I have often been in bear territory for days without seeing one. Then again I have seen two or more in a few hours. Frequently I have been able to watch a grizzly at moderately short range for an hour or longer. I was chiefly concerned to get near enough to study his actions, and not to take a shot, as I trailed without a gun. But many a day I have failed to see a grizzly, though I searched carefully in a territory which I knew and where the habits of the individual bears were somewhat known to me. A grizzly territory is covered with a web of dim trails over which he usually travels. If surprised, the grizzly turns and retreats over the trail on which he was advancing. A bear's trail, close behind him, is a dangerous place to be in if he does retreat. Many a hunter, a few feet off the trail, has had the alarmed bear rush by without noticing him, while others, who were directly on the trail, have been run over or assailed by the bear. When in a trap or cornered, a wounded grizzly sometimes feigns death. Apparently, when he considers his situation desperate, he sees in this method the possibility of throwing his assailant off his guard. A trapper once invited me to go the rounds with him along his string of traps. In one of these was a young grizzly. At short range the hunter fired two shots and the bear fell in a heap. We advanced within a few feet and saw that the bear was bleeding freely, but halted "to be sure he was dead." "I make it a point," said the hunter, "to wait until a bear dies before I start skinning him. Once I made the mistake of putting down my rifle and starting to skin the bear before he was dead." We stepped forward, and the hunter prodded the bear with the end of the rifle-barrel. Like a jumping-jack the bear sprang at the hunter, knocked him over backwards, tore a hole through his clothing, and ripped a bad wound in his skin on the thigh. Fortunately the chain and clog on the trap held the bear from following up his assault.