ECHO MOUNTAIN GRIZZLY
A grizzly bear’s tracks that I came upon had the right forefoot print
missing.
The trail of this three-legged bear was followed by the tracks of two
cubs--strangely like those of barefooted children--clearly impressed
in the snow. These tracks were only a few hours old.
Hoping to learn where this mother grizzly and her cubs came from I
back-tracked through the November snows in a dense forest for about
twenty miles. This trail came out of a lake-dotted wooded basin lying
high up between Berthoud Pass and James Peak on the western slope of
the Continental Divide. The three-legged mother grizzly was leaving
the basin, evidently bound for a definite, far-off place. Her tracks
did not wander; there had been no waste of energy. A crippled bear
with two cub children and the ever-possible hunter in mind has enough
to make her serious and definite.
But the care-free cubs, judging from their tracks, had raced and
romped, true to their play nature and to youth. The mother’s tracks
showed that she had stopped once and looked back. Possibly she had
commanded the cubs to come along, but it is more than likely that she
had turned to watch them. Though ever scouting for their safety and
perhaps even now seeking a new home, yet she probably enjoyed their
romping and with satisfaction had awaited their coming.
I had gone along reading the story these bears had written in the snow
without ever thinking to look back. The following morning I realized
that this grizzly may have been following me closely.
I spent that night with a prospector from whom I learned many things
of interest concerning this three-legged grizzly. Truly, she was a
character. She had lived a career in the Berthoud Pass Basin.
Only a few weeks before, so the prospector told me, a trapper had
captured one of her cubs and nearly got the grizzly herself. A grizzly
bear is one of the most curious of animals. In old bears this constant
curiosity is supplemented and almost always safeguarded by extreme
caution. But during cubhood this innate curiosity often proves his
misfortune before he has learned to be wary of man.
The trapper, in moving camp, had set a number of small traps in the
camp rubbish. He felt certain that if a bear with cubs should be
prowling near, the cubs on scenting the place would rush up to
investigate before they could be restrained by the mother. There would
be little to rouse her suspicion, she doubtless having smelled over
many abandoned camp sites, and she, too, might be trapped.
One of this grizzly’s three cubs was caught. She and the two other
cubs were waiting with the trapped one when the trapper came on his
rounds, but at his appearance they made off into the woods. The
trapper set a large steel trap and left the trapped cub as a decoy.
The mother bear promptly returned to rescue the trapped cub. In her
excited efforts she plunged her right forefoot into the large trap.
Many grizzlies appear to be right-handed, and her best hand was thus
caught. An old grizzly is seldom trapped. But this bear, finding
herself caught, did the unusual. She gnawed at the imprisoned foot to
get away, and finally, at the reappearance of the trapper, tore
herself free, leaving a foot behind her in the trap. She fled on three
feet, driving the two cubs before her.
Then, though crippled, she returned that same night to the scene where
the cub was trapped. Not finding it she followed the scent to the
miner’s cabin, in which the cub was chained. Here she charged one of
the dogs so furiously that he literally leaped through the window into
the cabin. The other dogs set up a great to-do and the three-legged
bear made off into the woods. As soon as her leg healed she apparently
left Berthoud Pass Basin on the trail which I had discovered, and set
off like a wide-awake, courageous pioneer to find a new home in a more
desirable region.
A miner came to the prospector’s cabin before I had left the next
morning and told the story of her attempted rescue of the cub during
the preceding night. She had left her two cubs in a safe place and
evidently returned to rescue her third trapped cub. She went to the
miner’s cabin where the captured cub had been kept. The dogs gave
alarm at her presence and the miner going out fired two shots. She
escaped untouched and straightway started back to the other cubs.
This so interested me that I decided to trail her from the basin.
After following her fresh trail for about three miles this united with
the trail she had made in leaving the basin--the trail which I had
back-tracked the day before. Travelling about ten miles, beyond where
I had first seen the trail the day before, I came to a cave-like place
high up on the side of Echo Mountain. Here she had left the cubs the
night before. Tracks showed that she was then in the cave with them. I
did not disturb them, but I did revisit their territory again and
again.
In this cave they hibernated that winter. It was a roomy, natural cave
formed by enormous rock fragments that had tumbled together at the
base of a time-worn cliff. The den which the grizzly and cubs used the
first winter was not used again, nor were their later hibernating
places discovered.
The grizzly’s new domain was about thirty miles to the northward of
her former wilderness home. It was a wild, secluded region between
Echo Mountain and Long’s Peak.
Grizzlies often explore afar and become acquainted with the unclaimed
territory round them, and it is possible that this mother grizzly knew
the character of the new home territory before emigrating. There was
an abundance of food in the old home territory, but it is possible
that she had lost former cubs there and it is certain that she had
been shot at a number of times. However, the change may have been
simply due to that wanderlust which sometimes takes possession of the
ever-adventurous grizzly. In the eventful years which followed she
showed tireless energy and skill. Though badly crippled, she still
maintained those qualities which mean success for the survival of the
species--the ability to make a living, the postponing of death, and
the production of offspring.
The Echo Mountain grizzly had individuality and an adventurous career.
