Bears as Predators ~

[brotherbear]

The Grizzly Bear, The Narrative of a Hunter-Naturalist by William H. Wright.
Grizzlies have jaws like iron. In and about old Indian camps, where the old leg and thigh bones of elk and moose have been left, I have seen these crushed into fragments, and even ground into particles, by the vice-like jaws of these bears; this, of course, for the marrow that was to be found in them. Many think that the grizzly is a habitual hunter and killer of wild game; and in certain localities, and in times past, this may possibly have been true. This we will discuss farther on. I have never, however, in all my experience, except the little fellows before mentioned, that I have any reason to think had been killed by a grizzly.
That the grizzly can, and that easily, kill an elk or a moose, there is no sort of doubt. Nor do I deny that such killings have taken place. But I am firmly persuaded that he never attempts it unless it be in cases of emergency or where some exceptional circumstances lead to it. Should a grizzly happen, for example, to be near a water lick where these animals come to drink, he might, in one of his impatient rushes, strike down one of them, but the animals that might be destroyed in this way are a negligible quantity. Reply