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WILLIAM H.WRIGHT

"The Wicked Borroweth, and Returneth Not Again,'

JOHN M. GOOD

BANCROFT
LIBRARY

•o

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

THE GRIZZLY BEAR

From a photograph, copyright, 1909, by J .

AT BAY

THE GRIZZLY BEAR

THE NARRATIVE OF A HUNTER-
NATURALIST

HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND
ADVENTUROUS

BY

WILLIAM H. WRIGHT

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

AND J. B. KERFOOT

I

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK - - 1913

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published September, 1909

THIS BOOK IS
DEDICATED

WITH THE RESPECT, ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION

OF THE AUTHOR,

TO THE NOBLEST WILD ANIMAL OF NORTH AMERICA,
THE GRIZZLY BEAR

CONTENTS

PART I
HISTORICAL

CHAPTER

I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 3

II. EARLY HISTORY — LEWIS AND CLARK . . 13

III. FOLLOWERS OF LEWIS AND CLARK ... 26

IV. JAMES CAPEN ADAMS 37

V. THE SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION OF BEARS . 48

PART II
MY EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES

VI. MY FIRST GRIZZLY 55

VII. FIVE IN FIVE SHOTS 63

VIII. GRIZZLY GOURMETS 69

IX. TRAILING 77

X. A CHARGING GRIZZLY 87

XL AT CLOSE QUARTERS 95

XII. MY FIRST TRIP TO THE SELKIRKS . . .105

XIII. THE SELKIRKS REVISITED . . . .117

XIV. THE UNEXPECTED 133

vii

Contents

CHAPTER

XV. A SPRING GUN AVOIDED 138

XVI. A PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPEDITION . . . .142
XVII. FLASHLIGHTING GRIZZLIES . . . .164

PART III
CHARACTER AND HABITS OF THE GRIZZLY

XVIII. DESCRIPTION AND DISTRIBUTION . . .185

. XIX. CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS . . . .199

XX. FOOD AND FEEDING . . . . . 217

XXI. His FIERCENESS 229

XXII. His VITALITY 247

XXIII. FACT VERSUS FICTION 256

XXIV. CONCLUSION . 265

INDEX 269

viii

ILLUSTRATIONS

At bay Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

A camp in the Sierras 44

A thousand-pounder, half as broad as he was long . . 58

Grizzlies feeding 66

A grizzly coming out of the woods 72

Listening . . . . . . . . 78

Elk Summit, Bitter Root Mountains .... 96

Near the head-waters of Wilson's Creek .... 106

The home of the grizzly — in the Selkirks . . . .112

Travelling in the Selkirks 118

He landed in the little trail that we were following . .134

In the Bitter Roots — the old grizzly and her two cubs . 136

His suspicions aroused 140

He came on, stopping and sniffing . . . . . 150

A flash that failed 168

She was an old bald-face with three cubs . . . .176

ix

x Illustrations

FACING PAGE

Front foot of a black bear, front track of a black bear; front
foot of a grizzly bear, front track of a grizzly bear . .186

Hind foot of a black bear, hind track of a black bear; hind
foot of a grizzly bear, hind track of a grizzly bear . .188

The grizzly's walk is a kind of shuffle . . . .196
Grizzly-bear cub, twelve hours old — two-thirds natural size . 200

Roots of which some grizzlies are fond — the dog-tooth violet,
the spring beauty ........ 222

A case where curiosity looks like blood-thirstiness . . 238
In the pink of condition : young, sleek, vigorous, and alert . 252
Three-year-olds 266

PART I
HISTORICAL

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

THE object of this book is to place on record the
facts I have gleaned, and the deductions I have
drawn, from some twenty-five years of more or less con-
stant observation of the grizzly bear. This is an animal
much talked about, but little studied. It is now well on
its way toward extinction. Our acquaintance with its
life history is broken by many gaps and supplemented by
many conjectures. Some of these gaps I believe myself
able to fill; some of these conjectures I propose to ex-
amine and discuss. Before, therefore, venturing even ten-
tatively to take the chair as a witness, I find it only right
that I should, in so far as I am entitled to do so, qualify
as an expert.

I was born in 1856 on a small farm in southern New
Hampshire. This farm, like its neighbors, was little
more than piles of rock fenced in by other piles of rock;
and from the time I was twelve years old or so I worked
on these piles of rock during the summer, and at coopering
or lumbering during the winter, and in the saw-mills in the
spring.

I had little schooling, and, indeed, little chance of it;
but one of my earliest recollections is nevertheless con-

3

4 The Grizzly Bear

nected with a book. I have often seen in the newspapers
and magazines replies of various persons of note to the
question, "What book has exerted the greatest influence
on your life ?" Most of these answers I notice are rather
hazy, but if I had ever been asked to reply to this question,
I should have been able to answer without any hesitation.
And my answer would have been, "The Adventures of
James Capen Adams, Grizzly Bear Hunter of California."
This book, by what chance I am unable to guess, was in
the town library of the village nearest our home. I sup-
pose that my father, thinking that its illustrations would
amuse his sons, had brought it home for us. At any rate,
although I have no recollection of seeing it for the first
time, I remember my father's reading aloud from it in the
evenings, and our repeated request that he would get it
for us again. I think that before we could read ourselves,
my brother and myself must have all but worn out the old
book looking at its pictures.

Along about this time, in the early sixties, when I was
some six or seven years of age, Barnum's Circus made a
tour of the New England States, and their posters exhib-
ited the picture of a huge grizzly, which was advertised as
having been caught by this man Adams. You can, per-
haps, imagine the effect of this upon us youngsters, and
the condition we were in when the circus came to Nashua,
and our father consented to take us to see it. That bear
is about the only thing I remember about my first circus.
I know I went back every few minutes to look at him; and
I can see him now, pacing backward and forward in his
great cage. I can see just how his toe-nails looked and
can remember the exact color of him. There is nothing

Autobiographical 5

strange in the fact that I had already, boylike, dreamed
of emulating Adams. It is even less strange that that
evening I openly declared my resolution. The only
strange thing about it is that I never changed my mind.

In those days, and in that country, fathers had an un-
disputed proprietary interest in their children until they
came definitely of age. It never occurred to either side
to question it, and while, as I grew toward manhood, I
found myself more and more seriously determined to go
west and become a hunter, I worked steadily on the
home farm and at home pursuits till I was twenty-one.
Then, since I had no means of my own, I went to
Fitchburg, and got work in a machine-shop. I had
already, at home, learned blacksmithing; and now, as I
had had little opportunity of education, I went to night
school. I worked, first and last, all over New England.
I was soon getting the highest wages. I was never laid
off when there was any work to be done, and whenever
a shop closed down at one place, I got a letter of recom-
mendation and went to the next town.

Meanwhile I had not lost sight of my real purpose. I
had long owned a tent and a rifle. I had, whenever I
could, gone into the woods. I knew well how to fend
for myself in the open, and was something of a crack shot
both at a mark and at game.

In 1883 (I was then working in Providence, R. I., for
Brown & Sharp), a man came around the country hiring
mechanics for a large machine-shop in Melbourne, Aus-
tralia. The men, I remember, were to pay their own way
out, and if they stayed eighteen months, were to be reim-
bursed. It was a far cry from the opportunity I had been

6 The Grizzly Bear

looking for, but it interested me enough to send me to the
ticket office to make inquiries. A man named Church was
ticket agent at the time, and in the course of our conversa-
tion he told me that there were a number of people think-
ing of going west, and that if I would give him three weeks
in which to advertise a trip, and would take charge of two
car-loads of emigrants, he would give me a ticket to Port-
land, Oregon, and return.

Naturally I jumped at the chance, though I wished
many a time before I was rid of my charges that I had
paid my fare. One car-load of settlers was switched off
at Chicago bound for San Francisco; the others, with
myself in charge, went north-west to St. Paul and beyond.
And I dropped the last of them at Mussel Shell, Montana,
where there was a large sheep-raising industry. There
were now four of us, a carpenter from Maine, a jeweller
and a blacksmith from Providence, and myself. I was
keeping Melbourne up my sleeve, but had determined to
stop off in the West if I could find a locality where I would
be apt to get a grizzly, and I had made inquiries all along
the road from every one who was supposed to know the
country. Of course I had heard the usual number and
the usual kind of bear stories, but I was so repeatedly
informed that in the hills surrounding Spokane, there
were plenty of grizzlies, if any one had the nerve to
hunt them, that in the end three of us, the jeweller, the
blacksmith, and myself, got off there.

Spokane was then a town of about fifteen hundred
inhabitants. I had brought a camp outfit with me from
the East and, when we got off the train, I secured a wheel-
barrow, wheeled my trunk and my other belongings down

Autobiographical 7

to the river bank about half a mile out of town, set up my
tent, and went hunting — for a job. I had twelve dollars
and fifty cents in my pocket and these two boys, who had
nothing at all, on my hands. Luck, however, was with
me. One of the first people I met was an old man named
Weeks, who ran a blacksmith and machine shop, and
when I showed him my credentials and told him my
qualifications he employed me.

This was on the I3th of May, 1883. It was just after
the mining boom in the Coeur d'Alene had burst; and
Spokane, being the nearest settlement, was the dumping
ground for the horde of disappointed and destitute men
who tramped, foot-sore and desperate, out of the moun-
tains. In those days there was only a train a day each
way on the Northern Pacific — and not always that.
When a train steamed into the little station at Spokane,
a crowd, of all sorts and conditions, gathered to watch it;
some merely curious; some looking for an un watched
brake-beam to ride away on; some spotting any arrivals
who appeared to have money, and who later on were not
any too secure against hold-ups.

While I was standing talking to Weeks in front of a
stable, which he also owned, we saw a man who had ar-
rived by my train come out of the little hotel called the
San Francisco House, and walk down the street toward a
stone smoke-house, directly across from where we stood.
He had on a light overcoat and had his hands in his pock-
ets. It was nearly dusk, and just as he reached the smoke-
house a man jumped out from behind it and shoved a
pistol in his face. There was a shot, and the man with
the pistol fell headlong into the street. It turned out

8 The Grizzly Bear

afterward that the traveller had had a pistol, one of the
old British bulldogs, in his overcoat pocket, and when
the robber told him to throw up his hands, he had simply
fired through his coat. The wounded man died in a few
hours, after exonerating his slayer by saying, "He is all
right, I'd have got him if he hadn't got me." This was
my introduction to Spokane.

I lived in my tent for a year. I secured the contract
to carry the United States mail between the railroad
station and the post-office. There was only one small
sack a day each way, and not always that (I remember
that once there was not a bit of mail either way for thirty
days), so that it was not much of a job, but it threw me in
with Mr. Heath, the postmaster, and he, having a section
of land that he had homesteaded, about a mile out of town
and upon which no one would live because there was no
water, offered me three lots if I would build a house and
dig a well. The two boys I had had with me when I came
had got work and left, and there was a carpenter who had
struck town with no money and no work, and I boarded
him for a year to build my house. I dug the well. I got my
lumber from an old fellow who owned a saw-mill and
needed some repairs done on his machinery, but had no
money. I did the repairs and took my pay in lumber.
Two years later I sold the house and lots for $2,750
cash.

Meanwhile I worked in Weeks's machine-shop, and
one Saturday afternoon, late in August, having heard of a
place where there were so many grizzly bears that no one
dared to go there, I started out with two other fellows who
thought they wanted to hunt bears, reached the promised

Autobiographical 9

land well after dark, and Sunday morning started on my
first bear hunt. Looking back on it now, I think my idea
must have been that hunting grizzly bears was something
like "chumming" for fish; that all that was necessary
was to go into the hills, let one's scent blow down breeze,
and then shoot the ferocious animals that worked their
way up wind with the intention of eating you.

