Wading into the water a bear will knock out the salmon right and left when they are running thick.
Flesh and fish do not constitute the grisly's ordinary diet.

At most times the big bear is a grubber in the ground, an eater of insects, roots, nuts, and berries.

Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other.
It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher.

If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts to satisfy the cravings of so huge a bulk.

The sign of a bear's work is, of course, evident to the most unpracticed eye; and in no way can one get a better idea of the brute's power than by watching it busily working for its breakfast, shattering big logs and upsetting boulders by sheer strength.