This heroic grizzly mother might be called an emigrant or an exile, or
even a refugee. Though crippled, she dared to become a pioneer. All
that men learned of her eventful life was a story of struggles and
triumphs--the material for the biography of a character.
The next July a camper in following the track of a snowslide came upon
a three-legged mother grizzly and two cubs. They were eating the
carcass of a deer that was just thawing from the snow and débris
brought down by the snowslide. The grizzly was nearly white, one cub
was brown, and the other dark gray.
As the camper went on with his burro he noticed the bear watching him
from among trees across a little glacier meadow. He camped that night
on a small stream at the foot of an enormous moraine a few miles from
the place where he had seen the bear. Returning from picketing the
burro he chanced to glance at the skyline summit of the moraine. Upon
it the three-legged bear stood watching him. She was looking down with
curious interest at his tent, his campfire, and the burro. Surely this
crippled grizzly was living up to the reputation of the species for
curiosity. A moment later she disappeared behind a boulder. With his
field glasses he could still see her shadow. This showed her standing
behind the boulder with her one forepaw resting against it and peeping
from behind it.
That autumn a trapper out for pine martens saw the Echo Mountain
grizzly and her cubs. He reported her a great traveller; said that she
ranged all over her large and rugged Rocky Mountain territory. Her
tracks were seen on the summit of the range and she occasionally
visited the other side of the divide. Perhaps she felt that an
intimate knowledge of the region was necessary for a crippled bear in
meeting emergencies. This knowledge certainly would be valuable to her
in making her living and a marked advantage if pursued.
This rugged scenic mountain wilderness now is a part of the Rocky
Mountain National Park. It must have been a wonderland for the
childlike cubs. In the lower part of this territory are a number of
moraines, great hills, and ridges covered with grass and dotted with
pines. There are many poetic beaver ponds. The middle slopes are black
with a spruce forest and cut with a number of cañons in which clear
streams roar. Up at eleven thousand feet the forest frays out with
dwarfed and storm-battered trees. Above this the summit of the Rockies
spreads out under the very sky into a moorland--a grassy Arctic
prairie. Here, in places, big snowdrifts lie throughout the summer. To
these timberline drifts, when fringed with flowers, the mother and the
cubs sometimes came. The stains of their tracks upon the snow showed
that the cubs sometimes rolled and scampered over the wasting drifts.
They often waded in beaver ponds, swam in the clear lakes, played
along the summit of ridges while the mother was making a living; and
they often paused, too, listening to the sounds of the winds and
waters in the cañons or looking down into the open meadows far below.
Stories of this large, handsome, nearly white Echo Mountain grizzly
reached trappers more than one hundred miles away. During the several
years through which I kept track of her a number of trappers tried for
the bear, each with his own peculiar devices. They quickly gave it up,
for in each case the bear early discovered the trap--came close to it
and then avoided it.
But finally an experienced old trapper went into her territory and
announced in advance his determination to stay until he got the Echo
Mountain grizzly. He set a steel trap in the head of a little ravine
and placed a cake of half-burned, highly scented honey just beyond the
trap. The mother and the cubs came, and apparently she had had a hard
time making them sit down and wait until she examined the trap. To the
amazement of the trapper she had climbed down the precipitous rocks
behind the trap and procured the honey without passing over the trap.
Knowing that she was in the lower part of her territory, he one day
set three large traps in three narrow places on the trail which she
used in retreating up the mountain. The uppermost of these he set in
the edge of the little lake at the point where she invariably came out
of the water in crossing it. He then circled and came below her. Away
she retreated. The first trap was detected two or three leaps before
she reached it. Turning aside, she at once proceeded to the summit of
the range over a new route. The following day the trapper was seen
moving his outfit to other scenes.
Two near-by ranchers tried to get the bear by hunting. The latter part
of September they invaded her territory with dogs. The second day out
the dogs picked up her trail. She fled with the yearling cubs toward
the summit of the range over a route with which she was familiar.
Pausing at a rugged place she defied the dogs for a time, the cubs
meanwhile keeping on the move. She continued her retreat at a
surprising speed for a three-legged bear. The thin snow covering
indicated that she ran at something of a gallop, making long, lunging
leaps.
About a mile beyond her first affray with the dogs the mother swam
with the cubs across a small mountain lake and paused in the willows
on the farther shore. Two of the dogs swam boldly after them. Just
before they reached the farther shore this daring mother turned back
to meet them and succeeded in killing both. One of the other dogs had
made his way round the lake and audaciously charged the cubs in the
willows. They severely injured him but he made his escape. On went the
bears. The hunters reached the lake and abandoned pursuit.
The next year another hunt with hounds was launched. There were a
dozen or more dogs. The cubs, now more than two years old, were still
with the mother. The hounds started them on the slope of Echo
Mountain. They at once headed for the heights. After a run of three or
four miles they struck their old route, retreated as before, and again
swam the lake, but continued their way on up the range.