At any rate our inexperience in this kind of hunting,
our tack of caution, and our carelessness in making too
much noise, prevented us from getting any grizzlies; and
it spoke volumes for the number of these animals then
roaming the hills that we actually, in spite of our awk-
wardness, saw eleven. I did succeed in killing one black
bear, wounding another, and scaring several more nearly
to death by rolling rocks after them. As a matter of fact
it was well on into my second season before I really killed
a grizzly, and although I saw a great many in my ex-
cursions, it was also about that long before I realized that
the bear stories I had heard were just stories. I used to
go out the last of every week.

Later, in the first fall, having saved some money, I
bought a half-interest in the shop from Mr. Weeks. This
I did really to have more freedom to hunt. After a part-
nership of five or six months, the old man gave me the
other half of the business to teach one of his boys the
trade, and I ran the shop till the next summer, when, the
berries and grizzlies being ripe, I took a partner to look
after the business while I looked after bear. Judging
from the way he ran it, and the number of bear I got that
year, I think it would have been cheaper for me to buy my
bear. However, except for three or four months in the fall,

io The Grizzly Bear

when the hunting season was on, I ran this shop until
1888.

By that time the town had grown, I had bought prop-
erty that had increased in value, I had got married, I had
a home and an income, and I sold the blacksmith shop,
devoted myself to hunting grizzlies and contracting for
the building of houses in the town, and soon had most of
my means invested in building materials. Then, in 1889,
came the big Spokane fire. It burned the greater part of the
city, wiped out my building materials, and as I carried no
insurance, came near to wiping me out too; and what the
fire only began, the hard times that followed completed.

I now found myself with an undiminished interest in
hunting, and no means to gratify my inclinations. For a
time I removed to Missoula, Montana, worked in a tax-
idermist's shop in the winter, and photographed and
hunted during the summer; but I was soon to find a more
congenial occupation. I was, it is needless to say, no
longer the tyro of six years before. I had long since
freed my mind from the preconceptions of lies and legends,
and had worked out my own hunting lore from my own
experience and observation. I was, it is true, familiar
with only a section of the grizzly's range, and had pene-
trated but a few hundred miles in either direction from
my base of operations. But I had always had strongly
developed what some people call the bump of locality and
direction, and what others more poetical refer to as "the
sixth sense of the homing pigeon." I have, it seems to me
now, always been at home in the woods. I have never
been in any part of the country, in any mountains or any
place, where it was difficult for me to find my way. I

Autobiographical 1 1

have never carried a compass, have never slept away from
camp overnight, and have travelled three or four hundred
miles across uninhabited districts and come out where I
wanted to. I soon found that I had many friends who
were anxious to hunt, and who were ready to pay me to
take them hunting. These friends had friends. It was not
long before I turned what had been my hobby into a busi-
ness. Heretofore I had hunted three or four months a year.
Henceforward I was seldom that long away from the woods.
And soon I was familiar with every range of mountains
in which the grizzly bear was found, from Mexico to
Alaska.

In the beginning, I studied the grizzly in order to hunt
him. I marked his haunts and his habits, I took notice of
his likes and dislikes; I learned his indifferences and his
fears; I spied upon the perfection of his senses and the
limitations of his instincts, simply that I might the better
slay him. For many a year, and in many a fastness of the
hills, I pitted my shrewdness against his, and my wariness
against his, and my endurance against his; and many a
time I came out winner in the game, and many a time I
owned myself the loser. And then at last my interest in
my opponent grew to overshadow my interest in the game.
I had studied the grizzly to hunt him. I came to hunt him
in order to study him. I laid aside my rifle. It is twelve
years since I have killed a grizzly. Yet in all those years
there is not one but what I have spent some months in his
company. And then (alas! that it had not been sooner)
I undertook to photograph him. And finally I have at-
tempted to put into this volume something of the story of
the grizzly during the seventy-five years between his dis-

12 The Grizzly Bear

covery and my meeting with him; something of my
personal adventures with him; and the gist of my ob-
servations of his habits and of my opinions of his
nature.

II

EARLY HISTORY— LEWIS AND CLARK

THE history of the grizzly bear differs from that of all
the other great beasts that have come into close
contact with civilization. The story of the others begins
with our beginnings. The lion and the tiger have been
always with us. They helped to rock the cradle of the
race, and lunched occasionally from its contents. When
we were cave men, we barred them from the mouths of
our caves, and drew pictures of them on the walls. Later,
we charred the ends of sharpened sticks in our fires, and
with these drove them into the jungle. We and they
have grown up together.

But the first chapter of the history of the grizzly is the
beginning of the story's end. When my grandfather was
born, the grizzly had never been heard of. If my grand-
son ever sees one, it will likely be in the bear pit of a zoolog-
ical garden.

The actual history of the grizzly bear begins on April
29, 1805, when, on the banks of the upper Missouri, at
the mouth of the Yellowstone River, in what is now Mon-
tana, Captain Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, met one of these animals for the first time.

Before this, indeed, hints and rumors of a bear different
from the Eastern variety had come back to civilization

13

14 The Grizzly Bear

with returning traders and explorers. Edward Umfre-
ville, writing in 1790 upon "The Present State of Hudson's
Bay," had heard of them. In summing up the fauna of
the North and West, he says: "Bears are of three kinds:
the black, the red, and the grizzle bear." But he goes no
further than to add, in regard to the two latter, that, "their
nature is savage and ferocious, their power dangerous, and
their haunts to be guarded against."

Sir Alexander MacKenzie, the explorer, during his
second voyage, on May 13, 1795, mentions seeing bear
tracks on the banks of the Peace River, some of which
were nine inches wide. He says, "The Indians entertain
great apprehension of this kind of bear, which is called
the grisly bear, and they never venture to attack it except
in a party of at least three or four." He never, however,
seems to have seen one, nor does he describe it.

Lewis and Clark, on the other hand, not only entered
in their journals full accounts of their various encounters
with these animals, but made inquiries about them among
the inhabitants of the regions where they were found, and
took in them not only the interest of the fur trader and
the hunter, but that of the naturalist. Moreover, for
nearly fifty years these field notes of theirs were the chief,
if not the only, source of information regarding these
animals. Here and there, during that period, in the works
of scientific writers upon natural history, an original
observation, or an authenticated report of such observa-
tions, appears. But for the most part everything outside
the categories of frank romance or alleged adventure that
found its way into print, was an unblushing rehash or an
unwarranted elaboration of their statements.

Early History — Lewis and Clark 15

Their note of April 29, 1805, is as follows:
"Captain Lewis, who was on shore with one hunter,
met, about eight o'clock, two white bears. Of the strength
and ferocity of this animal the Indians had given us dread-
ful accounts. They never attack him but in parties of
six or eight persons, and even then are often defeated with
a loss of one or more of their party. Having no weapons
but bows and arrows, and the bad guns with which the
traders supply them, they are obliged to approach very
near to the bear. As no wound, except through the head
or heart, is mortal, they frequently fall a sacrifice if they
miss their aim. He rather attacks than avoids a man,
and such is the terror which he has inspired, that the
Indians who go in quest of him paint themselves and per-
form all the superstitious rites customary when they make
war on a neighboring nation.

"Hitherto, those bears we had seen did not appear
desirous of encountering us; but although to a skilful
rifleman the danger is very much diminished, yet the
white bear is a terrible animal. On approaching these
two, both Captain Lewis and the hunter fired and each
wounded a bear. One of them made his escape. The
other turned upon Captain Lewis and pursued him seventy
or eighty yards, but being badly wounded the bear could
not run so fast as to prevent him from reloading his piece,
which he again aimed at him, and a third shot from the
hunter brought him to the ground. He was a male, not
quite full-grown, and weighed about three hundred
pounds. The legs are somewhat longer than those of the
black bear and the talons and tusks much longer. Its
color is a yellowish brown; the eyes are small, black, and

1 6 The Grizzly Bear

piercing; the front of the fore legs near the feet is usually
black, and the fur is finer, thicker, and deeper than that
of the black bear; add to which it is a more furious
animal and very remarkable for the wounds which it will
bear without dying."

Thus reads the first account of a meeting between a
white man and a grizzly.

I quote at length from Lewis and Clark on this subject,
not only because their notes are interesting, accurate, and
instructive in themselves, but because, while they are
scattered through the pages of a voluminous and un-
familiar report, a first-hand acquaintance with them is,
in their field, the beginning of knowledge. On May 6,
following, the record proceeds:

" Captain Clark and one of the hunters met this evening
the largest brown bear we have seen. As they fired he
did not attempt to attack, but fled with a most tremendous
roar; and such was his extraordinary tenacity of life that,
although five balls passed through his lungs, and he had
five other wounds, he swam more than half across the
river to a sand bar and survived twenty minutes. He
weighed between five hundred and six hundred pounds
at least, and measured at least eight feet seven and a
half inches from the nose to the extremity of the hind
feet, five feet ten and a half inches around the breast,
three feet eleven inches around the neck, one foot eleven
inches around the middle of the fore leg, and his talons,
five on each foot, were four and three-eighth inches in
length. This differs from the common black bear in hav-
ing its talons longer and more blunt; its tail shorter; its
hair of a reddish or bay brown, longer, finer, and more

Early History — Lewis and Clark 17

abundant; his liver, lungs, and heart much larger even in
proportion to his size, the heart being equal to that of a
large ox; his maw ten times larger. Besides fish and flesh
he feeds on roots and every kind of wild fruit."

May n, 1805. "About five in the afternoon one of
our men (Bratton), who had been afflicted with boils and
suffered to walk on shore, came running to the boats with
loud cries and every symptom of terror and distress. For
some time after we had taken him on board he was so
much out of breath as to be unable to describe the cause
of his anxiety; but he at length told us that about a mile
and a half below he had shot a brown bear, which had
immediately turned and was in close pursuit of him; but
the bear, being badly wounded, could not overtake him.
Captain Lewis, with seven men, immediately went in
search of him; having found his track, followed him by
the blood for a mile, found him concealed in some thick
brushwood and shot him with two balls through the skull.
Though somewhat smaller than that killed a few days
ago, he was a monstrous animal and a most terrible
enemy. Our man shot him through the centre of the
lungs, yet he had pursued him furiously for half a mile,
then returned more than twice that distance, and with his
talons prepared himself a bed in the earth two feet deep
and five feet long; he was perfectly alive when they found
him, which was at least two hours after he had received
the wound. The wonderful power of life which these
animals possess renders them dreadful; their very track in
the mud or sand, which we have sometimes found eleven
inches long and seven and one-fourth inches wide, ex-
clusive of the talons, is alarming; and we had rather

1 8 The Grizzly Bear

encounter two Indians than meet a single brown bear.
There is no chance of killing them by a single shot unless
the ball goes through the brain, and this is very difficult
on account of two large muscles which cover the side of
the forehead and the sharp projection of the centre of
the frontal bone, which is also thick."

May 14, 1805. "Toward evening the men in the
hindmost canoes discovered a large brown bear lying in the
open grounds about three hundred paces from the river.
Six of them, all good hunters, immediately went to attack
him, and concealing themselves by a small eminence, came
unperceived within forty paces of him. Four of the hunters
now fired and each lodged a ball in his body, two of them
directly through the lungs. The furious animal sprang
up and ran open-mouthed upon them. As he came near,
the two hunters who had reserved their fire gave him two
wounds, one of which, breaking his shoulder, retarded his
motion for a moment; but before they could reload he
was so near that they were obliged to run to the river, and
before they reached it he had almost overtaken them.
Two jumped into the canoe, the other four separated, and
concealing themselves in the willows, fired as fast as each
could reload. They struck him several times, but instead
of weakening the monster, each shot seemed only to direct
him toward the hunter; till at last he pursued two of them
so closely that they threw aside their guns and pouches
and jumped down a perpendicular bank of twenty feet
into the river. The bear sprang after them, and was within
a few feet of the hindmost when one of the hunters on
shore shot him in the head and finally killed him. They
dragged him to the shore and found that eight balls had

Early History — Lewis and Clark 19

passed through him in different directions. The bear was
old and the meat tough, so that they took the skin only."

