rushes, thundering bisons and savage Indians. No chore was so hard nor
so long but that I managed to complete it in time to take my place in
the fireside circle and listen to accounts of those huge animals that
lived in the Rocky Mountains and were fiercer than any other bears in
the world. "Ursus horribilis," my father called them, and a delicious
little shudder would run down my back at the sound of the words. There
was talk, too, of hunters who had tracked these monsters to their lairs
and overcome them. Early I decided that when I went West, I would
become, besides other things, a mighty bear hunter. The cows I drove
to pasture were "ursus horribilis" (how I reveled in those words!)
fleeing before me, and I was stalking them through the wilds with rifle
upon my arm, and pistol and hunting knife in my belt! I planned to
discard the ragged overalls and clumsy "clodhoppers" of the farm, as
soon as I reached the mountains, for smoke-tanned, Indian-made buckskin
suit and moccasins, all beaded and fringed. I wondered if the Indians
wore coonskin caps like Davy Crockett--I felt it absolutely necessary
that I should have one to wear to meet my first bear.
My first venture into the woods below the Parson's ranch I remember
vividly, because I was filled with eager, yet fearful anticipation. I
expected to meet a grizzly around every bowlder. I kept wondering how
fast a bear could run; I halted frequently beside trees, for I
remembered my father's saying grizzlies did not climb, so I planned to
shin up the tallest tree in the woods should one come in sight. In my
dreams back on the farm, my only fear had been lest all the grizzlies
be killed before I reached the Rockies; barring such dire calamity, I
had never had a doubt of my prowess. But somehow, when at last I found
myself alone in the dark forest, it seemed the better part of valor to
postpone the actual encounters until I should become more skillful with
my old black-powder rifle. So obsessed was I by the thought of bears
that on my first excursions into the wilds, a rock never rolled down a
slope nor dropped from a cliff, a crash sounded in a thicket, but that
I was sure a bear was mysteriously responsible. I dreamed of them, day
and night, until they became bugbears, grizzly bugbears!
Considering my long-avowed intentions, my first camp alone in the Wild
Basin country was not entirely unfortunate, for there, that first
exciting afternoon, I met a bear face to face. Of course, I gave him
the right of way. Was I not the intruder and he the rightful resident?
Though years have elapsed since I dropped my rifle and sped in instant
flight down the mountain side toward camp, I still like to think that
my marvelous speed discouraged "ursus horribilis" and, therefore, he
turned tail.
During my first summer in the mountains, I saw bears several times, in
each instance going about their business and making no move to attack
me. After these glimpses of them I gathered courage and decided to
postpone my career as a hunter no longer. Bears were the objectives of
my hunting expeditions, but they always succeeded in eluding me. Many
times in stalking them I came upon fresh tracks showing they had broken
into flight at my approach. One day I turned homeward, empty-handed,
and learned later I had been within gunshot of one without catching
sight of him.
Gradually my respect for them grew. The one I had watched stalk the
marmot increased my admiration of their cunning. I eventually learned
that they are extremely alert and agile, despite their seemingly stupid
lumbering about, that they employ keen eyes and sensitive ears and
high-power noses to the best advantage. As my respect for them grew,
my ambition to become a mighty hunter of them gave way to a desire to
learn more about them, to observe them in their natural state and study
their habits. Just as they had inspired the most heroic dreams of my
childhood, so they came to interest me more than any other animal of
the wilds.
To the south of the Parson's ranch lay a wild, rugged region, which I
called the "bad lands" on account of its jungle of woods, streams,
swamps and terminal moraines, where bowlders of all sizes had been
deposited by an ancient glacier. Through this tangle it was impossible
to move without making noise, for a fire had swept over it and young
lodge-pole trees had sprung up so close together that it was impossible
to move without crashing into them. It was while on hands and knees in
one of these thickets of new growth that I came upon bear tracks. The
tracks were the largest I had even seen, so I gripped my gun tightly
and peered about warily. The tracks pointed west, so I headed east,
crashing through the trees ponderously, giving an occasional yell to
help the bear keep out of my way.