At timberline there were clusters of thickly matted, low-growing
trees with open spaces between. Closely pressed, the bears made a
stand. Unfamiliar with timberline trees, two of the dogs in dodging
the bears leaped into the matted growths. With feet half entangled
they were caught by the bears before they could make the second quick
move. The mother bear killed one dog with a single stroke of her
forepaw and the cubs wrecked the other. The mother and cubs then
charged so furiously that the remaining dogs retreated a short
distance. Mother and cubs turned and again fled up the slope.
The hounds were encouraged by the near-coming men again to take up
pursuit. It was nearly night when the bears made another stand on the
summit, where they beat off the dogs before the hunters came up. They
then made their way down ledges so rocky and precipitous that the dogs
hesitated to follow. Descending two thousand feet into the forest of
Wild Basin on the other side of the range, they escaped. Evidently the
mother grizzly had planned this line of retreat in advance.
About a month later I saw the Echo Mountain grizzly on the
western side of the range, in her home territory. She was ever
alert--stopping, looking, listening, and scenting frequently. Often
she stood up the better to catch the wireless scent messages. Though
vigilant, she was not worried. She was even inclined to play. While
standing on her hind feet she struck at a passing grasshopper with her
one forepaw, but she missed. Instantly, while still standing, she
struck playfully this way and that, wheeling entirely about as she
struck the last time.
From her tracks I noticed that she had been ranging over the middle
and lower slopes of her territory, eating elderberries and
choke-cherries below and kinnikinick and wintergreen berries in the
higher slopes. Once, when I saw her rise up suddenly near me, there
were elder bush tops with red berries dangling from them in her mouth.
After a brief pause she went on with her feast. Having only one
forefoot, she was evidently greatly handicapped in all digging
operations and also in the tearing to pieces of logs. Bears frequently
dig out mice and small mammals and overturn rotten logs and rip them
open for the ants and grubs which they contain.
The last year that I had news concerning the Echo Mountain grizzly she
was seen with two young cubs on the shore of a beaver pond a few miles
southwest of Grand Lake. Berry pickers saw her a few times on Echo
Mountain and her tracks were frequently seen.
In the autumn a Grand Lake hunter went out to look for the Echo
Mountain grizzly. He had a contempt for any man who pursued big game
with dogs and was sarcastic in his condemnation of the two sets of
hunters who had failed with dogs to procure a three-legged bear. He
condemned everyone who used a trap. But the skill of this grizzly in
escaping her pursuers had gone forth, and being a bear hunter he had a
great desire to procure her.
He took a pack horse and several days’ provisions and camped in the
heart of her territory. He spent two days getting acquainted with her
domain and on the third day, shortly after noon, came upon her trail
and that of her cubs descending to the lower part of her territory. He
trailed for several miles and then went into camp for the night. Early
the next day he set off again. He was a painstaking and intelligent
stalker and succeeded in approaching at close range to where the bears
were eating the tops off raspberry bushes. They either saw or scented
him and, as he circled to get closer, retreated. They went down the
mountain about two miles, using the trail they had tracked in the snow
climbing up.
But in a ravine below they abruptly left their old trail, turned
southward, climbed to the summit of a ridge, and travelled eastward,
evidently bound for the summit of the range. The hunter also hurried
up a ridge toward the top, his plan being to intercept the bears at a
point above the limits of tree growth, where the ridge he was on
united with the ridge to which the bears had retreated. He travelled
at utmost speed.
Just before he reached the desired point he looked across a ravine and
down upon the summit of the parallel ridge. Sure enough, there were
the bears! The cubs were leading, the mother bear limping along,
acting as rear guard. Apparently she had injured her remaining
forefoot. She climbed a small rock ledge to the summit, stood up on
hind feet and looked long and carefully back down the ridge along
which they had just travelled. While she was doing this the cubs were
playing among the scattered trees. The mother grizzly rejoined the
cubs and urged them on before her along the ridge. At every opportune
place she turned to look back.
The wind was blowing up the slope. The hunter had hidden in a rock
ledge just above the treeline and was thus awaiting the bears where
they could neither see nor scent him.
Presently they emerged from among the storm-dwarfed and battered trees
out upon the treeless mountain-top moorland. Up the slope they started
along a dim, wild life trail that passed within an easy stone toss of
the hunter. The mother, limping badly, finally stopped. The cubs
stopped, looked at her, then at each other, and began to play.
The mother rose on her hind feet. Instantly the cubs stopped playing
and stood up, looking silently, seriously at the mother, then at every
point toward which she gazed. Looking down the slope she sniffed and
sniffed the air.
Holding the only remaining and crushed forepaw before her she looked
it over intently. It was bleeding and one toe--nearly severed--hung
loosely. The paw appeared to have been crushed by a falling rock. With
the cubs watching her as she licked the wounded foot, the hunter made
ready and drew bead just below the ear.
The shadow of a passing cloud rushed along the earth and caused the
cubs to cease their serious watching of their mother and to follow
with wondering eyes the ragged-edged shadow skating up the slope. The
hunter, close enough to see the blood dripping from the paw, shifted
slightly and aimed for the heart. Then, as he flung his rifle at a
boulder: “I’ll be darned if I’ll kill a crippled mother bear!”
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
End of Project Gutenberg's Watched by Wild Animals, by Enos A. Mills