May 22, 1805. "We have not seen in this quarter
[since passing the Muscle Shell] the black bear common in
the United States, and on the lower parts of the Missouri,
nor have we discerned any of their tracks. They may
easily be distinguished by the shortness of the talons from
the brown, grizzly, or white bear, all of which seem to be
of the same family, which assumes those colors at different
seasons of the year."

June 12, 1805. On coming out to the Missouri River
from an expedition inland, they this day saw two large
brown bears and killed them both at the first fire — "a
circumstance which has never before occurred since we
have seen that animal."

June 14, 1805, at the Falls of the Missouri. "Captain
Lewis met a herd of at least one thousand buffalo, and
being desirous of providing for supper, shot one of them.
The animal immediately began to bleed, and Captain Lewis,
who had forgotten to reload his rifle, was intently watching
to see him fall, when he beheld a large brown bear, which
was stealing on him unperceived and was already within
twenty steps. In the first moment of surprise he lifted
his rifle, but remembering instantly that it was not charged
and that he had no time to reload, he felt that there was no
safety but in flight. It was in the open, level plain — not a
bush or a tree within three hundred yards, the bank of the
river sloping and not more than three feet high, so that
there was no possible mode of concealment. Captain Lewis
therefore thought of retreating in a quick walk, as fast
as the bear advanced, toward the nearest tree; but as soon

2O The Grizzly Bear

as he turned, the bear ran open-mouthed and at full speed
upon him. Captain Lewis ran about eighty yards, but
finding that the animal gained on him fast, it flashed on his
mind that, by getting into the water to such a depth that
the bear would be obliged to attack him swimming, there
was still some chance of his life; he therefore turned short,
plunged into the river about waist deep, and facing about,
presented the point of his espontoon. The bear arrived
at the water's edge within twenty feet of him; but as
soon as he put himself in this posture of defence, the bear
seemed frightened, and wheeling about, retreated with as
much precipitation as he had pursued. Very glad to be
released from this danger, Captain Lewis returned to the
shore, and observed him run with great speed, sometimes
looking back as if he expected to be pursued, till he
reached the woods. He could not conceive the cause of
the sudden alarm of the bear, but congratulated himself
on his escape when he saw his own track torn to pieces
by the furious animal, and learned from the whole
adventure never to suffer his rifle to be a moment un-
loaded."

June 20, 1805. "One of the men, who was sent a short
distance from the camp to bring home some meat, was
attacked by a white bear, closely pursued within forty
paces of the camp, and narrowly escaped being caught.
Captain Clark immediately went with three men in quest of
the bear, which he was afraid might surprise another of
the hunters who was out collecting the game. The bear
was, however, too quick, for before Captain Clark could
reach the man, the bear had attacked him and compelled
him to take refuge in the water. He now ran off as they

Early History — Lewis and Clark 21

approached, and it being late, they deferred pursuing
him till the next morning."

June 27, 1805. "As the men were hunting on the river,
they saw a low ground covered with thick brushwood,
where, from the tracks along shore, they thought a bear
had probably taken refuge. They therefore landed with-
out making a noise and climbed a tree about twenty feet
above the ground. Having fixed themselves securely
they raised a loud shout and a bear instantly rushed
toward them. These animals never climb, and therefore,
when he came to the tree and stopped to look at them,
Drewyer shot him in the head. He proved to be the larg-
est we had yet seen. His nose appeared to be like that of
a common ox, his forefeet measured nine inches across,
the hind feet were seven inches wide and eleven and three-
quarters long, exclusive of the talons. One of these ani-
mals came within thirty yards of the camp last night and
carried off some buffalo meat which we placed on a pole."

June 28, 1805. "The white bears have now become
exceedingly troublesome, they constantly infest our camp
during the night, and though they have not attacked us,
as our dog, which patrols all night, gives us notice of their
approach, yet we are obliged to sleep with our arms by
our sides for fear of accident, and we cannot send one
man alone to any distance, particularly if he has to pass
through brushwood."

May 13, 1806, near the Kooskooskee River. "The
hunters killed ... a male and female bear, the first of
which was large, fat, and of a bay color, the second, mea-
gre, grizzly, and of smaller size. They were of the species
common to the upper part of the Missouri and might well

22 The Grizzly Bear

be termed the variegated bear, for they are found occa-
sionally of a black, grizzly, brown, or red color. There is
every reason to believe them to be of precisely the same
species. Those of different colors are killed together, as
in the case of these two, as we found a white and bay
associated together on the Missouri; and some nearly
white were seen in this neighborhood by the hunters.
Indeed, it is not common to find any two bears of the
same color, and if the difference in color were to constitute
a distinction of species, the number would increase to
almost twenty. Soon afterward the hunters killed a female
bear with two cubs. The mother was black with a consid-
erable intermixture of white hairs and a white spot on the
breast, One of the cubs was jet black and the other of a
light reddish-brown or bay color. The poil of these vare-
gated bears is much finer, longer, and more abundant
than that of the common black bear, but the most striking
differences between them are that the former are larger
and have longer tusks, and longer as well as blunter
talons, that they prey more on other animals, that they lie
neither so long nor so closely in winter quarters, and that
they never climb trees, however closely pressed by the
hunters. These variegated bears, though specifically the
same with those we met on the Missouri, are by no means
so ferocious, probably because the scarcity of game and
habit of living on roots may have weaned them from the
practice of attacking and devouring animals. Still, how-
ever, they are not so passive as the common black bear,
which is also to be found here, for they have already
fought with our hunters, though with less fury than those
on the other side of the mountain."

Early History — Lewis and Clark 23

May 31, 1806. (On one of the upper branches of the
Columbia River.) "Two men visited the Indian village,
where they purchased a dressed bearskin, of a uniform
pale reddish-brown color, which the Indians called
yackahy in contradistinction to hohhost, or white bear.
This remark induced us to inquire more particularly into
their opinions as to the several species of bears; we there-
fore produced all the skins of that animal which we had
killed at this place, and also one very nearly white which
we had purchased. The natives immediately classed the
white, the deep and the pale grizzly-red, the grizzly dark
brown, in short, all those with the extremities of the hair
of a white or frosty color, without regard to the color of
the ground of the poil, under the name of hohhost. They
assured us that they were all of the same species with the
white bear; that they associated together, had longer
nails than the others, and never climb trees. On the
other hand, the black skins, those which were black with
a number of entirely white hairs intermixed, or with a
white breast, the uniform bay, the brown, and light red-
dish-brown, were ranged under the class yackah, and
were said to resemble each other in being smaller, in hav-
ing shorter nails than the white bears, in climbing trees,
and being so little vicious that they could be pursued
with safety. This distinction of the Indians seems to be
well founded, and we are inclined to believe: First, that
the white, grizzly, etc., bear of this neighborhood forms
a distinct species, which, moreover, is the same with that
of the same color on the upper part of the Missouri, where
the other species is not found; second, that the black,
reddish-brown, etc., is a second species, equally distinct

24 The Grizzly Bear

from the white bear of this country and from the black
bear of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which two last
seemed to form only one species. The common black
bear is indeed unknown in this country, for the bear of
which we are speaking, though in most respects similar,
differs from it in having much finer, thicker, and longer
hair, with a greater proportion of fur mixed with it, and
also in having a variety of colors, while the common black
bear has no intermixture or change of color, but is of a
uniform black."

It may here be noted that scientific naturalists, in their
latest classifications of bears, while upholding Lewis and
Clark in their surmises regarding the grizzlies, overrule
them in their assumption that the other " black, brown,
etc., bear" of the Rocky Mountain regions form a differ-
ent species from the common black bear.

July 15, 1806. At the Falls of the Missouri again.
"At night McNeal, who had been sent in the morning to
examine the cache at the lower end of the portage, re-
turned, but had been prevented from reaching that place
by a singular adventure. Just as he arrived near Willow
Run, he approached a thicket of brush, in which was a
white bear, which he did not discover till he was within
ten feet of him. His horse started and wheeled suddenly
round, throwing McNeal almost immediately under the
bear, which started up instantly. Finding the bear rais-
ing himself on his hind feet to attack him, he struck him
on the head with the butt end of his musket; the blow was
so violent that it broke the breach of the musket and
knocked the bear to the ground. Before he recovered
McNeal, seeing a willow tree close by, sprang up and

Early History — Lewis and Clark 25

there remained, while the bear closely guarded the foot of
the tree until late in the afternoon. He then went off;
McNeal being released came down, and having found his
horse, which had strayed off to the distance of two miles,
returned to camp."

HI

FOLLOWERS OF LEWIS AND CLARK

\ LTHOUGH the grizzly bear was thus discovered by
-/ JL Lewis and Clark in 1805, these explorers did not
return to civilization until 1807, and even then their
zoloogical records were not promptly worked up. It was
not, therefore, until 1814 that any naturalist gave even
tentative recognition to the discovery thus made. In that
year, on the 4th of May, in his introductory address before
the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York,
Governor De Witt Clinton, speaking of the work which lay
open to the coming naturalists of the country, referred to
"the white, brown, or grizzly bear, the ferocious tyrant of
the American woods," and spoke of it as "a nonde-
script, and a distinct animal from the polar bear, with
which it is confounded." It ranged, he said, the country
along the Missouri River where "it exists, the terror of the
savages, the tyrant of all other animals, devouring alike
man and beast and defying the attack of whole tribes of
Indians." He then proceeded to call attention to the tra-
ditions of the Delaware and Mohican Indians, in regard
to the Great Naked Bear, which they believed to have
once inhabited the territories of New York State, and to •
suggest that the bear of this Indian legend was identical

26

Followers of Lewis and Clark 27

with the grizzly. From another part of the transactions
of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York,
I quote a curious version of this Indian legend. The re-
port runs: "that among all animals that had been for-
merly in this country this was the most ferocious; that it
was the largest of the common bears and remarkably long
bodied. All over (except a spot of hair on its back of a
white color) naked. That it attacked and devoured man
and beast, and that a man or a common bear only served
for one meal for one of these animals; that with its teeth
it could crack the strongest bones; that it could not see
very well, but in discovering its prey by scent it exceeded
all other animals; that it pursued its prey with unremit-
ting ravenousness, and that there was no other way of
escape but by taking to a river, and either swimming
down the same or saving one's self by means of a canoe;
that its heart being remarkably small, it could seldom be
killed with an arrow; that the surest way of destroying
him was to break its backbone; that when a party went
out to destroy this animal they first took leave of their
friends and relations at home, considering themselves as
going on an expedition, perhaps never to return again;
that when out they sought for his track, carefully attend-
ing to the course the wind blew and endeavoring to keep
as near as possible to a river; that every man of the party
knew at what part of the body he was to take his aim;
that some were to strike at the backbone, some at the
head, and others at the heart; that the last of these animals
known of was on the east side of the Mohicanni Sipu
(Hudson's River) where, after devouring several Indians
that were tilling their ground, a resolute party, well pro-

28 The Grizzly Bear

vided with bows, arrows, etc., fell upon the following plan,
in which they also succeeded, viz. : Knowing of a large,
high rock, perpendicular on all sides and level on the top,
in the neighborhood of where the naked bear kept, they
made ladders (Indian ladders), and placing these at the
rock, they reconnoitred the ground around, and soon
finding a fresh track of the animal they hastily returned,
getting on top of the rock and drawing the ladders up
after them. They then set up a cry similar to that of
a child, whereupon this animal made its way thither and
attempted to climb the rock, the Indians pouring down
their arrows in different directions, all the while upon him.
The animal now grew very much enraged, biting with its
teeth against the rock and attempting to tear it with its
claws until at last they had conquered it."

The next mention made of the new bear occurs the
following year, in 1815, in the second American edition
of Guthrie's Geography where, upon information fur-
nished by Brackenridge from the Lewis and Clark journal,
George Ord, the naturalist, described and formally named
the grizzly bear.

