But the story of the shooting as told by one of the first three hunters was something like this: “We came upon the largest grizzly that I had ever seen. He must have weighed fifteen hundred pounds or more. He was busy digging in an opening and didn’t see us until we opened on him at short range. As we had time, we aimed carefully, and each of us got in several shots before he reached the woods. He ran with as much strength as if nothing had happened; yet we simply filled him full of lead—made a regular lead mine of him.”
The grizzly is not an exceedingly difficult animal to kill if shot in a vital spot—in the upper part of the heart, in the brain, or through the centre of the shoulder into the spine. Hunters too often fire aimlessly, or become so frightened that they do not even succeed in hitting the bear, though firing shot after shot in his general direction.
William H. Wright once killed five bears with five shots in rapid succession. I was with a hunter in a berry-patch when four grizzlies fell with four lightning-like shots. George McClelland in Wyoming killed nine bears inside of a minute. He probably fired sixteen shots. These were grizzlies, two of which were cubs.
During the last few seconds of his life, after the grizzly receives a fatal wound, he sometimes fights in an amazingly effective and deadly manner. As an old bear-hunter once said, “the grizzly is likely to do a lot of execution after he is nominally dead.” Hundreds of hunters have been wounded and scores of others killed by grizzlies which they were trying to kill or capture. Hundreds of others have escaped death or serious injury by extremely narrow margins.
A grizzly appears to have caused the death of the first white man to die within the bounds of Colorado. This happened on the plains in the eastern part of the State. Seeing the grizzly in the willows near camp, the man went out to kill him. The wounded grizzly knocked him down and mauled him so severely that he died.
In southern Colorado I saw a frightened hunter on horseback pursued by a mother grizzly. He was chasing her cubs, when she suddenly charged him. The horse wheeled and ran. Although the hunter urged the horse to its utmost, the bear was almost upon them when his dogs rushed in and distracted her.
Hunters claim that if a man feign death when knocked down by a grizzly he is not likely to be injured. James Capen Adams appears to have saved himself a number of times by this method. I have not had occasion to try the experiment.
An old bear-hunter told me that he once saved himself from what seemed to be certain death, in a most unusual manner. A grizzly knocked him sprawling, then leaped upon him to chew him up. In falling, however, the hunter had grabbed up a stone. With this he struck the bear a smashing blow on the tip of his nose as the bear landed upon him. The bear backed off with a roar of pain. This gave the hunter opportunity to seize his rifle and fire a fatal shot.
Three or four men who have been severely bitten and shaken by grizzlies have testified that they felt no pain at the time from these injuries. I cannot account for this. Livingstone, the African explorer, also states that he felt no pain when a lion was chewing him.
I once witnessed a grizzly-roping in Montana that had rare fighting and adventure in it. Two cowboys pursued a grizzly nearly to camp, when several others came riding out with whirling ropes seeking fun. They roped the bear; but a horse was pulled off his feet and dragged, a cowboy was ditched into a bunch of cactus, another cowboy lost his saddle, the cinches giving way under the strain, and a horse struck in the flank had to be shot. Meantime the bear got away and stampeded the entire herd of cattle.