The king of the game beasts of temperate North America, because the most
dangerous to the hunter, is the grisly bear; known to the few remaining
old-time trappers of the Rockies and the Great Plains, sometimes as "Old
Ephraim" and sometimes as "Moccasin Joe"--the last in allusion to his
queer, half-human footprints, which look as if made by some mishapen
giant, walking in moccasins.
Bear vary greatly in size and color, no less than in temper and habits.
Old hunters speak much of them in their endless talks over the camp
fires and in the snow-bound winter huts. They insist on many species;
not merely the black and the grisly but the brown, the cinnamon, the
gray, the silver-tip, and others with names known only in certain
localities, such as the range bear, the roach-back, and the smut-face.
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
on the superior prowess of the roach-back; the explanation being that a
bear in early spring is apt to be ravenous from hunger. The next insists
that the California grisly is the only really dangerous bear; while
another stoutly maintains that it does not compare in ferocity with what
he calls the "smaller" silver-tip or cinnamon. And so on, and so on,
without end. All of which is mere nonsense.
Nevertheless it is no easy task to determine how many species or
varieties of bear actually do exist in the United States, and I cannot
even say without doubt that a very large set of skins and skulls would
not show a nearly complete intergradation between the most widely
separated individuals. However, there are certainly two very distinct
types, which differ almost as widely from each other as a wapiti does
from a mule deer, and which exist in the same localities in most heavily
timbered portions of the Rockies. One is the small black bear, a bear
which will average about two hundred pounds weight, with fine, glossy,
black fur, and the fore-claws but little longer than the hinder ones; in
fact the hairs of the fore-paw often reach to their tips. This bear is a
tree climber. It is the only kind found east of the great plains, and
it is also plentiful in the forest-clad portions of the Rockies, being
common in most heavily timbered tracts throughout the United States.
The other is the grisly, which weighs three or four times as much as the
black, and has a pelt of coarse hair, which is in color gray, grizzled,
or brown of various shades. It is not a tree climber, and the fore-claws
are very long, much longer than the hinder ones. It is found from the
great plains west of the Mississippi to the Pacific coast. This bear
inhabits indifferently lowland and mountain; the deep woods, and the
barren plains where the only cover is the stunted growth fringing the
streams. These two types are very distinct in every way, and
their differences are not at all dependent upon mere geographical
considerations; for they are often found in the same district. Thus I
found them both in the Bighorn Mountains, each type being in extreme
form, while the specimens I shot showed no trace of intergradation.
The huge grizzled, long-clawed beast, and its little glossy-coated,
short-clawed, tree-climbing brother roamed over exactly the same country
in those mountains; but they were as distinct in habits, and mixed as
little together as moose and caribou.
On the other hand, when a sufficient number of bears, from widely
separated regions are examined, the various distinguishing marks are
found to be inconstant and to show a tendency--exactly how strong I
cannot say--to fade into one another. The differentiation of the two
species seems to be as yet scarcely completed; there are more or less
imperfect connecting links, and as regards the grisly it almost seems as
if the specific character were still unstable. In the far northwest,
in the basin of the Columbia the "black" bear is as often brown as any
other color; and I have seen the skins of two cubs, one black and one
brown, which were shot when following the same dam. When these brown
bears have coarser hair than usual their skins are with difficulty to be
distinguished from those of certain varieties of the grisly. Moreover,
all bears vary greatly in size; and I have seen the bodies of very large
black or brown bears with short fore-claws which were fully as heavy as,
or perhaps heavier than, some small but full-grown grislies with long
fore-claws. These very large bears with short claws are very reluctant
to climb a tree; and are almost as clumsy about it as is a young grisly.
Among the grislies the fur varies much in color and texture even among
bears of the same locality; it is of course richest in the deep forest,
while the bears of the dry plains and mountains are of a lighter, more
washed-out hue.
A full grown grisly will usually weigh from five to seven hundred
pounds; but exceptional individuals undoubtedly reach more than twelve
hundredweight. The California bears are said to be much the largest.
This I think is so, but I cannot say it with certainty--at any rate I
have examined several skins of full-grown California bears which were
no larger than many I have seen from the northern Rockies. The Alaskan
bears, particularly those of the peninsula, are even bigger beasts;
the skin of one which I saw in the possession of Mr. Webster, the
taxidermist, was a good deal larger than the average polar bear skin;
and the animal when alive, if in good condition, could hardly have
weighed less than 1,400 pounds.[*] Bears vary wonderfully in weight,
even to the extent of becoming half as heavy again, according as they
are fat or lean; in this respect they are more like hogs than like any
other animals.
[*] Both this huge Alaskan bear and the entirely distinct
bear of the barren grounds differ widely from the true
grisly, at least in their extreme forms.