There were two words, similar in sound, but differing
in signification, which had been impartially applied to
this animal; one of them was grisly, and means "savage-
looking, fear-inspiring, terrible, horrid"; the other was
grizzly, and means "grayish, or somewhat gray." If one
may judge from the context of Lewis and Clark's notes,
they used the latter word with the latter meaning, but
Ord evidently inclined to the belief that the first word
had been used both with reason and intent, and he there-
fore gave to this species the name of Ursus horribilis.

Followers of Lewis and Clark 29

Numerous other naturalists during the succeeding
years suggested other names for the grizzly, such as
Ursus ferox (De Witt Clinton), Ursus candescens (Hamilton
Smith), Ursus cinereus (Richard Harlan). It being, how-
ever, a well-established rule that the name first given to a
new species by its scientific classifier shall be retained, the
grizzly bear is known to science as Ursus horribilis; and,
it being also customary to add to the Latin name of any
animal the name of the scientist who first formally de-
scribed and named it, the Rocky Mountain grizzly is
specifically known as Ursus horribilis Ord.

Mr. Ord, quoting Mr. Brackenridge as his authority,
says:

"This animal is the monarch of the country which he
inhabits. The African lion or the tiger of Bengal are not
more terrible or fierce. He is the enemy of man and liter-
ally thirsts for human blood. So far from shunning, he
seldom fails to attack and even to hunt him. The Indi-
ans make war upon these ferocious monsters with the
same ceremonies as they do upon a tribe of their own
species, and, in the recital of their victories, the death of
one of them gives the warrior greater renown than the
scalp of a human enemy. He possesses an amazing
strength, and attacks without hesitation and tears to
pieces the largest buffalo. The color is usually such as
the name indicates, although there are varieties from
black to silvery whiteness. In shape he differs from the
common black bear in being proportionately more
long and lank. He does not climb trees, a circum-
stance which enables hunters, when attacked, to make
their escape."

30 The Grizzly Bear

Dr. D. B. Warden, in his "Account of the United States
of North America," published in 1819, refers to the grizzly
bear, but, apart from quoting some passages from Lewis
and Clark, only adds that " the fur is employed for muffs and
tippets, and the skins bring from twenty to fifty dollars."

D. W. Harmon, in his "Journal of Voyages and
Travels in the Interior of North America," published in
1820, refers to the grizzly bear as "the gray bear," but
does not, except in color, size, and strength, greatly dis-
tinguish them from "the brown or chocolate color, and
those that are perfectly black." He refers to an occasional
bear "the color of a white sheep."

In 1823 there was published "The Account of an Ex-
pedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains Per-
formed in the Years 1819 and 1820, by Order of the Hon-
orable J. C. Calhoun, Secretary of War. Under Command
of Major Stephen H. Long. Compiled by Edwin James
from the Notes of Major Long, Mr. T. Say, and Other
Gentlemen of the Exploring Party." Mr. T. Say, here
mentioned, was the eminent naturalist, and his detailed
scientific description and measurements of a half-grown
grizzly shot by the party is printed in a foot-note on
Page 53. They saw a number of grizzlies, but seem to
have succeeded in giving them a wide berth. They met a
number of Indians wearing necklaces and other orna-
ments made of the claws of the grizzly, and mentioned
seeing and playing with a young bear of this species which
was chained in the court of the Missouri Fur Company,
near Engineer Cantonment. They quote freely from
Lewis and Clark, and in their turn add several anecdotes,
which are afterward repeatedly quoted by others.

Followers of Lewis and Clark 31

Richard Harlan, in his "Fauna Americana," pub-
lished in 1825, refers to the grizzly as Ursus dnereus, but
does nothing more than quote from his predecessors.

The following year, however, in Godman's "Natural
History," we come upon an interesting document. The
author, after saying that the grizzly bear "slaughters in-
discriminately every creature whose speed or artifice is
not sufficient to place them beyond his reach," mentions
two grizzly bear cubs that had, some time before, been
kept alive in the menagerie of Peale's (afterward the
Philadelphia) Museum. "When first received, they were
quite small, but speedily gave indications of that ferocity
for which this species is so remarkable. As they increased
in size they became exceedingly dangerous, seizing and
tearing to pieces every animal they could lay hold of, and
expressing great eagerness to get at those accidentally
brought within sight of their cage by grasping the iron
bars with their paws and shaking them violently, to the
great terror of spectators, who felt insecure while witness-
ing such displays of their strength. In one instance an
unfortunate monkey was walking over the top of their
cage, when the end of the chain which hung from his
waist dropped through within reach of the bears; they
immediately seized it, dragged the screaming animal
through the narrow aperture, tore him limb from limb,
and devoured his mangled carcass almost instantaneously.
At another time a small monkey thrust his arm through
an opening in the bear cage to reach after some object;
one of them immediately seized him, and with a sudden
jerk tore the whole arm and shoulder-blade from the body
and devoured it before any one could interfere. They

32 The Grizzly Bear

were still cubs and very little more than half grown when
their ferocity became so alarming as to excite continual
apprehension lest they should escape, and they were
killed to prevent such an event."

He then quotes the following letter from Lieutenant
Zebulon M. Pike, addressed to President Jefferson, re-
ferring to these cubs, and throwing a curious side light
upon their ferocity.

WASHINGTON, February 3, 1808.

SIR: I had the honor of receiving your note last evening, and
in reply to the inquiries of Mr. Peale can only give the following
notes : The bears were taken by an Indian in the mountains which
divide the large western branch of the Rio del Norte and some
small rivers which discharge their waters into the east side of the
Gulf of California, near the dividing line between the provinces of
Biscay and Sonora. , We . . . purchased them of the savages,
and for three or four days I made my men carry them in their laps
on horseback. As they would eat nothing but milk they were in
danger of starving. I then had a cage prepared for both, which
was carried on a mule, lashed between two packs, but always
ordered them to be let out the moment we halted, and not shut
up again before we were prepared to march. By this treatment,
they became exceedingly docile, when at liberty following my
men (whom they learned to distinguish from the Spanish dragoons
by their always feeding them, and encamping with them) like
dogs through our camps, the small villages, and forts where we
halted. When well supplied with sustenance they would play like
young puppies with each other and the soldiers, but the instant
they were shut up and placed on the mule they became cross, as
the jolting knocked them against each other and they were some-
times left exposed to the scorching heat of a vertical sun for days
without food or a drop of water, in which case they would worry

Followers of Lewis and Clark 33

and tear each other, until nature was exhausted, and they could
neither fight nor howl any longer. They will be one year old on
the first of next month (March, 1808) and, as I am informed, they
frequently arrive at the weight of eight hundred pounds.

While in the mountains we sometimes discovered them at a
distance, but in no instance were we able to come up with one,
which we eagerly sought and that being the most inclement season
of the year, induces me to believe they seldom or never attack
man unprovoked, but defend themselves courageously. An
instance of this kind occurred in New Mexico, while I sojourned
in that province: three of the natives attacked a bear with lances,
two of whom he killed and wounded the third, before he fell the
victim.

With sentiments of the highest respect and esteem,
Your obedient servant,

Z. M. PIKE.

His EXCELLENCY, THOMAS JEFFERSON,
President of the United States.

Richardson's "Fauna Boreali American! " (1829)
mentions that a young grizzly cub caught in the Rocky
Mountains was brought to England by the Hudson's Bay
Company and kept alive in the Tower. Landseer made
several engravings of it and a fine plate is included in
Richardson's work. Here we first meet with the tale of
a trapper seized and carried off from beside his camp-fire
by a large grizzly, but rescued by a comrade. This
occurred on the Saskatchewan, and Richardson met and
talked with the rescuer, whose name was Bourasso, and
who had an excellent reputation for veracity. The story
is later quoted by Audubon. Theodore Roosevelt, in
"The Wilderness Hunter," tells of meeting a French

34 The Grizzly Bear

trapper named Baptiste Lamoche, whose head was
twisted to one side from the bite of a grizzly bear which
(according to his story) had sneaked up on him while
sitting cooking dinner in camp by the shore of a lake, and
had seized him by the neck with his teeth and started to
drag him off into the woods, but was shot by one of his
companions.

Audubon, in "The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North
America" (1846), begins his article upon the grizzly bear
by saying: "While in the neighborhood where the grizzly
bear may possibly be hidden, the excited nerves will cause
the heart's pulsations to quicken if but a startled ground-
squirrel run past, the sharp click of the lock is heard and
the rifle hastily thrown to the shoulder before a second of
time has assured the hunter of the trifling cause of his
emotion." Audubon himself, on August 22, 1843, had
assisted in the killing of a grizzly bear on the Upper Mis-
souri and his words are significant. They paint very clearly
the frame of mind with which even a trained observer
approached the study of this animal, and go far toward
explaining why all the testimony relating to the grizzly
bear's wariness and disinclination to fight unless pressed
is uniformly overlooked by commentators, and only his
ferocity dwelt upon. Audubon, for instance, goes on to
cite Richardson's story of Bourasso, and the companion
seized at the side of his camp-fire and made off with, and
seems to regard it as quite what was to be expected. He
then sites Drummond, the botanist, who, in 1826, in the
Rockies, often came upon the grizzly bear unexpectedly,
but said that when he stood still and watched them, or
simply waved his hand, or made a noise with his tin box

Followers of Lewis and Clark 35

of specimens, they would rear up, look at him, and make
off. He makes no comment upon this, however, and
draws no inferences from it, and evidently never thought
to try the experiment himself. One wishes, by the way,
that Drummond had been a student of animals instead of
plants. He had the right kind of stuff in him. He evi-
dently came from Missouri, and he had great opportu-
nities. For instance, in the latter part of June, 1826, he
saw a male grizzly caressing a female. Soon after, both
came toward him, whether by accident or to attack he
did not wait to see, but climbed a tree. He then (being
after all only a botanist) shot the female, and the enraged
male rushed up to his tree and reared against it, but did
not try to climb. He then returned to the female, which
had sunk to the ground, and Drummond shot him too.
So was wasted a chance to watch a forest courtship, to
observe which I would tramp a hundred miles and live in
a tree for a week.

So much then for the early history of the grizzly. It is
not much, but it is all we have. Lewis and Clark's obser-
vations are the basis of it, repeated with slight variations
and considerable embellishments in regard to ferociousness
and bloodthirstiness by each after writer. Occasionally
one of these adds an original observation or a hearsay
anecdote. Then these in turn are repeated and embel-
lished.

Meanwhile, the grizzly had been seized upon as a lit-
erary godsend in another quarter. To the romancers, the
discovery of an Ursus horribilis was like the throwing
open to settlement of a new territory, and there was a
regular stampede to locate quarter sections. Captain

36 The Grizzly Bear

Mayne Reid was the hero of the movement. Jenkins,
Lawrence, and a host of others preceded and followed
him. Kit Carson wrote reliably and was not listened
to. Jim Bridges told whoppers and was believed.

IV
JAMES CAPEN ADAMS

A 3D so we come to James Capen Adams. Adams
was born in Medway, Mass., in October, 1807.
He was trained as a shoemaker, but as soon as he
attained his majority he joined a company of showmen as
a collector of wild animals and hunted for them in the
woods of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Later
a tiger, belonging to the show, having disabled him while
he was training it, he invested all his means in boots and
shoes and started for St. Louis in search of health and
a fortune. Finding neither in this outpost of civilization
he joined the rush to California, where he arrived in the
fall of 1849, having come overland via Mexico. Here for
three years he engaged, with varying success, in mining,
trading, and stock-raising, and finally becoming disgusted
with the world and his fellows, in the fall of 1852 he took
to the mountains and became a hermit, a hunter, and a
purveyor of wild animals to shows and menageries.

