the food supply runs short, in early spring, or in
a fall when the berry crop fails, they sometimes have to do their
own killing. Twice I have come across the remains of elk, which had
seemingly been slain and devoured by bears. I have never heard of elk
making a fight against a bear; yet, at close quarters and at bay, a bull
elk in the rutting season is an ugly foe.

A bull moose is even more formidable, being able to strike the most
lightning-like blows with his terrible forefeet, his true weapons of
defense. I doubt if any beast of prey would rush in on one of these
woodland giants, when his horns were grown, and if he was on his guard
and bent on fight. Nevertheless, the moose sometimes fall victims to
the uncouth prowess of the grisly, in the thick wet forests of the high
northern Rockies, where both beasts dwell. An old hunter who a dozen
years ago wintered at Jackson Lake, in northwestern Wyoming, told me
that when the snows got deep on the mountains the moose came down and
took up their abode near the lake, on its western side. Nothing molested
them during the winter. Early in the spring a grisly came out of its
den, and he found its tracks in many places, as it roamed restlessly
about, evidently very hungry. Finding little to eat in the bleak,
snow-drifted woods, it soon began to depredate on the moose, and killed
two or three, generally by lying in wait and dashing out on them as they
passed near its lurking-place. Even the bulls were at that season weak,
and of course hornless, with small desire to fight; and in each case the
rush of the great bear--doubtless made with the ferocity and speed which
so often belie the seeming awkwardness of the animal--bore down the
startled victim, taken utterly unawares before it had a chance to defend
itself. In one case the bear had missed its spring; the moose going
off, for a few rods, with huge jumps, and then settling down into its
characteristic trot. The old hunter who followed the tracks said he
would never have deemed it possible for any animal to make such strides
while in a trot.

Nevertheless, the grisly is only occasionally, not normally, a
formidable predatory beast, a killer of cattle and of large game.
Although capable of far swifter movement than is promised by his frame
of seemingly clumsy strength, and in spite of his power of charging with
astonishing suddenness and speed, he yet lacks altogether the supple
agility of such finished destroyers as the coug