Trailing without a Gun

I had gone into Wild Basin, hoping to see and to trail a grizzly. It was

early November and the sun shone brightly on four inches of newly fallen

snow; trailing conditions were excellent. If possible I wanted to get

close to a bear and watch his ways for a day or two.

Just as I climbed above the last trees on the eastern slope of the

Continental Divide, I saw a grizzly ambling along the other side of a

narrow cañon, boldly outlined against the sky-line. I was so near that

with my field-glasses I recognized him as "Old Timberline," a bear with

two right front toes missing. He was a silver-tip,--a nearly white old

bear. For three days I followed Old Timberline through his home

territory and camped on his trail at night. I had with me hatchet,

kodak, field-glasses, and a package of food, but no gun.

The grizzly had disappeared by the time I crossed the cañon, but a clear

line of tracks led westward. I followed them over the Divide and down

into the woods on the other side. In a scattered tree-growth the tracks

turned abruptly to the right, then led back eastward, close to the first

line of tracks, as though Old Timberline had turned to meet any one who

might be following him.

The most impressive thing I had early learned in trailing and studying

the grizzly was that a wounded bear if trailed and harassed will

sometimes conceal himself and lie in an ambush in wait for his pursuer.

I never took a chance of walking into such danger. Whenever the trail

passed a log, bowlder, or bushes that might conceal a bear, I turned

aside and scouted the ambush for a side view before advancing further.

Old Timberline's tracks showed that he had now and then risen on hind

feet, listened, and turned to look back. He acted as though he knew I

was following him, but this he had not yet discovered. All grizzlies are

scouts of the first order; they are ever on guard. When at rest their

senses do continuous sentinel duty, and when traveling they act exactly

as though they believed some man was in pursuit.

Following along the trail and wondering what turn the grizzly would make

next, I found where he had climbed upon a ledge in the edge of an

opening, and had evidently stood for some seconds, looking and

listening. From the ledge he had faced about and continued his course

westward, heading for a spur on the summit of the Divide.

We were in what is now the southern end of the Rocky Mountain National

Park. The big bear and myself were on one of the high sky-lines of the

earth. We traversed a territory ten thousand to twelve thousand feet

above sea-level, much of it above the limits of tree growth. There were

long stretches of moorland, an occasional peak towering above us, and

ridges long and short thrusting east and west, and cañons of varying

width and depth were to be seen below us from the summit heights.

Crossing this spur of the Divide, the grizzly entered the woods. Here he

spent so much time rolling logs about and tearing them open for grubs

and ants that I nearly caught up with him. I watched him through the

scattered trees from a rocky ledge until he moved on. This after a few

minutes he did. As he came to an opening in the woods, I wondered

whether he would go round it to the right or to the left. To my

astonishment, without the least hesitation he sauntered across the

opening, his head held low and swinging easily from side to side. But

the instant he was screened by trees beyond, rising up, with fore paws

resting against a tree, he peered cautiously out to see if he was being

followed. When the next opening in the woods was reached, he went

discreetly round it. You never know what a grizzly's next move will be

nor how to anticipate his actions.

Old Timberline started down into a cañon as though to descend a gully

diagonally to the bottom. I hastily made a short cut and was ready to

take his picture when he should come out at the lower end. But he never

came. After waiting some time, I back-tracked and found he had gone only

a few hundred feet down the gully, then returned to the top of the cañon

and followed along the rim for a mile. He had then descended directly to

the bottom of the cañon and gone straight up to the top on the other

side.

Autumn is the time when bears most search the heights for food. Old

Timberline's trail headed again for the heights. When I next caught

sight of him, he was digging above the tree-line, but as it was now

nearly night, I went back a short distance into the woods and built a

fire by the base of a cliff. Here all through the clear night I had a

glorious view of the high peaks up among the cold stars.

Before daylight I left camp and climbed to the top of a treeless ridge,

thinking that the bear might come along that way. In the course of time

he appeared, about a quarter of a mile east of me. After standing and

looking about for a few minutes, he started along the ridge, evidently

planning to recross the Continental Divide near where he had crossed the

day before. As I could not get close to him from this point, I concluded

to follow his trail of the preceding night and if possible find out what

he had been doing.