The grisly is now chiefly a beast of the high hills and heavy timber;
but this is merely because he has learned that he must rely on cover to
guard him from man, and has forsaken the open ground accordingly. In old
days, and in one or two very out-of-the-way places almost to the present
time, he wandered at will over the plains. It is only the wariness born
of fear which nowadays causes him to cling to the thick brush of the
large river-bottoms throughout the plains country. When there were no
rifle-bearing hunters in the land, to harass him and make him afraid,
he roved thither and thither at will, in burly self-confidence. Then
he cared little for cover, unless as a weather-break, or because it
happened to contain food he liked. If the humor seized him he would
roam for days over the rolling or broken prairie, searching for roots,
digging up gophers, or perhaps following the great buffalo herds
either to prey on some unwary straggler which he was able to catch at
a disadvantage in a washout, or else to feast on the carcasses of those
which died by accident. Old hunters, survivors of the long-vanished ages
when the vast herds thronged the high plains and were followed by the
wild red tribes, and by bands of whites who were scarcely less savage,
have told me that they often met bears under such circumstances; and
these bears were accustomed to sleep in a patch of rank sage bush, in
the niche of a washout, or under the lee of a boulder, seeking their
food abroad even in full daylight. The bears of the Upper Missouri
basin--which were so light in color that the early explorers often
alluded to them as gray or even as "white"--were particularly given
to this life in the open. To this day that close kinsman of the grisly
known as the bear of the barren grounds continues to lead this same kind
of life, in the far north. My friend Mr. Rockhill, of Maryland, who
was the first white man to explore eastern Tibet, describes the large,
grisly-like bear of those desolate uplands as having similar habits.
However, the grisly is a shrewd beast and shows the usual bear-like
capacity for adapting himself to changed conditions. He has in most
places become a cover-haunting animal, sly in his ways, wary to a degree
and clinging to the shelter of the deepest forests in the mountains and
of the most tangled thickets in the plains. Hence he has held his own
far better than such game as the bison and elk. He is much less common
than formerly, but he is still to be found throughout most of his former
range; save of course in the immediate neighborhood of the large towns.
In most places the grisly hibernates, or as old hunters say "holes up,"
during the cold season, precisely as does the black bear; but as with
the latter species, those animals which live farthest south spend
the whole year abroad in mild seasons. The grisly rarely chooses that
favorite den of his little black brother, a hollow tree or log, for
his winter sleep, seeking or making some cavernous hole in the ground
instead. The hole is sometimes in a slight hillock in a river bottom
but more often on a hill-side, and may be either shallow or deep. In
the mountains it is generally a natural cave in the rock, but among the
foothills and on the plains the bear usually has to take some hollow or
opening, and then fashion it into a burrow to his liking with his big
digging claws.
Before the cold weather sets in the bear begins to grow restless, and to
roam about seeking for a good place in which to hole up. One will often
try and abandon several caves or partially dug-out burrows in succession
before finding a place to its taste. It always endeavors to choose a
spot where there is little chance of discovery or molestation, taking
great care to avoid leaving too evident trace of its work. Hence it is
not often that the dens are found.
Once in its den the bear passes the cold months in lethargic sleep; yet,
in all but the coldest weather, and sometimes even then, its slumber is
but light, and if disturbed it will promptly leave its den, prepared for
fight or flight as the occasion may require. Many times when a hunter
has stumbled on the winter resting-place of a bear and has left it, as
he thought, without his presence being discovered, he has returned only
to find that the crafty old fellow was aware of the danger all the time,
and sneaked off as soon as the coast was clear. But in very cold weather
hibernating bears can hardly be wakened from their torpid lethargy.
The length of time a bear stays in its den depends of course upon the
severity of the season and the latitude and altitude of the country. In
the northernmost and coldest regions all the bears hole up, and spend
half the year in a state of lethargy; whereas in the south only the
she's with young and the fat he-bears retire for the sleep, and these
but for a few weeks, and only if the season is severe.
When the bear first leaves its den the fur is in very fine order, but it
speedily becomes thin and poor, and does not recover its condition until
the fall. Sometimes the bear does not betray any great hunger for a few
days after its appearance; but in a short while it becomes ravenous.
During the early spring, when the woods are still entirely barren and
lifeless, while the snow yet lies in deep drifts, the bear, hungry
brute, both maddened and weakened by long fasting, is more of a flesh
eater than at any other time. It is at this period that it is most apt
to turn true beast of prey, and show its prowess either at the expense
of the wild game, or of the flocks of the settler and the herds of the
ranchman. Bears are very capricious in this respect, however. Some are
confirmed game, and cattle-killers; others are not; while yet others
either are or are not accordingly as the freak seizes them, and
their ravages vary almost unaccountably, both with the season and the
locality.
Throughout 1889, for instance, no cattle, so far as I heard, were
killed by bears anywhere near my range on the Little Missouri in western
Dakota; yet I happened to know that during that same season the ravages
of the bears among the herds of the cowmen in the Big Hole Basin, in
western Montana, were very destructive.