I had gone about a hundred yards and was congratulating myself on my
escape, when, to my horror, I discovered fresh tracks paralleling mine.
Altering my course I went on, shouting vigorously, but with less
confidence of scaring the bear out of the region.
In this extremity I recalled a bit of advice the Parson had given me.
"Don't ever let on you're afraid," he cautioned me one day, "because if
you do the animal may turn on you."
With this in mind I faced about, took up the bear's trail, and with
ready rifle, followed it. I kept looking behind me, to the right and
to the left. The wind was blowing snow off the high peaks above and it
made the tracks easily followed, for it kept them fresh. They turned
aside, angled off, tacked and came back close to their first line.
Around and around I trailed. A dozen times I stopped with my heart in
my mouth, the rifle at my shoulder, but my alarm was occasioned by some
other denizen of the wilds. Twice deer crashed away and left me rooted
fast; and once, a cock grouse took the air from a rock just above my
head, and nearly precipitated a stampede.
Finally I gave up the chase and started home, still watching warily for
the bear. Better to guard against attack I climbed a little ridge that
overlooked the irregular openings through which I had been trailing;
and up there, paralleling my course, were bear tracks. Bruin had been
craftily looking me over from his higher position. I at once advised
that bear, by every means at my command, that he was no longer being
hunted, and I made tracks for home as fast as my legs would let me,
watching warily, or bearily, in all directions.
The Parson laughed heartily when I told of my experience that night as
together with Aunt Jane we sat before the glowing fire of his hearth.
Despite Aunt Jane's gentle excuses for me, I felt ashamed and
determined to return next day and take up the bear's trail. Running
away from an unseen bear was ludicrous, not to say cowardly. But I
comforted myself with the assurance that even the Parson might have no
other chance to run, if the bear saw him first!
The "bad lands" became the scene of many a hide-and-seek game, with the
animals slipping silently away as I blundered along behind, puzzling
out their trails, and imagining I was stalking them unawares. My many
failures, while discouraging, were fruitful of experience, for I
learned to hunt up-wind, thus discounting the high-power noses of the
bears and muffling to some extent my clumsy movements from the deer.
Repeated trips into that rough region informed me that one or two bears
lived there, and that though they often left it to explore some other
region, they eventually returned to their own home range. In tracing
their movements I kept a sort of big-game Bertillon record; only
instead of taking finger-prints, as is done with criminals, I measured
footprints sketching them in my notebook, noting any slight peculiarity
that would distinguish one track from another, and thus made positive
identification possible.
I was compelled to get my information concerning the bears' movements
mostly from their tracks, for they were far too crafty to be seen "in
person"! They evidently moved on the assumption that vigilance was the
price of life. They used their wits as well as their keen senses,
seemed to reason as well as to have instinct. Moreover they made use
of other animals for their own defense. They were ever alertly
watching the significant movements of their neighbors, for signals of
dangers beyond the range of their own senses. The quiet retreat of a
fox or coyote apprised them of something unusual in the wind; the
sudden up-winging of magpies and jays warned them of the approach of an
enemy. They distinguished between the casual flight of birds and their
flying when bound toward a kill of mountain lion or other beasts of
prey. They were tuned-in on every animal broadcasting station on their
range.
I learned that contrary to the lurid tales of the early explorers and
hunters, they were peace-loving, deeming it no disgrace to run away
from danger and leaving the vicinity as soon as man appeared in it.
True, their curiosity sometimes tempted them to circle back and watch a
man from some secure retreat, and at such times they slipped as
silently from one thicket to another as a fox, sampling the air for
tell-tale odors, standing erect to watch and listen.
Bit by bit, as I learned more about them, I came to revise my early,
gory opinion of them. My impression had been formed chiefly from tales
of Lewis and Clark's expedition; when they made their memorable trip
across the continent, grizzlies were not afraid of men because the
arrows of the Indians were ineffective against them. Whenever food
attracted them to an Indian camp they moseyed fearlessly among the
tepees, helping themselves to it and scattering the redskins. Their
attempts thus to raid white men's camps gave rise to blood-curdling
stories of their savagery, and their fearless, deadly attacks on men.