A short distance below him I found his trail and back-tracked to a place

which showed that he had spent the night near the entrance of a recently

dug den. I learned some weeks later that this den was where he

hibernated that winter. A short distance farther on I came to where he

had been digging when I saw him the evening before. Evidently he had

been successful. A few drops of blood on the snow showed that he had

captured some small animal, probably a cony. From this point I trailed

Old Timberline forward and eastward, and near noon I caught a glimpse of

him on the summit of the Divide.

While roaming above timber-line he did not take the precaution to

travel with his face in the wind. He could see toward every point of the

compass. He was ambling easily along, but I knew that his senses were

wide awake--that his sentinel nose never slept and that his ears never

ceased to hear. Climbing to the very summit of a snow-covered ridge, he

lay down with his back to the wind. Evidently he depended upon the wind

to carry the warning scent of any danger behind him, while he was on the

lookout for anything in front of him. Nothing could approach nearer than

half a mile without his knowing it. He looked this way and that. After

only a short rest he arose and started on again.

I hoped that some time I should be able to photograph Old Timberline at

twenty-five or thirty feet. But at all times, too, I was more eager to

watch him, to see what he was eating, where he went, and what he did. I

was constantly trying to get as close as possible. Of course I had ever

to keep in mind that he must not see, hear, nor scent me. I had to be

particularly careful to prevent his scenting me. Often in hastening to

reach a point of vantage I had to stop, note the topography, and change

my direction, because a wind-current up an unsuspected cañon before me

might carry news of my presence to the bear.

Near mountain-tops the wind is deflected this way and that by ridges and

cañons. In a small area the prevailing west wind may be a north wind,

and a short distance farther on it may blow from the southwest. Often,

when the bear was somewhere in a cañon, I climbed entirely out of it, to

avoid the likelihood of being scented, and scurried ahead on a plateau.

Usually I followed in the bear's trail, but sometimes I made short cuts.

So long as Old Timberline remained on the moorland summit of this

treeless ridge, I could not get close to him. But when he arose and

started down the ridge, I hurried down the slope, hoping to get ahead

and hide in a place of concealment near which he might pass. I kept out

of sight in the woods and hastened forward for two miles, then climbed

up and hid in a rock-slide on the rim of the ridge.

By and by I saw Old Timberline coming. When within five hundred feet of

me he stopped and dug energetically. Buckets of earth flew behind, and

occasionally a huge stone was torn out and hurled with one paw to the

right or left. Once he stopped digging, rose on hind feet, and looked

all around as though he felt that some one was slipping up on him. He

dug for a few minutes longer and then again stood up and sniffed the

air. Not satisfied, he walked quickly to a ledge from which he could see

down the slope to the woods. Discovering nothing suspicious, he returned

to his digging, stepping in his former footprints. He uncovered

something in its nest, and through my glasses I saw him strike right and

left and then rush out in pursuit of it. After nosing about in the hole

where he had been digging, he started off again. He went directly to the

ledge, walking in his former well-tracked trail, then descended the

steep eastern slope of the Divide toward the woods. I hurried to the

ledge from which he had surveyed the surroundings and watched him.

Arriving at a steep incline on the snowy slope, Old Timberline sat down

on his haunches and coasted. A grizzly bear coasting on the Continental

Divide! How merrily he went, leaning forward with his paws on his knees!

At one place he plunged over a snowy ledge and dropped four or five

feet. He threw up both fore paws with sheer joy. Soon he found himself

exceeding the speed-limit. Looking back over one shoulder, and reaching

out his paw behind him, he put on brakes; but as this did not check him

sufficiently, he whirled about and slid flat on his stomach, digging in

with both fingers and toes until he slowed down.

Then, sitting up on his haunches again, he set himself in motion by

pushing along with rapid backward strokes of both fore paws. He coasted

on toward the bottom. In going down a steep pitch of one hundred feet or

more he either quite lost control of himself or let go from sheer

enthusiasm. He rolled, tumbled, and slid recklessly along. Reaching the

bottom, he rose on hind feet, looked about him for a few seconds, and

then climbed halfway up the course for another coast. At the end of this

merry sliding he landed on an open flat in the edge of the woods.