In the spring and early summer of 1888, the bears killed no cattle near
my ranch; but in the late summer and early fall of that year a big bear,
which we well knew by its tracks, suddenly took to cattle-killing. This
was a brute which had its headquarters on some very large brush bottoms
a dozen miles below my ranch house, and which ranged to and fro across
the broken country flanking the river on each side. It began just before
berry time, but continued its career of destruction long after the wild
plums and even buffalo berries had ripened. I think that what started it
was a feast on a cow which had mired and died in the bed of the creek;
at least it was not until after we found that it had been feeding at
the carcass and had eaten every scrap, that we discovered traces of
its ravages among the livestock. It seemed to attack the animals wholly
regardless of their size and strength; its victims including a large
bull and a beef steer, as well as cows, yearlings, and gaunt, weak
trail "doughgies," which had been brought in very late by a Texas
cow-outfit--for that year several herds were driven up from the
overstocked, eaten-out, and drought-stricken ranges of the far south.
Judging from the signs, the crafty old grisly, as cunning as he was
ferocious, usually lay in wait for the cattle when they came down
to water, choosing some thicket of dense underbrush and twisted
cottonwoods, through which they had to pass before reaching the sand
banks on the river's brink. Sometimes he pounced on them as they fed
through the thick, low cover of the bottoms, where an assailant could
either lie in ambush by one of the numerous cattle trails, or else creep
unobserved towards some browsing beast. When within a few feet a quick
rush carried him fairly on the terrified quarry; and though but a clumsy
animal compared to the great cats, the grisly is far quicker than one
would imagine from viewing his ordinary lumbering gait. In one or two
instances the bear had apparently grappled with his victim by seizing it
near the loins and striking a disabling blow over the small of the back;
in at least one instance he had jumped on the animal's head, grasping
it with his fore-paws, while with his fangs he tore open the throat
or crunched the neck bone. Some of his victims were slain far from the
river, in winding, brushy coulies of the Bad Lands, where the broken
nature of the ground rendered stalking easy. Several of the ranchmen,
angered at their losses, hunted their foe eagerly, but always with ill
success; until one of them put poison in a carcass, and thus at last, in
ignoble fashion, slew the cattle-killer.
Mr. Clarence King informs me that he was once eye-witness to a bear's
killing a steer, in California. The steer was in a small pasture, and
the bear climbed over, partly breaking down, the rails which barred the
gateway. The steer started to run, but the grisly overtook it in four or
five bounds, and struck it a tremendous blow on the flank with one paw,
knocking several ribs clear away from the spine, and killing the animal
outright by the shock.
Horses no less than horned cattle at times fall victims to this great
bear, which usually spring on them from the edge of a clearing as they
graze in some mountain pasture, or among the foot-hills; and there is
no other animal of which horses seem so much afraid. Generally the bear,
whether successful or unsuccessful in its raids on cattle and horses,
comes off unscathed from the struggle; but this is not always the case,
and it has much respect for the hoofs or horns of its should-be prey.
Some horses do not seem to know how to fight at all; but others are both
quick and vicious, and prove themselves very formidable foes, lashing
out behind, and striking with their fore-hoofs. I have elsewhere given
an instance of a stallion which beat off a bear, breaking its jaw.
Quite near my ranch, once, a cowboy in my employ found unmistakable
evidence of the discomfiture of a bear by a long-horned range cow. It
was in the early spring, and the cow with her new-born calf was in a
brush-bordered valley. The footprints in the damp soil were very plain,
and showed all that had happened. The bear had evidently come out of the
bushes with a rush, probably bent merely on seizing the calf; and had
slowed up when the cow instead of flying faced him. He had then begun
to walk round his expected dinner in a circle, the cow fronting him
and moving nervously back and forth, so that her sharp hoofs cut and
trampled the ground. Finally she had charged savagely; whereupon the
bear had bolted; and, whether frightened at the charge, or at the
approach of some one, he had not returned.
The grisly is even fonder of sheep and pigs than is its smaller black
brother. Lurking round the settler's house until after nightfall,
it will vault into the fold or sty, grasp a helpless, bleating
fleece-bearer, or a shrieking, struggling member of the bristly
brotherhood, and bundle it out over the fence to its death. In carrying
its prey a bear sometimes holds the body in its teeth, walking along on
all-fours and dragging it as a wolf does. Sometimes, however, it seizes
an animal in its forearms or in one of them, and walks awkwardly on
three legs or two, adopting this method in lifting and pushing the body
over rocks and down timber.
