killing mentioned above as happening near my ranch, either the
same bear that figured in them, or another of similar tastes, took to
game-hunting. The beast lived in the same succession of huge thickets
which cover for two or three miles the river bottoms and the mouths of
the inflowing creeks; and he suddenly made a raid on the whitetail deer
which were plentiful in the dense cover. The shaggy, clumsy monster was
cunning enough to kill several of these knowing creatures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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