These tales, while pure fiction, led to the belief that all bears were
bad and should be killed, at every opportunity; and ever since Lewis
and Clark saw the first one, men with dogs and guns, traps and poison
have been on their trail. While I do not believe bears guilty of the
many offenses charged them, I am sure that they had been the "life of
the party" at many a camp, having been led out of their retirement by
their small-boy curiosity.
In the region where first I followed a bear, or where it followed me,
there ranged two of these animals, each recording a different track and
displaying individual traits which I came to recognize. The smaller
track had short claws that left their prints in the sand or soft
places. In following this track I found that the maker was inclined to
be indolent; that if the digging after a chipmunk was hard he left the
job unfinished and sought easier sources of food. Thus the black bear
that frequented the "bad lands" loafed across his range, living by the
easiest means possible and rarely exerting himself. Twice when
Blackie's trail crossed that of other black bears, the tracks showed
that all stopped to play, romping much as children romp and showing a
sociable disposition. It was usually late in November before the black
bear denned up for the winter, commonly adapting the shelter beneath
some windfall to make a winter home by enlarging and improving it and
perhaps by raking in some dead pine needles.
At the approach of fall Blackie left off distant wanderings, conserved
energy by little exertion, and thus waxed fat. In the thickest of the
rough jumble I found two of his deserted winter dens to which he never
returned, and once in midwinter I found him out, asleep beneath some
brush over which the snow had drifted. It was the thread of rising
steam from a tiny hole above the den that first attracted my attention
to it, but my nose gave me additional information.
Blackie's tracks showed he had unusually large feet for his pounds, so
I called him "Bigfoot." There was a marked difference between
Blackie's and the other tracks I found in the "bad-lands." The other
tracks were those of a grizzly, a fact I determined after collecting
evidence for several years, and by sight of the animals themselves.
There was a wide difference, too, in the actions of these animals
whenever anything unusual happened. Blackie, commonly, ran away
without waiting to learn what had caused the alarm. The grizzly
displayed extreme caution, usually standing erect on his hind feet,
remaining motionless, watching for silent signals of other animals and
the birds, swinging his head slowly from side to side, training his
high-power nose in all directions, cocking his ears alertly as a
coyote. When he located the enemy he slipped away noiselessly,
followed a trail with which he was familiar and left the vicinity,
perhaps traveling ten or twenty miles before stopping.
Unlike Blackie, too, the grizzly was a prodigious worker. No job was
too big for him. Often he spent an hour or more in digging out a tiny
titbit such as a chipmunk, and several times in his pursuit of a marmot
he excavated in rockslides holes large enough for small basements.
Daily he traveled many miles, foraging for food as he moved, sometimes
eating swarms of grasshoppers, or stowing away bushels of grass or
other greenery, or uprooting the ground for dogtooth violets of which
he was very fond. Such spots, when he had finished his rooting,
resembled a field which the hogs had plowed up.
In one respect the black bear and the grizzly were alike: they never
seemed to have enough to eat, but had the insatiable appetites of
growing boys; never showing any signs of being finicky, but devouring
everything edible. Ants, hoppers, chipmunks, marmots and rabbits,
comprised their fresh meat; while roots, shoots, bulbs, grass, berries
and practically everything growing served for vegetables. They both
were inordinately fond of honey. Early one fall the grizzly left his
home range and headed for the foothills. More than twenty miles away
he found a bee tree, an old hollow cedar which he tore open. He
devoured both bees and honey, then went lumbering home. Mountain lions
made frequent kills about the region, leaving the carcasses of deer,
cattle, horses and burros, which the bears located with their noses or
by the flight of birds, and gorged themselves; afterward lying down in
some retreat and sleeping long, peaceful hours.
It was because of their scavenger habits that they came to be blamed
for killing the animals upon which they fed. But not once did I find
evidence that they had killed anything larger than a marmot. The
grizzly was always working industriously, from dawn to dark, or at
night; while Blackie dallied, even though making a "bear living." He
preferred to go empty rather than to work for food.