At first he took no especial interest in grizzlies and,
indeed, avoided them. He says: "I frequently saw him
[the grizzly]; he was to be found, I knew, in the bushy
gorges in all directions, and sometimes, in my hunts,

37

38 The Grizzly Bear

I would send a distant shot after him; but, as a general
rule, during this first winter, I paid him the respect to
keep out of his way; and he seemed somewhat ceremo-
nious in return. Not by any means that he feared me;
but he did not invite the combat, and I did not venture
it." Later on he "considered it a point of honor to give
battle in every case."

But had he been merely a hunter, merely even an
uncouth knight-errant of the mountains, sworn to per-
petual pursuit of the grizzly dragon, his story would not
concern us. It was because he dealt in living grizzlies as
well as dead ones; because for all his sworn enmity he
admired, understood, and even loved them, and was the
first white man to domesticate them; because, although
he was neither a student nor even an educated man, he
was yet, within the limits of his interest, an accurate ob-
server, that I rank him so high as a light-giver on the sub-
ject of these animals. The story of Adams's career is told
in a book called "The Adventures of James Capen Adams,
Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California,"
written by Theodore H. Hittell, published in 1860, and
long since out of print.1 I have already told how the dis-
covery of this book excited my interest in hunting, and in
the grizzly; but some years ago, wishing to refresh my
memory in regard to it, I obtained a copy only after
much searching.

Adams, in this book, describes several of his expedi-
tions; one undertaken in May, 1853, in company with
a young Texan named Sykesey and two Indians, in the
course of which he visited Washington and Oregon Terri-
tories, and after collecting many animals, including both

1 Republished, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

James Capen Adams 39

black and grizzly bears, took them to Portland and
shipped them to the East; one undertaken in the early
spring of 1854 to the Yosemite Valley; and one later in
the same year across the Sierra Nevada and to Salt Lake
City. These expeditions brought him into contact with
the grizzly throughout the greater part of its range in
what is now the United States, and he recognizes and
comments upon the distinction between the grizzlies of
California and those of the North. The grizzly, he says,
is "the monarch of American beasts, and, in many re-
spects, the most formidable animal in the world to be
encountered. In comparison with the lion of Africa and
the tiger of Asia, though these may exhibit more activity
and bloodthirstiness, the grizzly is not second in courage,
and excels them in power. Like the regions which he in-
habits, there is a vastness in his strength which makes him
a fit companion for the monster trees and rocks of the
Sierras, and places him, if not the first, at least in the first
rank of all quadrupeds."

Again he says: "There are several varieties of the
grizzly bear; or, to speak more properly, perhaps, the
species has a wide range, extending to the British posses-
sions on the north, to New Mexico on the south, and from
the eastern spurs of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific
Ocean. His size, general appearance, and character vary
with the part of this great region in which he is found;
for, although courageous and ferocious in the Rocky
Mountains, he is there neither so large nor so terrible as
in the Sierra Nevadas, where he attains his greatest size
and strength. The grizzly of the Rocky Mountains sel-
dom, if ever, reaches the weight of a thousand pounds;

40 The Grizzly Bear

the color of his hair is almost white; he is more disposed
to attack men than the same species in other regions, and
has often been known to follow upon a human track for
several hours at a time. Among hunters he is known as
the Rocky Mountain white bear, to distinguish him from
other varieties. The Californian grizzly sometimes
weighs as much as two thousand pounds. He is of a
brown color, sprinkled with grayish hairs. When aroused
he is, as has been said before, the most terrible of all
animals in the world to encounter, but ordinarily will not
attack man except under peculiar circumstances. The
grizzly of Washington and Oregon Territories resembles
the bear of California, with the exception that he rarely
attains so large a size and has a browner coat. His hair
is more disposed to curl and is thicker, owing to the greater
coldness of the climate. He is not so savage, and can be
hunted with greater safety than either the Californian or
Rocky Mountain bear. In New Mexico the grizzly loses
much of his strength and power, and upon the whole, is
rather a timid and spiritless animal."

It was on his first expedition, somewhere in eastern
Washington, that, having shot an old grizzly that was
followed by two yearling cubs, and having, after many dif-
ficulties and repeated failures, captured the youngsters,
Adams came into possession of Lady Washington, destined
thenceforth to be his companion and servant. She was
already old enough to resent the restriction of her liberty,
and it was not until he had supplemented kindness with
discipline that she accepted her new position in the
scheme of life. "From that time to this," Adams says,
"she has always been with me; and often has she shared

James Capen Adams 41

my dangers and privations, borne my burdens, and par-
taken of my meals. The reader may be surprised to hear
of a grizzly companion and friend, but Lady Washington
has been both to me. He may hardly credit the accounts
of my nestling up between her and the fire to keep both
sides warm under the frosty skies of the mountains, but
all this is true." The details of her training, the gradual
augmentation of her liberty, the way in which she came
to follow him to the hunt, and finally to consent (at first
utider protest) to bear the trophies of these joint expedi-
tions back to camp on her back, makes fascinating read-
ing, and Adams seems, naturally enough, to have valued
her affection. But the following year her nose was put
out of joint. During one of his hunts in the Yosemite
Valley, in the spring of 1854, he located the winter quar-
ters of a grizzly bear, from which the occupant had not
yet emerged, and deciding, from the sounds that reached
him in his careful reconnoitring, that the occupant was
a female with young, he determined to watch for her
appearance, kill her, and secure the cubs. The adventure
proved a thrilling one, and at its conclusion he found
himself in possession of a grizzly bear so small and help-
less that he only succeeded in raising it by inducing a
greyhound, that accompanied the party and had a
young family of her own at the time, to adopt it in lieu
of two out of her three offspring. She objected strenu-
ously at first, but soon gave in gracefully, and Ben Frank-
lin and his foster-brother grew up in amity, and continued
to be sworn allies through life. Ben, having never known
the world under any other guise, accepted it frankly as
he found it. He not only did not have to unlearn the

42 The Grizzly Bear

habits of the savage, but seems never to have developed
them, at least not toward his master. He was never
chained, slept for the most part in Adams's company, and
when at last the ultimate test of allegiance was unex-
pectedly presented to him, he took sides unhesitatingly
with his adopted master against his own relations. Adams,
while accompanied by Ben Franklin, was attacked by a
wounded grizzly. Ben instantly joined in the fight, and,
though himself badly bitten, saved his master's life. From
that time on he was the apple of Adams's eye, his insep-
arable companion, and of all living beings on earth the
best beloved.

One is reminded of a quaint story, quoted by several
of the early commentators, of a grizzly bear once domes-
ticated by a tribe of northern Indians. On the occasion
of a visit from members of another tribe, the bear's owner,
for a joke, ordered the bear to get into one of the canoes
belonging to the visitors. The bear obeyed, but the
owner of the canoe, resenting the intrusion, struck him,
and, "since the bear had come to be regarded as one of
their family" by the hosts, the blow was the cause of an
intertribal war.

Ben accompanied his master on several of his later
trips, and more than once, suffering from blistered feet,
limped after the outfit in improvised moccasins. On one
occasion it was only by the most heroic devotion that
Adams rescued him from the desert, where the bear had
fallen exhausted, and lay, bending imploring eyes upon
his master, as he left to search for water and help. We
have no record of the manner of Ben's death, but one can
well imagine, after reading Mr. Hittell's book, with what

James Capen Adams 43

a heavy heart Adams must finally, in 1859, have sailed for
home without him.

Adams also trained and, in a sense, domesticated, two
other grizzlies. One of these, called "Funny Joe," he
captured as a young cub on his expedition to Salt Lake;
the other came to him in an entirely different way, as a
result of the same trip. At one of their camps near the
Emigrant Trail they thought it necessary to mount a
guard at night. "The guard usually consisted of two
persons, relieved at midnight by two others. The last
guard on one particular night were Tuolumne and one of
the Indians, who reported to me in the morning that a
strange bear had entered camp, made the acquaintance of
Lady Washington, and after a t^te-a-fete of an hour or so
had retired again in a very peaceful and orderly manner
to the mountains from which he came. They had not
called me because of my fatigue during the day, they said,
and because the visitor had been so civil that they did not
think it necessary to disturb me. I, however, directed
that if such a case should occur again, they should not
fail to let me know.

"The next night the visitor returned, and being in-
formed of it, I got up. It was about midnight, but the
moon was shining, so that we could easily see him ap-
proach the Lady, who was usually chained at night.
I took my rifle with the intention of killing the beast, but,
on second thought, concluded it would be more to our
advantage to give him the freedom of the camp, and
accordingly did not disturb him. He remained until
dawn and then retired. On the occasion of his return the
next night — for, like a royal lover, he was very attentive —

44 The Grizzly Bear

Gray advised that he should be killed, but I opposed the
proposition, and, for aught I know, he still roams in his
native haunts."

Here is one of the times when one could wish that
Adams's interest had had a more scientific bias. It is
only roughly that we are able to set from seven to nine
months as the approximate time before Lady Washington
gave birth to a male cub. Adams named him Fremont,
but he seems to have done little credit to his romantic
begetting and his noble parentage, either in intelligence
or looks.

In the American Naturalist for May, 1886, under
the title of "Domestication of the Grizzly Bear," John
Dean Caton, LL.D., discusses Adams's adventures, de-
scribes his taming of Lady Washington, Ben Franklin, and
Fremont, and says that at first he looked upon this book
as an entertaining romance or at least as much embel-
lished. But that, "upon inquiring in San Francisco, I met
reliable persons who had known him well and had seen
him passing through the streets of that city followed by
a troupe of these monstrous grizzly bears, which paid not
the least attention to the yelping dogs and the crowds of
children which closely followed them, giving the most
conclusive proof of the docility of the animals." This is
the only reference I have ever seen made to Adams's
book, and Mr. Caton's glimpse of him in the streets of
San Francisco is interesting, and, if that were needed,
confirmatory.

In 1907, having been informed by Dr. C. Hart Merriam
that the author, Mr. Hittell, was still living in San Fran-
cisco, I wrote to him asking for some information about

A CAMP IN THE SIERRAS

James Capen Adams 45

the origin of the book and his recollection of Adams. In
reply I received the following letter:

SAN FRANCISCO, December 15, 1907.
MR. W. H. WRIGHT.

Dear Sir: Your letter in relation to "The Adventures of James
Capen Adams, etc./' has given me great pleasure. The book,
unfortunately, was published in the exciting and excited days of
1860, just before the breaking out of the Civil War, and was
never properly placed before the public; but it is gratifying to
find that it did here and there reach readers who became inter-
ested in it. It is possible, and indeed, likely, that it will be re-
published, and, if so, it will contain a preface giving an account
of how I became acquainted with Adams and came to write his
story, and a postscript relating to his death and what became of
his big bears, so far as known to me.

Your own work in hunting and studying the grizzly excites
my lively interest, and particularly so as you say my book, to
some extent at least, directed your attention to the subject. As
to the questions you ask, or any other inquiries you may make,
I will cheerfully give you all the information within my knowledge.

Ben Franklin, Adams's favorite bear, died in San Francisco;
but as my papers are not at hand, I cannot be certain just now
about the exact date. According to my recollection, it was in the
summer of 1859. About the end of that year Adams went East,
carrying his animals in a sailing vessel around Cape Horn, but
without his finest specimen. I knew Ben Franklin well, often
played with him, and on several occasions rode on his back.
The picture of him and his master, given at the head of Part
Second of my book, entitled "Adams and Ben Franklin," pre-
sents excellent portraits. Lady Washington and Samson were
both, as I understand it, taken to New York and exhibited there
by Adams under the auspices of Barnum. I do not know what

46 The Grizzly Bear

became of them. Ben Franklin was caught, as a small cub, in the
spring of '54; Lady Washington, as a larger cub in 1853, and Sam-
son, as a large bear, in the winter of 1854-5; that is, if Adams was
truthful in his statements to me, as I thought and still think he
was. As to Samson's weight, my recollection is that Adams said
he had had him weighed on a hay scales. His show bills in San
Francisco gave fifteen hundred pounds as his weight and I never
heard it disputed, but as he was doubtless the big bear exhibited
in New York, it is possible that the exact weight could be ascer-
tained there.