When a grisly can get at domestic animals it rarely seeks to molest
game, the former being far less wary and more helpless. Its heaviness
and clumsiness do not fit it well for a life of rapine against shy
woodland creatures. Its vast strength and determined temper, however,
more than make amends for lack of agility in the actual struggle with
the stricken prey; its difficulty lies in seizing, not in killing, the
game. Hence, when a grisly does take to game-killing, it is likely to
attack bison, moose, and elk; it is rarely able to catch deer, still
less sheep or antelope. In fact these smaller game animals often show
but little dread of its neighborhood, and, though careful not to let
it come too near, go on grazing when a bear is in full sight. Whitetail
deer are frequently found at home in the same thicket in which a bear
has its den, while they immediately desert the temporary abiding place
of a wolf or cougar. Nevertheless, they sometimes presume too much on
this confidence. A couple of years before the occurrence of the feats
of cattle-killing mentioned above as happening near my ranch, either the
same bear that figured in them, or another of similar tastes, took to
game-hunting. The beast lived in the same succession of huge thickets
which cover for two or three miles the river bottoms and the mouths of
the inflowing creeks; and he suddenly made a raid on the whitetail deer
which were plentiful in the dense cover. The shaggy, clumsy monster was
cunning enough to kill several of these knowing creatures. The exact
course of procedure I never could find out; but apparently the bear laid
in wait beside the game trails, along which the deer wandered.
In the old days when the innumerable bison grazed free on the prairie,
the grisly sometimes harassed their bands as it now does the herds of
the ranchman. The bison was the most easily approached of all game,
and the great bear could often get near some outlying straggler, in its
quest after stray cows, yearlings, or calves. In default of a favorable
chance to make a prey of one of these weaker members of the herds, it
did not hesitate to attack the mighty bulls themselves; and perhaps the
grandest sights which it was ever the good fortune of the early hunters
to witness was one of these rare battles between a hungry grisly and a
powerful buffalo bull. Nowadays, however, the few last survivors of the
bison are vanishing even from the inaccessible mountain fastnesses in
which they sought a final refuge from their destroyers.
At present the wapiti is of all wild game that which is most likely to
fall a victim to the grisly, when the big bear is in the mood to turn
hunter. Wapiti are found in the same places as the grisly, and in some
spots they are yet very plentiful; they are less shy and active than
deer, while not powerful enough to beat off so ponderous a foe; and they
live in cover where there is always a good chance either to stalk or to
stumble on them. At almost any season bear will come and feast on an
elk carcass; and if the food supply runs short, in early spring, or in
a fall when the berry crop fails, they sometimes have to do their
own killing. Twice I have come across the remains of elk, which had
seemingly been slain and devoured by bears. I have never heard of elk
making a fight against a bear; yet, at close quarters and at bay, a bull
elk in the rutting season is an ugly foe.
A bull moose is even more formidable, being able to strike the most
lightning-like blows with his terrible forefeet, his true weapons of
defense. I doubt if any beast of prey would rush in on one of these
woodland giants, when his horns were grown, and if he was on his guard
and bent on fight. Nevertheless, the moose sometimes fall victims to
the uncouth prowess of the grisly, in the thick wet forests of the high
northern Rockies, where both beasts dwell. An old hunter who a dozen
years ago wintered at Jackson Lake, in northwestern Wyoming, told me
that when the snows got deep on the mountains the moose came down and
took up their abode near the lake, on its western side. Nothing molested
them during the winter. Early in the spring a grisly came out of its
den, and he found its tracks in many places, as it roamed restlessly
about, evidently very hungry. Finding little to eat in the bleak,
snow-drifted woods, it soon began to depredate on the moose, and killed
two or three, generally by lying in wait and dashing out on them as they
passed near its lurking-place. Even the bulls were at that season weak,
and of course hornless, with small desire to fight; and in each case the
rush of the great bear--doubtless made with the ferocity and speed which
so often belie the seeming awkwardness of the animal--bore down the
startled victim, taken utterly unawares before it had a chance to defend
itself. In one case the bear had missed its spring; the moose going
off, for a few rods, with huge jumps, and then settling down into its
characteristic trot. The old hunter who followed the tracks said he
would never have deemed it possible for any animal to make such strides
while in a trot.
Nevertheless, the grisly is only occasionally, not normally, a
formidable predatory beast, a killer of cattle and of large game.
Although capable of far swifter movement than is promised by his frame
of seemingly clumsy strength, and in spite of his power of charging with
astonishing suddenness and speed, he yet lacks altogether the supple
agility of such finished destroyers as the cougar and the wolf; and for
the absence of this agility no amount of mere huge muscle can atone. He
is more apt to feast on animals which have met their death by accident,
or which have been killed by other beasts or by man, than to do his own
killing. He is a very foul feeder, with a strong relish for carrion,
and possesses a grewsome and cannibal fondness for the flesh of his own
kind; a bear carcass will toll a brother bear to the ambushed hunter
better than almost any other bait, unless it is the carcass of a horse.
