"As to it's being great sport hunting them, it's the grizzly that usually
does the hunting. For myself, I haven't any ambition that way. I'm
perfectly willing to give him his full half of the road whenever we meet.
And we won't meet at all, if I see him first. I've had more than one
tussle with an old silver-tip, and I've got a few hides up at the house
to serve as reminders. But it's always been when it was more dangerous to
run than it was to stay and fight it out. There ain't many things on four
feet or two that I'd go far out of my way to keep from meeting, but when
it comes to a grizzly I haven't any pride at all. There are less exciting
forms of amusement. No, my boy, if you're thinking of tackling a grizzly,
take a fool's advice and don't do it."

"But a bullet in the right place would stop them as surely as it would
anything else, I should think," ventured Tom.

"That's just the point," said Melton. "It's mighty hard to put a bullet
in the right place. If you're on horseback, your horse is so mortally
scared at sight of the brute that he won't let you get a steady aim.
There's nothing on earth that a mustang fears so much as a bear. And, if
you're on foot, he moves so swiftly and dodges so cleverly, that it's
hard to pick out the right spot to plunk him. And all the time, you know
that, if you miss, it's probably all up with you. Even if you get him in
the heart, his strength and vitality are such that he may get to you in
time enough to take you along with him over the great divide. And it
isn't a pleasant way of dying. He just hugs you up in those front paws of
his, lifts up his hind paw with claws six inches long, and with one great
sweep rips you to pieces. There's no need of a post-mortem to find out
how a man has died when a grizzly has got through with him. I've come
across such sights at times, and I didn't have any appetite for a day or