As to Adams's death, Barnum, in his autobiography, gives an
account of it, and I know nothing more than he tells except a few
items found in the newspaper at the time. My recollection is that
he died in Massachusetts. There was a depression in his skull
just above the forehead, which he said was caused by a blow
from a bear in the early part of 1855, as related on pages 313 and
314 of my book. On his passage around Cape Horn, on his way
to New York, he, according to report, had a fight with an ape or
baboon, which tore the wound afresh, and, though it healed again
sufficiently to enable him to go about and attend to business, he
eventually died from the effects of it.

As to the comparative sizes of Ben Franklin and Lady Wash-
ington with Samson, I should say that the latter was nearly, if not
quite, twice as large as either of the others; so far as I know he
was the same bear that was exhibited in the Eastern States in
1860. He was untamed and had to be kept in a very large and
strong cage, though I never saw him very wild.

In reference to getting Adams's story, I was in the newspaper
business at the time, and could get only an hour or two a day to
spend with him; and, as he talked, I wrote down what he said,
usually in his own language, but sometimes with some changes to
make it more grammatical. He knew little or nothing about the
geography of the country, and I therefore could not locate him

James Capen Adams 47

except in very general terms. He did not, on any occasion, appear
to exaggerate, and told nothing improbable, though I had to
wonder how he could remember so distinctly the particulars of
his various hunts. I still have my notes of his talk. My object in
writing the book was to tell his story in his own way, and I added
nothing to the substance of his narrative except a few supposed
embellishments and a little sentiment, besides literary order,
expression, and arrangement. I have to thank Dr. Merriam for
directing you to me, and hope my answers to your inquiries will
be satisfactory.

Hoping to hear from you again, believe me,
Very sincerely yours,

THEODORE H. HITTELL.

To my mind, when I was a boy, this old man Adams
was the prince of all hunters. Boone and Crockett and
Carson seemed one-candle-power lamps to this old arc
light of an Adams, and in some ways I feel so still. Ad-
ams, of course, was not a naturalist. He was not, except
in his capacity as a hunter, trader, and trainer of wild ani-
mals, interested in natural history, that is to say, he was
only interested in those habits and in those traits of the ani-
mals he dealt with that had to do with his success. But
he was of a quicker intelligence and of a more indepen-
dent nature than most of his kind; he insisted upon using
his own eyes, he had a widely varied experience, and his
reminiscences abound in observations of interest, and of
at least conditional value. I shall more than once refer
to them as occasions arise.

V

THE SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION OF BEARS

IT was formerly the custom to class the North American
bears in three groups — Blacks, Grizzlies, and the
Polar Bear. The study during recent years of a series of
several hundred skulls, including many belonging to the
huge bears of the Alaskan coast region, showed this classi-
fication to be inadequate, and, scientific naturalists having
added four more strongly marked species to our fauna, it
became necessary, in view of the remarkable characters
presented by these new forms, to rearrange our bears.

According to Dr. C. Hart Merriam's classification of
the North American bears, these may now be classed in
five well-marked, superspecific groups or types:

1. The Polar Bear.

2. The Black Bears.

3. The Grizzly Bears.

4. The Sitka Bear Type.

5. The Kodiak, or Alaska Peninsula Bear.

The five groups are unequally related. The Polar
Bear belongs to an independent genus. The Black Bears
differ more from the others, taken collectively, than the
latter do from one another; and seem to be the only ones
whose distinctive character is of sufficient weight to en-
title them to subgeneric recognition.

48

The Scientific Classification of Bears 49

Taking up these groups in order we find that:

1. The Polar or Ice Bear, Thalarctos Maritimus Linn.,
inhabits the Arctic shores and the islands of both conti-
nents, and has not been subdivided.

2. The Black Bears may be separated into at least
four species, having, respectively, more or less circum-
scribed geographic ranges:

(a) The Common Black Bear, Ursus Americanus
Pallas.

(U) The Louisiana Bear, Ursus Luteolus Griffith.

(c) The Florida Bear, Ursus Floridanus Merriam.

(d) The St. Elias Bear, Ursus Emmonsi Dall.

Some of these may be found to intergrade, and Ursus
Americanus may be still further split into subspecies.

3. The Grizzly Bears (including the Barren Ground
Bear) may be separated into four more or less well-
marked forms, as follows:

(a) The True Grizzly, Ursus Horribilis Ord, from
the northern Rocky Mountains.

(b) The Sonora Grizzly, Ursus Horribilis Horriaus
Baird, probably only a subspecies.

(c) The Norton Sound, Alaska, Grizzly, probably
another subspecies.

(d) The very distinct Barren Ground Bear, Ursus
Richardsoni Mayne Reid.

Whether or not the large grizzly from Southern Cali-
fornia deserves subspecific separation from the Sonora
animal (H or rice us), has not been determined.

4. In the fourth group, the large brown bear of Sitka
and the neighboring islands (and perhaps the adjacent
mainland also), Ursus Sitkensis Merriam, and the large

50 The Grizzly Bear

brown bear of Yakutat Bay and the coastal slope of the
St. Elias range, Ursus Dalli Merriam, are the represent-
atives of a very distinct type. They resemble the grizzly
in the flatness of their skulls, but are much larger, are dif-
ferent in color, have more curved foreclaws, and the Sitka
bear has a different type of sectorial tooth. The Yakutat
Bear is much larger than the Sitka Bear, and has very
different teeth. It may represent a different section.

5. The gigantic fish-eating bear of Kodiak Island and
the Alaska Peninsula, Ursus Middendorffi Merriam, is the
largest of living bears and differs markedly from all other
American species. It closely resembles the Great Brown
Bear of Kamchatka, Ursus Beringiana MiddendorflF,
which it slightly exceeds in size. The extraordinary ele-
vation and narrowness of the forehead suffice to distin-
guish this bear from all other known species.

The number of full species of North American bears
here recognized is ten : four of the Black Bear group, two
of the Grizzly group, three of the big brown bears of
Alaska, and the Polar Bear.

These ten species are as follows:

The Polar Bear, Thalarctos Maritimus Linn.
The Common Black Bear, Ursus Americanus

Pallas.

The Louisiana Black Bear, Ursus Luteolus Grif-
fith.

The Florida Black Bear, Ursus Florldanus Mer-
riam.

The St. Elias Black Bear, Ursus Emmonsi Dall.
The Rocky Mountain Grizzly, Ursus Horribilis
Ord.

The Scientific Classification of Bears 51

The Barren Ground Grizzly, Ursus Richardsoni

Mayne Reid.

The Sitka Brown Bear, Ursus Sitkensis Merriam.
The Yakutat Brown Bear, Ursus Dalli Merriam.
The Kodiak Brown Bear, Ursus Middendorffi

Merriam.

It will, of course, be understood that when in this
work mention is made of the grizzly bear, it is intended
to refer to that species found throughout the northern
Rocky Mountain region of the United States and British
Columbia, the species recognized by all scientific natural-
ists as the true grizzly, Ursus Horribilis Ord. No other
type of the grizzly will be discussed, except by way of
comparison.

PART II
MY EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES

VI
MY FIRST GRIZZLY

HUNTING grizzlies requires more quiet, more skill,
and more patience than any other kind of hunting,
and at the best there will be more disappointments than
killings. It took me several years to learn this. I started
out with deep-rooted but mistaken notions, and these had
to be knocked out of my head by failures, and new ones
hammered in by experience, before I understood the
grizzly well enough to even occasionally get the best of
him.

The best way to hunt them is to study their habits,
familiarize yourself with their range, and lie in wait for
them near their feeding grounds. Trailing them is more
than uncertain. It is, to be sure, a supreme test of wood-
craft and endurance, but it must be a good hunter indeed
that can take up the trail of an old grizzly and hope to
get a shot at him.

I am often asked what is the best gun for grizzlies ?
My answer is that the best gun is the one the hunter is
most used to and hence has the most confidence in; any
of the high-power guns are all right and will, if the bullet
be well placed, end matters at the first shot. My own first
hunting rifle was an old .44 Winchester that I brought
from the East. It had already done good service for deer

55

56 The Grizzly Bear

and black bear, but the extractor had become worn, so
that it would not always draw the shell unless I put my
thumb on it and bore down. This worked satisfactorily
as long as I thought to do it, but there were times when
I forgot and then there was trouble. The cartridge then
had to be cut to pieces before it could be taken out, and it
required a pocket-knife and some labor to accomplish the
result. For a year or more I had been thinking of getting
another gun, but this one was so accurate that I clung to
it, and at last it got me into difficulties.

I made a number of trips after grizzlies and I had
got sight of several, but they had always seen or heard
me first, and when I would see them they were just disap-
pearing over some ridge or into some jungle. So one
spring, having made up my mind to go after them and not
return until I had one, I started out in May with a few
pack-horses and went to the Bitter Root Mountains, which
form the dividing line between Montana and Idaho.
A friend went along with me to look after the horses, help
do the packing and, as he said, skin the bears.

For nearly three months we cruised about this rugged
wilderness and enjoyed life to the utmost. We killed
plenty of black bears, but up to September had not bagged
a grizzly. We found an abundance of their tracks and
saw three bears, but they were so wild that we could not
get near enough to them for a shot, and twice, when it
seemed as if one could not possibly escape, it quietly
slipped out of sight at a point I had not calculated upon.

We had, during this time, killed several deer for meat,
but though we had seen some elk and one or two moose,
we had not shot them since we could not care for so much

My First Grizzly 57

meat and had no way of carrying the heads. At last,
however, having, perforce, given up getting a grizzly, we
turned our faces homeward, and I determined to kill an
elk and pack out the head and what meat we could.

We therefore left the divide we had been following
and struck off to the right to reach a stream of consid-
erable size flowing into the main north fork of the Clear-
water River. We had been told by an old miner that
there was a large lick on this stream about twenty miles
from the trail, and he directed us as to where to leave the
ridge, and where, after we struck the stream, we would
find the lick.

We followed his directions and arrived at the creek
about noon the second day. The stream was very swift
and cold, since we were near its source, and it flowed from
the snow-banks only a few miles away. We set up our
tent, turned the horses out to graze, had a quick lunch, and
I, taking my rifle, went to search for the lick, leaving my
friend to attend to the camp. The weather was warm,
and expecting to return before dark, I did not take my
coat. I found the lick where the miner had stated and saw
plenty of fresh tracks of elk and deer. There was no tim-
ber nearer the spot than across the creek, except some two
hundred yards down the stream, but close to the lick, on
its lower side, there were some small bushes three or four
feet high. Into these, then, I crawled, and finding an old
log that had been left there by high water years before,
I cut some of the bushes and made a rough bed on the
lower side of it.

This was my first experience in watching such a place,
and I did not know that, at that time of year, the game

58 The Grizzly Bear

did not come every day. Judging from the trails, I took
it that they did. They had, without a doubt, been there
that morning, and so I curled down and prepared to
wait. At first it was not uncomfortable. The sun shone
in upon me and I found myself dozing several times.
Later, when the sun sank behind the mountains, I began
to feel the need of a coat, but still I did not care to give
up, and determined to stick it out until I got an elk or it
became too dark to see.

Every few minutes I raised my head above the bushes,
but nothing seemed to be stirring. Finally it became so
cold that my teeth began to chatter and I looked at my
watch and made up my mind to stay just five minutes
more. When these were gone I raised up, took another
look, and seeing nothing in sight, concluded to remain
another five. This I did several times. Finally I was
nearly frozen and I determined that the next five minutes
should be the last and that I would not wait longer for all
the elk in the country. When the time was up I took a
good look about, but not a living thing could be seen.
Then I looked up-stream and, just around the point of the
hill and out in the bottom about a hundred yards away,
I saw what seemed to me to be the old grizzly I had seen
in the cage when I was a boy. He had the same carriage,
had the same big forearms and the gait I would know
again anywhere as long as I lived. Best of all the brute
was headed straight for my log. I ducked back to my bed
and waited almost breathless for him to get nearer. I
had laid no plans. I simply wanted him to get near
enough that there might be no possibility of his escaping.
It now seemed certain that my dream was to come true.