Three winters in succession the grizzly climbed to a den in an exposed
spot on the northern slope of Mount Meeker. It was a low opening
beneath a rock, the entrance to which was partially stopped with loose
rubble, raked from inside the cave, and every fall he renovated it by
chinking the larger cracks and by pawing together loose bits of rock
for a bed. As fall approached, his tracks led to it; apparently he
napped inside occasionally to try it out. His ultimate retirement for
winter hibernation depended upon the weather and the food supply; if
the fall were late, with plenty of food, he would still be about the
woods as late as December, while one fall when snow came early and
deep, and so made food unavailable, he disappeared at the end of
October.
The grizzly had many individual traits. Not once in the years I
followed him, did he show any desire for others of his kind. He
preferred being alone. His play consisted chiefly of elaborate
stalkings of easily captured animals. If his hunger was appeased for a
time he would turn to hunting grasshoppers. Marking the spot where one
had alighted he would steal forward and pounce upon it as though it
were an animal of size and fighting ability. Again he would take great
pains to waylay a chipmunk, lying motionless while the unwary little
spermophile ventured closer and closer, then, with a lightning-like
slap of a huge paw, he would reduce his victim to the general shape and
thinness of a pancake.
Though the grizzly was somewhat awkward in appearance he could move
with amazing speed, and his strength was incredible. From glimpses I
had of him I estimated his weight at six hundred pounds, but he could
move the carcass of a cow or horse twice that heavy. Once on Cabin
Creek, not many miles from his accustomed haunts, a lion killed a
horse. As he approached the kill, the grizzly circled warily around
it, stood erect to sniff and listen, and growled warningly, informing
all would-be intruders that it was his. When he had eaten his fill, he
dragged the carcass nearly a hundred yards uphill over fallen timber,
into a thicket, where he covered it against the prying eyes of birds,
thinking, I presume, that they would signal other animals of its
location.
The date of his emergence from his den in the spring, like his holing
up in the fall, depended upon the weather. Commonly though, he
hibernated about one-third of the year. When he came out after his
long sleep he was very thin, the great layers of fat he had taken care
to put on before denning up were gone. One year I followed his tracks
the day he came out to learn what he first ate, and was surprised to
find that he scarcely ate at all. Instead of being ravenous, as I had
supposed he would be, he seemed to have no appetite, and barely tasted
a green shoot or two, and a little grass. His claws had grown out over
winter and the tough soles of his feet soon shed off so that, though
born to the wilds, he became a tenderfoot.
Upon two occasions I found the tracks of this "bad lands" grizzly far
from home; once he was at the edge of a snowbank near Arapahoe glacier,
where he had gone for a frozen grasshopper feast; and another time,
some years later, beyond Ypsilon Mountain, in an old sheep trail that
led toward the headwaters of the Poudre River. He was more than thirty
miles from home and still going.
Experience with men has made the few surviving grizzlies of the Rockies
crafty, and they are instinctively wary. Their habits have been much
the same wherever I have had opportunity of observing them. Their
extreme caution would perhaps lead one to believe them cowards, but
nothing is farther from the truth, for they are fighters of first rank,
and show unrivaled courage as well as lightning-like speed and
prodigious strength in combat. A fighting grizzly is a deadly
antagonist, never giving up, determined to win or die.
When a grizzly turns killer, as occasionally one of them does, you may
depend upon it, there are extenuating circumstances, and any
fair-minded jury would exonerate him of blame. When his home range
becomes settled up and the sources of his natural food are destroyed,
he is forced to seek new haunts and to eat such food as his new
location affords. It is not strange that, constricted in his range by
ranchers and cattlemen, with no opportunity to seek food according to
his instinctive habits, he sometimes turns cattle killer.
His action brands him at once as a bad bear, a killer and his infamy
quickly spreads the length of the mountains. He is blamed for the
kills of mountain lions, and the death of stock killed by chance. He
is hunted, becomes a fugitive from justice, and is kept so continuously
on the move that he has to prey on cattle because he is not given time
to forage in his former manner. Persecution sharpens his faculties; he
eludes his pursuers and their dogs, poisoned bait and traps, with a
shrewdness that puts their so-called intelligence to shame.
