A close season for a period of years is needed. If there is an open season this should be restricted to two or three States, and it should be short. The number taken should be limited to one per person, unless a mother grizzly with cubs be killed, in which case the cubs also may be captured. The use of steel trap, deadfall, poison, spring gun, and dogs should be prohibited and the sale of hides forbidden.
Most big game has had some protection for years; the grizzly has had none. He is not a bad fellow, there is no just claim against him, but he has paid the penalty of being misunderstood. He has been classed as a menace and relentlessly pursued as though a dangerous criminal. Men follow him the year round, with guns, dogs, horses, traps, and poison. He is even trailed to the hibernating-den and slaughtered without any chance for his life.
Fear of bears and prejudice against them is all too often taught and developed in childhood. Mothers and nurses hush children by telling them, "Bears will get you if you're not good." People, however, are now learning that bears are not ferocious, that they do not eat human flesh, and that in the wilds the grizzly flees from man as though from a pestilence.
Mr. Pocock, in "A Man in the Open," with quaint, satirical philosophy goes to the bottom of the grizzly question. He says:--
"The coarse treatment grizzlies gets from hunters makes them sort of bashful with any stranger. Ye see, b'ars yearns to man, same as the heathen does to their fool gods, whereas bullets, pizen, and deadfalls is sort of discouraging. Their sentiments gets mixed, they acts confused and naturally if they're shot at they'll get hostile, same as you and me. They is misunderstood and that's how nobody has a kind word for grizzlies."
Grizzlies are walking mouse-traps. They are, like birds, destroyers of pests, and give us services of economic value. They are useful for what they eat; their food is made up in part of mice, rats, rabbits, ants, grasshoppers, and stray carcasses, and the remainder may be considered of little or no value to man.
A grizzly came down into a rancher's meadow in southern Colorado and "rooted it up like a hog." The owner was up in arms and one morning killed the invader. Curious as to what the grizzly could have been eating, he sent for a local butcher. His "insides" showed, among other things, the remains of thirty-four mice, one rat, and one rabbit.