As it was nearly dark and I should not be able to see or follow the bear

much longer, I concluded to roll a rock from the ledge down near him.

Twice I had noticed that he had paid no attention to rocks that broke

loose above and rolled near him. But he heard this rock start and rose

up to look at it. It stopped a few yards from him. He sniffed the air

with nose pointing toward it and then went up and smelled it. Rearing

up instantly, he looked intently toward the mountain-top where I was

hidden. After two or three seconds of thought he turned and ran.

Evidently the stone had carried my scent to him. It was useless to

follow him in the night.

The next morning I left camp and followed Old Timberline's trail through

the woods. He had run for nearly ten miles almost straight south until

coming to a small stream. Then for some distance he concealed, involved,

and confused his trail with a cleverness that I have never seen equaled.

Most animals realize that they leave a scent which enables other animals

to follow them, but the grizzly is the only animal that I know who

appears to be fully aware that he is leaving telltale tracks. He will

make unthought-of turns and doublings to walk where his tracks will not

show, and also tramples about to leave a confusion of tracks where they

do show.

Arriving at the stream, the bear crossed on a fallen log and from the

end of this leaped into a bushy growth beyond. I made a détour, thinking

to find his tracks on the other side of the bushes, and I threw stones

into the bushes, not caring to go into them. Both tracks and grizzly

seemed to have vanished. I went down stream just outside the bushes

bordering it, expecting every instant to find the grizzly's tracks, but

not finding them. Then I returned to the log on which he had crossed the

stream, and from which he had leaped into the bushes.

Examining the tracks carefully, I now discovered what I had before

overlooked. After leaping into the bushes the bear had faced about and

leaped back to the log, stepping carefully into his former tracks. From

the log he had entered the water and waded up stream for a quarter of a

mile. Of course not a track showed. At a good place for concealing his

trail he had leaped out of the water into a clump of willows on the

north bank. From the willows he made another long leap into the snow and

then started back northward, alongside his ten-mile trail and one

hundred feet from it, as though intending to return to the place where I

had rolled the stone down the slope near him.

I did not discover all this at once, however. In my search for his trail

I went up stream on the north side and passed, without noticing, the

crushed willows into which he had leaped. Crossing to where the bank was

higher, I started back down stream on the other side, and in doing so

chanced to look across and see the crushed clump of willows. But it took

me hours to untangle this involved trail.

When I had followed the tracks northward for more than a mile, the trail

vanished in a snowless place. Apparently the grizzly had planned in

advance to use this bare place, because the moves he made in it were

those most likely to bewilder the pursuer. He did three things which are

always more or less confusing and even bewildering to the pursuer, be he

man or dog. He changed his direction, he left no tracks, and he crossed

his former trail, thereby mixing the scents of the two. He confused the

nose, left no record for the eye, and broke the general direction.

Unable to determine the course the bear had taken across this trackless

place, I walked round it, keeping all the time in the snow. When more

than halfway round I came upon his tracks leaving the bare place. Here

he had changed his direction of travel abruptly from north to east,

crossed his former trail, gone on a few yards farther, and then abruptly

changed from east to north.

I hurried along his tracks. After a few miles I saw where perhaps the

night before he had eaten part of the carcass of a bighorn. To judge

from tooth marks, the sheep had been killed by wolves. The trail

continued in general northward, parallel to the summit and a little

below it. As I followed, the tracks approached timber-line, the trees

being scattered and the country quite open.

Suddenly the trail broke off to the right for five or six hundred feet

into the woods, as though Old Timberline had remembered an acquaintance

whom he must see again. He had hustled along straight for a much-clawed

Engelmann spruce, a tree with bear-claw and tooth marks of many dates,

though none were recent. Old Timberline, apparently, had smelled the

base of the tree and then risen up and sniffed the bark as high as his

nose could reach. He had neither bitten nor clawed. Then he had gone to

two near-by trees, each of which had had chunks bitten or torn out, and

here smelled about.

Retracing his tracks to where the trail had turned off abruptly, the

bear resumed his general direction northward. When he stopped on a ridge

and began digging, I hurried across a narrow neck of woods and crept up

as close as I dared. A wagon-load of dirt and stones had been piled

up. While I watched the digging, a woodchuck rushed out, only to be

overtaken and seized by the bear, who, having finished his meal,

shuffled on out of sight.