My First Grizzly 59

I waited for what seemed an unconscionable time,
and hearing nothing, began to fear that this bear, like the
others, had given me the slip. Finally I raised up to look
about and there he was about seventy-five yards away.
He had evidently been standing still and had resumed his
walk just as I looked up. I did not drop down again, but
just stooped so that he would not see me, and waited for
him to reach a spot from which he could not get away
once I had opened up on him.

When some forty yards off he turned a little to the
left so as to avoid some bushes, and this being just what
I wanted, I straightened up, aimed carefully just on
the point of the shoulder close to the neck, and pulled the
trigger.

It never entered my thoughts but that the bear would
drop in his tracks. One can, therefore, imagine my sur-
prise when he gave a roar like a mad bull and came my
way on the jump. I threw the lever of the rifle forward to
pump up another cartridge, but that roar, and the grizzly's
tactics, had so surprised me that I forgot to thumb my old
Winchester and the shell was left jammed in the breach.
Here was a situation not down on the programme, and it
began to look as though I was going to have all the grizzly
I wanted. I took one look, dropped the gun, and lit out
for the creek, and as I reached it I jumped down the
bank, which was about three feet high.

Underneath this bank the dirt had been washed out by
the river, leaving a considerable hollow below the roots of
the bushes, and when I saw this space I ducked into it,
figuring that the bear, if he jumped after me, might jump
clear over me and give me a chance to climb back up the

60 The Grizzly Bear

bank and make for the timber down the stream. The
water was ice cold and I had been nearly frozen before
taking to it, but I had no regrets. I waited for what seemed
to me a half-hour, but I could hear nothing beyond the
rush of the water as it surged around the boulders, and at
last it got so cold that I felt that I would as soon be clawed
by a bear as frozen to death. So I tried to make my way up-
stream, thinking to reach a point above the bend and there
get out and go to camp; but the water was so rapid and
seemed to me to make so much noise as it struck against
my neck, that I was afraid the bear would hear me if he
was listening, as I supposed he was. He was behaving so
differently from the bears I was accustomed to that I was
at a loss how to size him up.

When I found I could not go up the stream I decided
to go down, and by hanging on to the roots, slid noiselessly
along for about fifty yards. Then, as I still heard nothing
of the bear, I concluded that he had either left the spot or
was keeping quiet and watching for me to reappear, and,
determined to at least have a look, I got up on my knees,
scraped the water out of my shirt, and peered cautiously
over the bank. But I was still too low to see over the
bushes, so I crawled ashore and raised up enough to look
about me. Still I could see no bear. I now began to fear
that he had escaped me, instead of I him, and I made up
my mind to creep to my gun, cut the cartridge out, and
hunt for him.

It makes me laugh to this day when I think of the
picture I must have made, first crawling a few feet, then
lying still and listening. It was the most conscientious
stalking I ever did. When I reached the log and looked

My First Grizzly 61

for my gun I could, at first, see nothing of it. But, raising
my head a bit, I spied it lying where I had thrown it in my
haste to get away, and I at once cut the shell out, carefully
thumbed it while I pumped in another cartridge, and
then, my own man again, I stood up and looked about me.

And the first thing I saw was that terrible bear, as dead
as a stone, and not more than twenty feet from where it
had stood when I shot it. Moreover, it had turned a com-
plete somersault and was headed the other way. The bul-
let had entered between the shoulder and the neck, had
hit no bones except a rib, and had passed over the heart,
severing the large blood-vessels.

Since then I have found that nearly all grizzlies, if shot
when they are not aware of the presence of the hunter, will,
for some reason, run in the direction from which the wound
is received. This, I believe myself, is why so many claim
that grizzlies always charge them. The next time my
attention was drawn to this I shot across a ravine at a
grizzly that had just come out of the bushes. I obtained
a side shot at about a hundred and fifty yards, and I made
it sitting down, aiming close up to the shoulder. At the
crack of the gun the bear turned and charged straight at
me, and I could see the brush in the gully sway, and could
hear him tearing through it. I ran back a few yards from
the edge of the brush so as to get a clear shot at him when
he came out of the ravine, and when he emerged I made
a movement to shoot. Like a flash he saw me, evidently
for the first time, and turned so quickly that, as I was not
expecting such a move, I did not have time to fire. He
only made a few jumps after seeing me and changing his
course, before he fell dead.

62 The Grizzly Bear

Since then I have seen many bears do the same thing,
and I am convinced that, although they generally, in these
circumstances, run toward one, it is not by any means
always with the intention of charging.

VII

\

FIVE IN FIVE SHOTS

1 SHALL never forget the first grizzly-bear trail I ever
saw. Not only because it was the first, but because
for many months it and its maker interested me, cost me
untold exertions, brought me uncounted disappointments,
and finally figured in the most successful encounter I ever
had with grizzlies.

It was a very distinct trail across the bottom of a
canon, perhaps a hundred yards wide, and had been worn
by an old and very large animal. The ground on either
side of the gully was too hard to show his footprints, but,
coming and going, he always seemed to cross at the same
spot, and I thought it would be an easy matter to watch
the trail and shoot the bear. This was when my first
greenness was a thing of the past and I was beginning to
take notice on my own account; but after watching oflF
and on for a week and over, and seeing nothing, I con-
cluded that the bear no longer used the trail, and dismissed
the matter from my mind. A few weeks later, however, in
passing the spot again, I saw fresh tracks, and knowing
that the bear was still in the vicinity, resumed my watch-
ing, but without result. Then I tried still-hunting the
canon. I crawled through every thicket and looked into
every place where I thought a bear could hide, but aside

63

64 The Grizzly Bear

from a fourteen-inch track and a few hairs that he would
leave sticking to trees as he passed, I saw nothing that
looked like a bear, and was almost willing to swear that
no grizzly inhabited the canon.

For two years I continued at intervals to see the big
tracks in this canon, but not once did I see the bear.
Finally, both my knowledge and experience having been
augmented, I made up my mind that, if such a thing were
possible, I would at least set eyes on him, and I got a man
to go with me to look after the camp and horses so I
would have nothing to do but hunt. We made camp
about two miles from the canon, and my first excursion
showed me that my old friend with the big feet was still
in evidence.

The upper edges of this canon were heavily timbered,
and above this timber on one hand stretched an open hill-
side facing the south. Near the head of the canon this
hillside was cut into by many little ravines, and along the
edges between these the sarvis berry grew. As I had never
succeeded in getting sight of the bear in the canon itself,
I decided to watch the hillside and perhaps catch him as
he came out to feed; so I selected a point which com-
manded a view of the whole hill, and every morning from
daylight until ten o'clock found me on the lookout, seated
in a little clump of fir-trees. And from three o'clock until
dark I was in the same place. Day after day, how-
ever, passed and brought no bear, and at last the camp
tender, while he did not say out and out that he thought
I was "locoed," intimated it pretty broadly. For his part,
he said, he did not believe there was a bear in the whole
country.

Five in Five Shots 65

Yet, almost every morning, examination showed fresh
bear tracks on the old trail, and I felt it safe to assume
that something was making them. So for a whole week
I lay in that clump of firs. Then I began to think about
giving up; but, knowing that the animal must show him-
self in time, I kept taking on fresh stocks of patience and
dragging myself again and again up to the little clump of
firs.

At last there came a rain. It began in the night and
kept up until about one o'clock in the afternoon of the
following day, and rained so hard that I did not go out in
the morning. In the afternoon it was so wet that I hesi-
tated about going, but finally, thinking that this might be
just the time the old bear would select to go berrying,
I decided to risk it. And, as luck would have it, when
I reached the firs and took a look at the hillside, there sat
an old grizzly about a hundred yards above the brink of
the canon, and some three hundred yards from me,
busily engaged in pulling down branches and eating ber-
ries.

I immediately began the sneak of my life. I did not,
even at first, think of walking. I simply got down on the
ground and snaked it. I worked below the bear, so that
if he ran he would have to come my way or go up the
open hillside and thus afford me additional shots if I
failed with the first. But I had no intention of failing.
I worked along slowly, so that the bear had moved quite
a distance up the hill before I finally got within reasonable
range, and even then I kept on until I was within sixty
yards before finally making up my mind to risk a shot.
I then crawled behind a bunch of bushes and, without

66 The Grizzly Bear

getting up, looked the ground over to see what the chances
were of the bear's getting back into the canon in case I
failed to drop him. And down there, in the canon I had
watched so long and so vainly, stood the largest bear it
had ever been my good fortune to set eyes on. I began to
think the woods were full of them, and backing silently into
one of the small ravines, I worked down the hill toward
the big fellow. And as I got a better view of him I knew
what had made those tracks. I had thought nothing about
the size of the first bear. I had been disappointed so
.often that anything went. But now that I had set my eyes
on this big one I thought him entitled to precedence.

Yet I wanted both, and I thought I saw my way to get-
ting them. The first bear seemed to have struck a bo-
nanza berry patch and was moving slowly, or not at all.
The big fellow, on the other hand, was down where the
bushes were pretty well stripped and seemed to be work-
ing uphill fairly fast. I therefore dropped out of sight,
wormed my way downhill a bit farther, waited till the two
bears were about a hundred yards apart, and then crept
to the top of a slight ridge and found myself some forty
yards from the big one and sixty from the other.

I figured on killing the large bear at the first shot and
then turning on the other before he had time to take in
the situation; and I relied on the second bear's standing
up to take a look before making for the canon, and thereby
giving me the few seconds that I would need.

By this time I had got rid of my old .44 repeater,
and was shooting a single-shot .45-100 Winchester that
weighed twelve pounds. I had selected this gun because
I could always depend on it. I used the full charge of

Five in Five Shots 67

powder, and had had swages made to swage slugs that
would weigh six hundred grains of soft lead. One of
these placed in the centre of a grizzly's shoulder never
failed to decide matters.

I took a sitting position that afforded me a right-hand
quartering shot at the big fellow and a left-hand quarter-
ing shot at the other, and that would enable me to act
very quickly after the first shot. For this I intended to
take my time, and to trust to luck and rapid work for the
second. And with one cartridge in the rifle, three others
on the ground, and two more between the fingers of my
right hand, the old single-shot could be depended upon
for both.

When all these things were arranged to my liking
I waited for a side shot at the large bear. I did not have
long to wait, and I never looked through sights more care-
fully than when drawing that bead. There were only about
two square inches of bear visible when I pulled the trigger,
but they were the exact square inches that I wanted, and
once the shot was delivered I wasted no time in finding
out the result but turned to the other bear. He acted ex-
actly as I had expected. He turned side on to me in order
to see what bedlam had broken loose. I caught him
squarely in the shoulder, and he wilted in his tracks as the
other had done. Not a yard did either of them move after
being shot.

I now got up to examine my prizes when I heard a
clawing and rolling of gravel in the next ravine. Glanc-
ing about to see what caused this racket I faced, to my in-
tense surprise, a mother bear and two half-grown cubs,
their retreat to the canon having been cut off, making for

68 The Grizzly Bear

the top of the divide as fast as they could go. I dropped
back to my sitting position, with my elbows on my knees,
and took a flying shot at the old bear. She was not over
seventy-five yards away and must have been quite near
me, in the next ravine, when the firing began. My bullet
caught her with a quartering rake forward, and rolled her
back into the gully, and as this, of course, stopped the
cubs, they fell to the next two shots.

I was soaked to the skin from the wet brush, and plas-
tered from head to foot with mud and dirt. But that, and
the endless waiting and watching by the clump of firs, yes,
and all the disappointments that had gone before, were
paid for now. Five grizzlies down to as many shots, in as
many minutes, cancels many debts. This was the great-
est bag of grizzlies that I ever made single-handed.