Nor do these big bears always content themselves merely with the
carcasses of their brethren. A black bear would have a poor chance if
in the clutches of a large, hungry grisly; and an old male will kill
and eat a cub, especially if he finds it at a disadvantage. A rather
remarkable instance of this occurred in the Yellowstone National Park,
in the spring of 1891. The incident is related in the following letter
written to Mr. William Hallett Phillips, of Washington, by another
friend, Mr. Elwood Hofer. Hofer is an old mountain-man; I have hunted
with him myself, and know his statements to be trustworthy. He was, at
the time, at work in the Park getting animals for the National Museum
at Washington, and was staying at Yancey's "hotel" near Tower Falls, His
letter which was dated June 21st, 1891, runs in part as follows:
"I had a splendid Grizzly or Roachback cub and was going to send him
into the Springs next morning the team was here. I heard a racket
outside, went out, and found him dead. An old bear that made a 9 1/2
inch track had killed and partly eaten him. Last night another one
came, one that made a 8 1/2 inch track, and broke Yancy up in the milk
business. You know how the cabins stand here. There is a hitching post
between the saloon and old house, the little bear was killed there. In a
creek close by was a milk house, last night another bear came there and
smashed the whole thing up, leaving nothing but a few flattened buckets
and pans and boards. I was sleeping in the old cabin, I heard the tin
ware rattle but thought it was all right, supposed it was cows or horses
about. I don't care about the milk but the damn cuss dug up the remains
of the cub I had buried in the old ditch, he visited the old meat house
but found nothing. Bear are very thick in this part of the Park, and are
getting very fresh. I sent in the game to Capt. Anderson, hear its doing
well."
Grislies are fond of fish; and on the Pacific slope, where the salmon
run, they, like so many other beasts, travel many scores of miles and
crowd down to the rivers to gorge themselves upon the fish which are
thrown up on the banks. 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. There is always a touch of the comic, as well as a touch of
the strong and terrible, in a bear's look and actions. It will tug and
pull, now with one paw, now with two, now on all fours, now on its
hind legs, in the effort to turn over a large log or stone; and when it
succeeds it jumps round to thrust its muzzle into the damp hollow and
lap up the affrighted mice or beetles while they are still paralyzed by
the sudden exposure.
The true time of plenty for bears is the berry season. Then they feast
ravenously on huckleberries, blueberries, kinnikinnic berries, buffalo
berries, wild plums, elderberries, and scores of other fruits. They
often smash all the bushes in a berry patch, gathering the fruit with
half-luxurious, half-laborious greed, sitting on their haunches, and
sweeping the berries into their mouths with dexterous paws. So absorbed
do they become in their feasts on the luscious fruit that they grow
reckless of their safety, and feed in broad daylight, almost at midday;
while in some of the thickets, especially those of the mountain
haws, they make so much noise in smashing the branches that it is a
comparatively easy matter to approach them unheard. That still-hunter is
in luck who in the fall finds an accessible berry-covered hillside which
is haunted by bears; but, as a rule, the berry bushes do not grow close
enough together to give the hunter much chance.
Like most other wild animals, bears which have known the neighborhood
of man are beasts of the darkness, or at least of the dusk and the
gloaming. But they are by no means such true night-lovers as the big
cats and the wolves. In regions where they know little of hunters they
roam about freely in the daylight, and in cool weather are even apt to
take their noontide slumbers basking in the sun. Where they are much
hunted they finally almost reverse their natural habits and sleep
throughout the hours of light, only venturing abroad after nightfall and
before sunrise; but even yet this is not the habit of those bears which
exist in the wilder localities where they are still plentiful. In these
places they sleep, or at least rest, during the hours of greatest heat,
and again in the middle part of the night, unless there is a full moon.
They start on their rambles for food about mid-afternoon, and end their
morning roaming soon after the sun is above the horizon. If the moon is
full, however, they may feed all night long, and then wander but little
in the daytime.
Aside from man, the full-grown grisly has hardly any foe to fear.
Nevertheless, in the early spring, when weakened by the hunger that
succeeds the winter sleep, it behooves even the grisly, if he dwells in
the mountain fastnesses of the far northwest, to beware of a famished
troop of great timber wolves. These northern Rocky Mountain wolves are
most formidable beasts, and when many of them band together in times of
famine they do not hesitate to pounce on the black bear and cougar; and
even a full-grown grisly is not safe from their attacks, unless he can
back up against some rock which will prevent them from assailing him
from behind. A small ranchman whom I knew well, who lived near Flathead
Lake, once in April found where a troop of these wolves had killed a
good-sized yearling grisly. Either cougar or wolf will make a prey of a
grisly which is but a few months old; while any fox, lynx, wolverine,
or fisher will seize the very young cubs. The old story about wolves
fearing to feast on game killed by a grisly is all nonsense. Wolves are
canny beasts, and they will not approach a carcass if they think a bear
is hidden near by and likely to rush out at them; but under ordinary
circumstances they will feast not only on the carcasses of the grisly's
victims, but on the carcass of the grisly himself after he has been
slain and left by the hunter. Of course wolves would only attack a
grisly if in the most desperate straits for food, as even a victory
over such an antagonist must be purchased with heavy loss of life; and a
hungry grisly would devour either a wolf or a cougar, or any one of the
smaller carnivora off-hand if it happened to corner it where it could
not get away.