I followed the trail through woods, groves, and openings. After an hour

or more without seeing the grizzly, I climbed a cliff, hoping to get a

glimpse of him on some ridge ahead. I could see his line of tracks

crossing a low ridge beyond and felt that he might still be an hour or

so in the lead. But, in descending from the cliff, I chanced to look

back along my trail. Just at that moment the bear came out of the woods

behind me. He was trailing me!

I do not know how he discovered that I was following him. He may have

seen or scented me. Anyway, instead of coming directly back and thus

exposing himself, he had very nearly carried out his well-planned

surprise when I discovered him. I found out afterwards that he had left

his trail far ahead, turning and walking back in his own footprints for

a distance, and trampling this stretch a number of times, and that he

had then leaped into scrubby timber and made off on the side where his

tracks did not show in passing along the trampled trail. He had

confused his trail where he started to circle back, so as not to be

noticed, and slipped in around behind me.

But after discovering the grizzly on my trail I went slowly along as

though I was unaware of his near presence, turning in screened places to

look back. He followed within three hundred feet of me. When I stopped

he stopped. He occasionally watched me from behind bushes, a tree, or a

bowlder. It gave me a strange feeling to have this big beast following

and watching me so closely and cautiously. But I was not alarmed.

I concluded to turn tables on him. On crossing a ridge where I was out

of sight, I turned to the right and ran for nearly a mile. Then,

circling back into our old trail behind the bear, I traveled serenely

along, imagining that he was far ahead. I was suddenly startled to see a

movement of the grizzly's shadow from behind a bowlder near the trail,

only three hundred feet ahead. He was in ambush, waiting for me! At the

place where I left the trail to circle behind him, he had stopped and

evidently surmised my movements. Turning in his tracks, he had come a

short distance back on the trail and lain down behind the bowlder to

wait for me.

I went on a few steps after discovering the grizzly, and he moved to

keep out of sight. I edged toward a tall spruce, which I planned to

climb if he charged, feeling safe in the knowledge that grizzlies cannot

climb trees. Pausing by the spruce, I could see his silver-gray fur as

he peered at me from behind the bowlder, and as I moved farther away I

heard him snapping his jaws and snarling as though in anger at being

outwitted.

Just what he would have done had I walked into his ambush can only be

guessed. Hunters trailing a wounded grizzly have been ambushed and

killed. But this grizzly had not even been shot at nor harassed.

Generally, when a grizzly discovers that he is followed, or even if he

only thinks himself followed, he at once hurries off to some other part

of his territory, as this one did after I rolled the stone. But Old

Timberline on finding himself followed slipped round to follow me. Often

a grizzly, if he feels he is not yet seen,--that his move is

unsuspected,--will slip round to follow those who are trailing him. But

in no other case that I know of has a bear lingered after he realized

that he was seen. After Old Timberline discovered that I had circled

behind him, he knew that I knew where he was and what he was doing.

But instead of running away he came back along the trail to await my

coming. What were his intentions? Did he intend to assault me, or was he

overcome with curiosity because of my unusual actions and trying to

discover what they were all about? I do not know. I concluded it best

not to follow him farther, nor did I wish to travel that night with this

crafty, soft-footed fellow in the woods. Going a short distance down

among the trees, I built a rousing fire. Between it and a cliff I spent

the night, satisfied that I had had adventure enough for one outing.

Trailing is adventurous. Many of the best lessons of woodcraft that I

have learned, several of the greatest and most beneficial outings that I

have had, were those during which I followed, sometimes day and night,

that master of strategy, the grizzly bear. A few times in trailing the

grizzly I have outwitted him, but more frequently he has outwitted me.

Every grizzly has speed, skill, and endurance. He has mental capacity

and often shows astounding plan, caution, courage, and audacity.

Trailing without a gun is red-blooded life, scouting of the most

exacting and manly order. The trailer loses himself in his part in the

primeval play of the wilderness. It is doubtful if any other experience

is as educational as the trailing of the grizzly bear.