The other people in the bar recovered their nerve, once the man
was down. They hustled him out into the shed, and there was no
more trouble from him.
Roosevelt hunted geese and ducks, deer, mountain sheep, elk and
grizzly bear during his stay in the West. It was still possible to
find buffalo, although most of the great herds had vanished. The
prairie was covered with relics of the dead buffalo, so that one
might ride for hundreds of miles, seeing their bones everywhere,
but never getting a glimpse of a live one. Yet he managed, after a
hard hunt of several days, to shoot a great bull buffalo.
An encounter with a grizzly bear is much more exciting, and he was
nearly killed by one bear. In later years Roosevelt killed almost
every kind of large and dangerous game that there is on the
earth,--lions, elephants, the African buffalo, and the rhinoceros.
The Indian tiger is perhaps the only one of the large savage
animals which he never encountered. Yet after meeting all these
and having some close shaves, especially with a wounded elephant
in Africa, he said that his narrowest escape was with this grizzly
bear.
It was when he had returned to the West and was on a hunt in
Idaho. He had had trouble with his guide, who got drunk, so they
parted company, and Roosevelt was alone. Looking down into a
valley, from a rocky ridge, he saw a dark object, which he
discovered was a large grizzly bear.
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