The grisly occasionally makes its den in a cave and spends therein the
midday hours. But this is rare. Usually it lies in the dense shelter
of the most tangled piece of woods in the neighborhood, choosing by
preference some bit where the young growth is thick and the ground
strewn with boulders and fallen logs. Often, especially if in a restless
mood and roaming much over the country, it merely makes a temporary
bed, in which it lies but once or twice; and again it may make a more
permanent lair or series of lairs, spending many consecutive nights in
each. Usually the lair or bed is made some distance from the feeding
ground; but bold bears, in very wild localities, may lie close by a
carcass, or in the middle of a berry ground. The deer-killing bear above
mentioned had evidently dragged two or three of his victims to his
den, which was under an impenetrable mat of bull-berries and dwarf
box-alders, hemmed by a cut bank on one side and a wall of gnarled
cottonwoods on the other. Round this den, and rendering it noisome, were
scattered the bones of several deer and a young steer or heifer. When
we found it we thought we could easily kill the bear, but the fierce,
cunning beast must have seen or smelt us, for though we laid in wait for
it long and patiently, it did not come back to its place; nor, on our
subsequent visits, did we ever find traces of its having done so.
Bear are fond of wallowing in the water, whether in the sand, on the
edge of a rapid plains river, on the muddy margin of a pond, or in the
oozy moss of a clear, cold mountain spring. One hot August afternoon,
as I was clambering down a steep mountain-side near Pend'Oreille lake,
I heard a crash some distance below, which showed that a large beast was
afoot. On making my way towards the spot, I found I had disturbed a big
bear as it was lolling at ease in its bath; the discolored water showed
where it had scrambled hastily out and galloped off as I approached. The
spring welled out at the base of a high granite rock, forming a small
pool of shimmering broken crystal. The soaked moss lay in a deep wet
cushion round about, and jutted over the edges of the pool like a
floating shelf. Graceful, water-loving ferns swayed to and fro. Above,
the great conifers spread their murmuring branches, dimming the light,
and keeping out the heat; their brown boles sprang from the ground like
buttressed columns. On the barren mountain-side beyond the heat was
oppressive. It was small wonder that Bruin should have sought the spot
to cool his gross carcass in the fresh spring water.
The bear is a solitary beast, and although many may assemble together,
in what looks like a drove, on some favorite feeding-ground--usually
where the berries are thick, or by the banks of a salmon-thronged
river--the association is never more than momentary, each going its own
way as soon as its hunger is satisfied. The males always live alone by
choice, save in the rutting season, when they seek the females. Then
two or three may come together in the course of their pursuit and rough
courtship of the female; and if the rivals are well matched, savage
battles follow, so that many of the old males have their heads seamed
with scars made by their fellows' teeth. At such times they are evil
tempered and prone to attack man or beast on slight provocation.
The she brings forth her cubs, one, two, or three in number, in her
winter den. They are very small and helpless things, and it is some
time after she leaves her winter home before they can follow her for any
distance. They stay with her throughout the summer and the fall, leaving
her when the cold weather sets in. By this time they are well grown;
and hence, especially if an old male has joined the she, the family may
number three or four individuals, so as to make what seems like quite a
little troop of bears. A small ranchman who lived a dozen miles from me
on the Little Missouri once found a she-bear and three half-grown cubs
feeding at a berry-patch in a ravine. He shot the old she in the small
of the back, whereat she made a loud roaring and squealing. One of the
cubs rushed towards her; but its sympathy proved misplaced, for she
knocked it over with a hearty cuff, either out of mere temper, or
because she thought her pain must be due to an unprovoked assault from
one of her offspring. The hunter then killed one of the cubs, and the
other two escaped. When bears are together and one is wounded by a
bullet, but does not see the real assailant, it often falls tooth and
nail upon its comrade, apparently attributing its injury to the latter.
Bears are hunted in many ways. Some are killed by poison; but this plan
is only practised by the owners of cattle or sheep who have suffered
from their ravages. Moreover, they are harder to poison than wolves.
Most often they are killed in traps, which are sometimes dead-falls,
on the principle of the little figure-4 trap familiar to every American
country boy, sometimes log-pens in which the animal is taken alive,
but generally huge steel gins. In some states there is a bounty for the
destruction of grislies; and in many places their skins have a market
price, although much less valuable than those of the black bear. The
men who pursue them for the bounty, or for their fur, as well as the
ranchmen who regard them as foes to stock, ordinarily use steel traps.
