But, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary, most old hunters
are very untrustworthy in dealing with points of natural history. They
usually know only so much about any given animal as will enable them to
kill it. They study its habits solely with this end in view; and once
slain they only examine it to see about its condition and fur. With rare
exceptions they are quite incapable of passing judgment upon questions
of specific identity or difference. When questioned, they not only
advance perfectly impossible theories and facts in support of their
views, but they rarely even agree as to the views themselves. One hunter
will assert that the true grisly is only found in California, heedless
of the fact that the name was first used by Lewis and Clarke as one of
the titles they applied to the large bears of the plains country round
the Upper Missouri, a quarter of a century before the California grisly
was known to fame. Another hunter will call any big brindled bear a
grisly no matter where it is found; and he and his companions will
dispute by the hour as to whether a bear of large, but not extreme, size
is a grisly or a silver-tip. In Oregon the cinnamon bear is a phase of
the small black bear; in Montana it is the plains variety of the large
mountain silver-tip. I have myself seen the skins of two bears killed
on the upper waters of Tongue River; one was that of a male, one of
a female, and they had evidently just mated; yet one was distinctly a
"silver-tip" and the other a "cinnamon." The skin of one very big bear
which I killed in the Bighorn has proved a standing puzzle to almost
all the old hunters to whom I have showed it; rarely do any two of
them agree as to whether it is a grisly, a silver-tip, a cinnamon, or
a "smut-face." Any bear with unusually long hair on the spine and
shoulders, especially if killed in the spring, when the fur is shaggy,
is forthwith dubbed a "roach-back." The average sporting writer moreover
joins with the more imaginative members of the "old hunter" variety in
ascribing wildly various traits to these different bears. One comments