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.  He fired, and the bear giving a loud grunt, as the bullet struck, rushed forward at a gallop into a laurel thicket.  Roosevelt paused at the edge of the thicket and peered within, trying to see the bear, but knowing too much about them to go into the brush where he was.

When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left it, directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside, a little above.  He turned his head stiffly towards me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.

I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick.  Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim.  I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him.  He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me.  I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck.  I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me.  The rush of his charge carried him past.  As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onwards, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of which I had fired.  Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit.  Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound. [Footnote:  “The Wilderness Hunter,” pp. 305-6.]