The trap is very massive, needing no small strength to set, and it is
usually chained to a bar or log of wood, which does not stop the bear's
progress outright, but hampers and interferes with it, continually
catching in tree stumps and the like. The animal when trapped makes off
at once, biting at the trap and the bar; but it leaves a broad wake and
sooner or later is found tangled up by the chain and bar. A bear is by
no means so difficult to trap as a wolf or fox although more so than a
cougar or a lynx. In wild regions a skilful trapper can often catch a
great many with comparative ease. A cunning old grisly however, soon
learns the danger, and is then almost impossible to trap, as it either
avoids the neighborhood altogether or finds out some way by which to get
at the bait without springing the trap, or else deliberately springs it
first. I have been told of bears which spring traps by rolling across
them, the iron jaws slipping harmlessly off the big round body. An old
horse is the most common bait.
It is, of course, all right to trap bears when they are followed merely
as vermin or for the sake of the fur. Occasionally, however, hunters
who are out merely for sport adopt this method; but this should never be
done. To shoot a trapped bear for sport is a thoroughly unsportsmanlike
proceeding. A funny plea sometimes advanced in its favor is that it is
"dangerous." No doubt in exceptional instances this is true; exactly as
it is true that in exceptional instances it is "dangerous" for a butcher
to knock over a steer in the slaughter-house. A bear caught only by the
toes may wrench itself free as the hunter comes near, and attack him
with pain-maddened fury; or if followed at once, and if the trap and bar
are light, it may be found in some thicket, still free, and in a frenzy
of rage. But even in such cases the beast has been crippled, and though
crazy with pain and anger is easily dealt with by a good shot; while
ordinarily the poor brute is found in the last stages of exhaustion,
tied tight to a tree where the log or bar has caught, its teeth broken
to splinted stumps by rabid snaps at the cruel trap and chain. Some
trappers kill the trapped grislies with a revolver; so that it may
easily be seen that the sport is not normally dangerous. Two of my own
cowboys, Seawell and Dow, were originally from Maine, where they had
trapped a number of black bears; and they always killed them either with
a hatchet or a small 32-calibre revolver. One of them, Seawell, once
came near being mauled by a trapped bear, seemingly at the last gasp
which he approached incautiously with his hatchet.
There is, however, one very real danger to which the solitary
bear-trapper is exposed, the danger of being caught in his own trap. The
huge jaws of the gin are easy to spring and most hard to open. If any
unwary passer-by should tread between them and be caught by the leg, his
fate would be doubtful, though he would probably die under the steadily
growing torment of the merciless iron jaws, as they pressed ever deeper
into the sore flesh and broken bones. But if caught by the arms, while
setting or fixing the trap, his fate would be in no doubt at all, for it
would be impossible for the stoutest man to free himself by any means.
Terrible stories are told of solitary mountain hunters who disappeared,
and were found years later in the lonely wilderness, as mouldering
skeletons, the shattered bones of the forearms still held in the rusty
jaws of the gin.
Doubtless the grisly could be successfully hunted with dogs, if the
latter were trained to the purpose, but as yet this has not been done,
and though dogs are sometimes used as adjuncts in grisly hunting they
are rarely of much service. It is sometimes said that very small dogs
are the best for this end. But this is only so with grislies that have
never been hunted. In such a case the big bear sometimes becomes so
irritated with the bouncing, yapping little terriers or fice-dogs that
he may try to catch them and thus permit the hunter to creep upon him.
But the minute he realizes, as he speedily does, that the man is his
real foe, he pays no further heed whatever to the little dogs, who can
then neither bring him to bay nor hinder his flight. Ordinary hounds, of
the kinds used in the south for fox, deer, wild-cat, and black bear, are
but little better. I have known one or two men who at different times
tried to hunt the grisly with a pack of hounds and fice-dogs wonted to
the chase of the black bear, but they never met with success. This
was probably largely owing to the nature of the country in which they
hunted, a vast tangled mass of forest and craggy mountain; but it was
also due to the utter inability of the dogs to stop the quarry from
breaking bay when it wished. Several times a grisly was bayed, but
always in some inaccessible spot which it took hard climbing to reach,
and the dogs were never able to hold the beast until the hunters came
up.
Still a well-trained pack of large hounds which were both bold and
cunning could doubtless bay even a grisly. Such dogs are the big
half-breed hounds sometimes used in the Alleghanies of West Virginia,
which are trained not merely to nip a bear, but to grip him by the hock
as he runs and either throw him or twirl him round. A grisly could not
disregard a wary and powerful hound capable of performing this trick,
even though he paid small heed to mere barking and occasional nipping.
