Survival Skills of Bears

[brotherbear]

The Grizzly Bear... And that the early explorers accepted the Indian verdict and thought it upheld by their own experiences is no less credible. For the grizzly bear, pursued into his fastness and attacked with bows and arrors, would be terrible indeed. And hostilely faced by men armed with the muzzle-loading smooth-bores of small calibre and still smaller penetration, he would be an antagonist but slightly less formidable. These things being so, it is scarcely to be wondered at that our predecessors overlooked two salient features of ther experiences: first, that they were themselves invariably the attacking party; and second, that, even so, for every bear that stayed to fight them, there were one or more that ran away. 
To sum up, then, it seems to be beyond doubt that a century's contact with men armed with rifles has rendered the grizzly bear a more wary and cautious animal. It would indeed be strange if this were not so, for the grizzly is quick to learn and has had innumerable opportunities of learning; and there have been[/b thirty or forty generations during which his individual lessons have been moulding the instinct of the race. But that, during this time, the grizzly has changed from a bloodthirsty and ferocious tyrant to an inoffensive minder of his own business, "defensive, not aggressive," I can find nothing in the records to show, nor do I for a moment believe. Reply