It was my rare privilege one day to witness the chase of an accused
"killer" by a dog pack. I was near timberline in the Rabbit Ear
mountains when first I heard their distant baying and caught sight of
them far down a narrow valley, mere moving specks. Close behind these
small dots were larger ones, men on horseback. A mile ahead of the
pack a lone object galloped into an opening and, as I focused my
glasses, stood erect, listening. It was a grizzly. He paused but a
moment, then tacked up the side of the mountain, crossed the ridge,
dropped into a parallel valley, and doubled back the way he had come.
Occasionally I caught a glimpse of him as he ambled along, seemingly
without haste, yet covering the ground at surprising speed.
Abruptly he left this second valley and recrossed the ridge to the
first, taking up the trail he had been on when the pack disturbed him.
The riders were still upon the ridge when the dogs recrossed it and
started baying up the first valley. When the fresh scent led them back
over the grizzly's first trail, they hesitated, confused, disagreeing
among themselves as to the course to follow: and while the dogs
delayed, the bear abandoned the lower ridges and timbered valleys and
headed toward the cliffs. Here the going was slow. Sometimes he
followed old, deep-worn game trails, but more often he chose his own
way. He climbed up the face of a cliff, following narrow ledges. At
the top, he turned and angled back, arriving at the base of the wall
again, but some distance from the place where he had climbed up, and
where he crossed his own trail, he swung back and forth repeatedly.
Half an hour later, the pack came howling to the cliff, and began
seeking a way up. They scattered, swung back and forth along the
ledges, crossed and recrossed the grizzly's tracks, but seemed unable
to follow the way he had gone, before they finally circled the cliff
and picked up his trail again. The bear's ruse had succeeded, by it he
gained several minutes' lead on his pursuers.
The grizzly emerged above timberline near where I sat and galloped
straight for a pass that overlooked the deep canyons, dark forests and
rocky ridges on the other side of the range. Just before he gained it,
three of the dogs broke cover and gave tongue, wildly excited at the
sight of their quarry, and instantly hot on his trail. The bear coolly
kept his same gait, until just short of the pass, at the top of a
steep, smooth incline between two huge rock slabs, he halted and faced
about, waiting for them to come up. When the dogs, panting and spent
from running, dashed up, he had got his wind and was ready for them.
The three dogs rushed pell-mell up the steep rock. With a deafening
roar, the grizzly struck out right and left. Two of the dogs ceased
howling and lay where they fell, the third turned tail and fled. The
bear, stepping over the dead bodies of his vanquished foes, leisurely
proceeded through the pass and down into the wild country beyond.
I have watched other grizzlies under similar conditions, and they have
all shown the same shrewd, cool, craftiness. They appear to reason, to
plan; their actions indicate forethought, premeditation. They seem to
have not only the marvelous instinct of the animal world, but also an
almost human power to think. They conserve their energy, bide their
time, choose their position and, in short, set the stage to their own
advantage. They have an instinct for the psychological moment--it
seems at times that they evolve it out of the chaos of chance.
The Parson said, "You never can tell what a bear will do," and I, for
one, believe him. The oddest performance of an individual bear I ever
saw took place over on the banks of the Poudre River. Rambling through
the forest I came, late one evening, upon the camp of two trappers.
They were making a business of trapping and had extensive trap-lines
set throughout the region, mostly for beavers, minks, bobcats and
coyotes, but some for bears too. In a narrow, dry gulch, one of them
had found fresh bear tracks--he thought of a medium-sized black
bear--leading up to the scattered, bleached bones of a cow. Tracks
about the skull indicated that the bear had rolled it about, much as a
puppy worries a bone. One day the trapper found the skull hidden in
some juniper bushes, and reasoned that the bear returned from day to
day, played with it, then hid it away. So he returned to camp, got a
trap and set it by the beast's toy.
I was eager to learn the outcome of this action, so I gratefully
accepted the trappers' invitation to stay over with them. Next day, I
went along when they visited the trap. To our astonishment, the skull
was gone and the trap still set.