Nor do I doubt that it would be possible to get together a pack of many
large, fierce dogs, trained to dash straight at the head and hold on
like a vise, which could fairly master a grisly and, though unable, of
course, to kill him, would worry him breathless and hold him down so
that he could be slain with ease. There have been instances in
which five or six of the big so-called blood-hounds of the southern
States--not pure blood-hounds at all, but huge, fierce, ban-dogs, with
a cross of the ferocious Cuban blood-hound, to give them good scenting
powers--have by themselves mastered the cougar and the black bear. Such
instances occurred in the hunting history of my own forefathers on my
mother's side, who during the last half of the eighteenth, and the first
half of the present, century lived in Georgia and over the border in
what are now Alabama and Florida. These big dogs can only overcome such
foes by rushing in in a body and grappling all together; if they hang
back, lunging and snapping, a cougar or bear will destroy them one by
one. With a quarry so huge and redoubtable as the grisly, no number
of dogs, however large and fierce, could overcome him unless they all
rushed on him in a mass, the first in the charge seizing by the head or
throat. If the dogs hung back, or if there were only a few of them, or
if they did not seize around the head, they would be destroyed without
an effort. It is murder to slip merely one or two close-quarter dogs at
a grisly. Twice I have known a man take a large bulldog with his pack
when after one of these big bears, and in each case the result was the
same. In one instance the bear was trotting when the bulldog seized it
by the cheek, and without so much as altering its gait, it brushed off
the hanging dog with a blow from the fore-paw that broke the latter's
back. In the other instance the bear had come to bay, and when seized by
the ear it got the dog's body up to its jaws, and tore out the life with
one crunch.
A small number of dogs must rely on their activity, and must hamper
the bear's escape by inflicting a severe bite and avoiding the
counter-stroke. The only dog I ever heard of which, single-handed, was
really of service in stopping a grisly, was a big Mexican sheep-dog,
once owned by the hunter Tazewell Woody. It was an agile beast with
powerful jaws, and possessed both intelligence and a fierce, resolute
temper. Woody killed three grislies with its aid. It attacked with equal
caution and ferocity, rushing at the bear as the latter ran, and seizing
the outstretched hock with a grip of iron, stopping the bear short, but
letting go before the angry beast could whirl round and seize it. It was
so active and wary that it always escaped damage; and it was so strong
and bit so severely that the bear could not possibly run from it at
any speed. In consequence, if it once came to close quarters with its
quarry, Woody could always get near enough for a shot.
Hitherto, however, the mountain hunters--as distinguished from the
trappers--who have followed the grisly have relied almost solely on
their rifles. In my own case about half the bears I have killed I
stumbled across almost by accident; and probably this proportion holds
good generally. The hunter may be after bear at the time, or he may be
after blacktail deer or elk, the common game in most of the haunts
of the grisly; or he may merely be travelling through the country or
prospecting for gold. Suddenly he comes over the edge of a cut bank,
or round the sharp spur of a mountain or the shoulder of a cliff
which walls in a ravine, or else the indistinct game trail he has been
following through the great trees twists sharply to one side to avoid
a rock or a mass of down timber, and behold he surprises old Ephraim
digging for roots, or munching berries, or slouching along the path,
or perhaps rising suddenly from the lush, rank plants amid which he has
been lying. Or it may be that the bear will be spied afar rooting in an
open glade or on a bare hill-side.
In the still-hunt proper it is necessary to find some favorite
feeding-ground, where there are many roots or berry-bearing bushes, or
else to lure the grisly to a carcass. This last method of "baiting" for
bears is under ordinary circumstances the only way which affords even a
moderately fair chance of killing them. They are very cunning, with the
sharpest of noses, and where they have had experience of hunters they
dwell only in cover where it is almost impossible for the best of
still-hunters to approach them.
Nevertheless, in favorable ground a man can often find and kill them by
fair stalking, in berry time, or more especially in the early spring,
before the snow has gone from the mountains, and while the bears are
driven by hunger to roam much abroad and sometimes to seek their food
in the open. In such cases the still-hunter is stirring by the earliest
dawn, and walks with stealthy speed to some high point of observation
from which he can overlook the feeding-grounds where he has previously
discovered sign. From this vantage he scans the country far and near,
either with his own keen eyes or with powerful glasses; and he must
combine patience and good sight with the ability to traverse long
distances noiselessly and yet at speed. He may spend two or three hours
sitting still and looking over a vast tract of country before he will
suddenly spy a bear; or he may see nothing after the most careful search
in a given place, and must then go on half a dozen miles to another,
watching warily as he walks, and continuing this possibly for several
days before getting a glimpse of his game. If the bear are digging
roots, or otherwise procuring their food on the bare hill sides and
table-lands, it is of course comparatively easy to see them; and it is
under such circumstances that this kind of hunting is most successful.
Once seen, the actual stalk may take two or three hours, the nature
of the ground and the direction of the wind often necessitating a long
circuit; perhaps a gully, a rock, or a fallen log offers a chance for an
approach to within two hundred yards, and although the hunter will, if
possible, get much closer than this, yet even at such a distance a bear
is a large enough mark to warrant taking a shot.
Usually the berry grounds do not offer such favorable opportunities, as
they often lie in thick timber, or are covered so densely with bushes as
to obstruct the view; and they are rarely commanded by a favorable
spot from which to spy. On the other hand, as already said, bears
occasionally forget all their watchfulness while devouring fruit, and
make such a noise rending and tearing the bushes that, if once found, a
man can creep upon them unobserved.