VIII
GRIZZLY GOURMETS

THERE is an old saying that the way to a man's
heart is through his stomach. This, in another
sense, is equally true of bears; and more grizzly hunters
have won their chance to drive their bullets home by study-
ing their victim's appetite than by any other method. It
follows that some of the easiest hunting grounds in the
north-west used to be along the streams where the salmon
ran, for the grizzly is a great fisherman. It is true that in
the fishing season his pelt is valueless, as at that time of
year he has no fur and but very little hair, but the man
who has come out to get a grizzly is apt to look upon this
circumstance as, indeed, a misfortune, but one to be
taken philosophically.

In the streams tributary to the Clearwater River in
Idaho there are two or three runs of salmon. One, of
what are locally known as the red, or Columbia River
salmon, takes place in the early spring, at the time of high
and muddy water. It does not, on this account, attract so
much attention from the bears. But later on, between the
middle of August and the middle of September, what are
known as the dog salmon make their way up all the little
streams. At that time the water is clear and low; the

69

70 The Grizzly Bear

stream beds are successions of small rapids and broken
riffles; the mad, unreasoning longing of the salmon to
reach the uttermost head of salmon navigation drives them
to struggle over places where there is scarcely enough
water to float them when swimming on their sides, and
the grizzlies gather to the feast.

These dog salmon grow to a very large size. They
run from two to four feet in length, and would, if fat,
weigh fifty or sixty pounds. But by the time they reach
the upper waters of the small streams they are very poor
and thin (good, indeed, only for bear bait), and fall easy
victims to the bear and other animals and large birds that
prey on them.

The grizzly has his own calendar and never gets mixed
up on it. About two weeks before the salmon are due he
leaves the higher hills and ridges and gathers near the
streams, to be on hand when the fish appear. One can
easily tell where to lie in wait for them. They always
have their favorite fishing ground, usually at some shal-
low riffle, and the creek bank is worn smooth by the many
trails leading away into the dense thickets, where they lie
up when not fishing. After locating one of these fishing
grounds, one has only to select a good hiding place, being
careful not to make noise enough to frighten away the
bears, and then wait until they come down to fish. In
localities where they have been little hunted, I have seen
them out fishing at all hours of the day, and to see a griz-
zly catching salmon is worth one's while.

The grizzly usually sits on the bank of the stream and
watches the riffles over which the salmon try to force their
way. H§ will wait quietly enough until the salmon is

Grizzly Gourmets 71

about half-way up the riffle and struggling in its efforts to
make the ascent. Then he will make a quick dash, and,
with one sweep of his huge paw, will send a shower of
water ten feet into the air, in the midst of which will be
seen a salmon sailing toward the creek bank and landing,
many times, ten or twenty feet beyond. Then the bear
hurriedly makes for the shore and, if hungry, eats the
fish. If he has already had his fill, he will kill it, lay it
down, and, returning, wait for another. I have seen one
bear catch seventeen salmon in this manner before stop-
ping, and he then carefully piled them together and
buried them for future use.

Sometimes a bear will sit on a log jam and watch for
the fish to swim out from under the logs. When one
comes he will, with a sweep of his paw, send it flying to
the bank. I have often seen them fishing in this way,
lying on a log with one paw hanging in the water, and it
is wonderful how many salmon they will fling out. Once
I saw five old grizzlies fishing from one log jam. Indeed,
I have watched for hours along these streams, and some
of the pleasantest moments of my hunting trips have been
so spent; but while I could have killed many a bear in
this way, I have never killed but three.

When I first began to hunt, I thought that the salmon
run would be a good opportunity to make a fine score in
bears, and accordingly, on one of my trips, having found
a place that was all tracked and worn by grizzlies, and
where there were large piles of decayed, ill-smelling
salmon, I stationed myself a little above the riffle and
waited. About three o'clock in the afternoon an old bear
came solemnly out of the thicket to the edge of the stream,

72 The Grizzly Bear

sniffed about for a while, and then walked out on a log
that lay across the creek just below, or at the foot of, a
riffle, where there was quite a long and deep hole. In such
holes the salmon sometimes collect until there are as many
as fifty. Then, all together, they will begin to climb the
riffle, and for an hour it is "Step lively, please," all along
the line. Soon after this bear walked out on the log, an-
other one made its appearance and it, too, walked out on
the log and sat there watching the salmon in the hole below.
I had never, then, seen bears catch salmon, and so, for the
time being, refrained from shooting. The fish, however,
did not seem to be in any hurry to get up the stream, and
I waited for an hour or more before anything happened.
Finally I saw one of the bears gather himself, look eagerly
into the stream, and move his head as if following some-
thing that was stirring there. Then I saw the back of a
salmon on the riffle, and the water began to boil as the
fish tried to force its way through the shallows. When it
was some feet above the log, and about half-way over the
riffle, one of the bears gave a spring and a stroke of its
paw, and the trick was done. The salmon was hurled
through the air to the bank and out of sight in the brush,
where the bear followed it. The other bear was now in
the act of grabbing a salmon, and he was equally success-
ful. By that time the first one was back again. There
was no loafing. Those bears were paid by the piece and
seemed to know it. I was altogether too interested to
think of shooting, but sat, open-mouthed, watching the
finest fishing I had ever seen.

The racket on the riffle soon brought another bear
out from the brush, and before the show closed there were

Grizzly Gourmets 73

four of them engaged in the sport. They must have
caught fifteen or twenty before there was any let up. Then
the salmon did not come so fast, and one bear, on going to
kill his catch, forgot to come back. The other three were
evidently becoming restless, as if they had had about
enough for the time being, and I thought it high time to
begin shooting if I meant to do any.

I was then using my single-shot rifle, made to order for
me by the Winchester people: the .45-100, in which I shot
one hundred grains of powder and six hundred grains of
lead. It was one of the guns that killed at both ends, but
I liked it better than any I have ever carried. I used it for
years, and I discarded it for a lighter .30-30 only when I
gave up hunting with a gun and took to hunting with a
camera. Personally, I could depend on this old rifle for
a sure three shots in twelve seconds, by holding two spare
cartridges between the fingers of my right hand, and I
have always thought that a hunter is apt to be much more
careful if he knows that every shot must tell. I always got
as close to the game as I could before shooting, and what-
ever I shot, it generally dropped, if hit, and I was usually
near enough to be sure of hitting.

I presume that, as I looked at the three remaining
bears, I was the victim of what nowadays would be called
a game-hog feeling. At any rate, I found myself figuring
on how I might get them all before they could get out of
reach. I was a little up-stream from them, and not over
fifty yards away. I figured that they would not come
toward my side of the creek when I fired, and that if I
killed the one nearest to the other shore, its body, if it re-
mained on the log, would retard the others in their effort

74 The Grizzly Bear

to escape. There was room for but two of them on the log
at one time, and the third was now on my bank. The
largest was in the middle, the other two being about of a
size. I made up my mind, therefore, to first chance a shot
at the small bear on the log and then to turn my attention
to the largest one. Afterward, if things worked out as I
hoped, I could pay my compliments to the one on shore.

I accordingly fired at the small bear, and hitting him
square in the shoulder, he dropped promptly and without
a murmur, but he dropped into the pool. Before the
other one on the log had time to make much of an inves-
tigation I hit him near the same place, but a little further
back, and he made for the shore. I paid no attention to
him, as I knew that he was fatally wounded and would not
go far, and slapping my third cartridge in place, I turned
to look for the third bear, but all I could see was the sway-
ing of the bushes where he had disappeared. The second
one shot went some fifty yards after reaching the bank,
when he fell, and was quite dead when I got to him.

But now that the excitement was over and I had time
to take stock of my achievement, my satisfaction was
short-lived. The hides were not worth taking off". It had
been a useless slaughter and I was sorry that I had killed.
I took the large teeth and long claws of the dead bears,
but since then I have never, but once, shot at a grizzly
when it was fishing.

This was some years later. I was out hunting with a
man from New York who was very anxious to kill a griz-
zly, having never shot one; so we made our way to one of
the creeks, where the bears fish, and soon finding a suita-
ble place, began our watch. This was some two miles

Grizzly Gourmets 75

below our camp, where there was quite a wide bottom,
through which the creek ran. There were several chan-
nels in the stream that had been formed by log-jam ob-
structions during high water, and among these channels
were several islands. It was an ideal fishing ground, but,
as the bears worked all the channels, it was an even guess
as to just where we would catch them. For a couple of
days we watched one place without success, and on the
second evening were returning to camp, after watching
until dark, and were crossing one of these islands on a
foot log. Just as we passed around the large root at the
butt of a log there was a snort and a splash that, expect-
ing nothing of the sort, startled us and nearly threw us off
our feet. The commotion was not over ten feet from us
on the other side of the creek, where the bank was three
feet high and the water ran two or three feet deep. Dark
as it was, we could see the water splashing and hear
something trying to get up the bank, but could not
make out distinctly what it was, although from the snort
we had heard we knew that it must be a bear.

My companion was packing three or four salmon that
we had caught and were going to put out for bait, while I
had an eight by ten camera on my back. There was
a sudden dropping of fish and an attempt to shed the
camera, but by the time this was done the bear had
climbed the bank. For an instant, however, he appeared
silhouetted against the western light, and I saw his gray
coat and took a quick shot at him. This brought out an-
other snort, with much breaking of branches, and we could
hear him for quite a while as he charged through the brush
in the bottom.

76 The Grizzly Bear

There was no use in trying to follow him in the dark,
nor, indeed, would it have been advisable, and we went on
to camp, thinking to trail him in the morning in case we
found that he was hit. But in the night it began to rain,
and it was still raining when we started out in the morn-
ing. Under some thick trees, where the rain had not
washed it out, we found plenty of blood, and at other
places the bear had lain down for some time, but after we
got out of the thick timber rain had washed the blood
off the grass and leaves, so that it was impossible to follow
the trail. We cross-cut the bottom and skirted the base of
the mountain, but we could not find the bear, and finally
we gave up the search. Then, some three days later, our
cook saw several buzzards circling about and swooping
down over near the mountain, and he went out to see what
it all meant. He found, between two large boulders that
were nearly overgrown with brush, the body of the old
grizzly that we had wounded. He had crawled in between
the rocks and had covered the entrance so completely
that, though we passed it twice at least, we never saw it.
The hide was quite useless. We took the teeth and nails
of the poor old fellow, but I would gladly have returned
them to him with his life, if I could have.

IX

TRAILING

TRAILING the grizzly bear is, in the language of the
regions which he inhabits, "no cinch." Of all the
forms of still hunting or stalking open to the sportsman
of America, it is the most difficult and the most demanding.
Not only is the grizzly phenomenally quick to catch every
sound, not only is his sense of smell amazingly developed,
but he is particularly cunning in guarding himself against
danger from the rear, and his senses are at least matched
by his shrewdness.

In following the trail of any wild animal, an observant
person soon begins to learn the peculiarities of his quarry.
Especially if there be a slight coating of snow on the ground
the record of recent hours is plainly written, for him who
trails to read. And as "Moccasin Joe" is at once more
human in his proceedings and more capricious in his
occupations than any of his fellow denizens of the forest,
as he exceeds these also in cunning and endurance, the
tracking of an old grizzly, made wise and wary by years
of experience, is the most searching test of a hunter's skill,
and offers him, both in entertainment and satisfaction, the
greatest reward.

Upon finding the trail of a bear, if the knowing hunter

77

78 The Grizzly Bear

will take his time and go along leisurely and without mak-
ing too much noise, he will, if the bear has not too great a
start of him, be reasonably likely to obtain a shot. But he
will find that cunning has to be matched with cunning,
and that unless he keeps his wits on watch and remembers
that he is not tracking some stupid beast that takes no
thought of who or what may be behind, the bear will
quietly make a detour, sniff the wind that reveals the
presence of the huntsman, and then, abandoning less
pressing interests for the time being, turn his attention to
preserving his own hide from capture, and either hur-
riedly cross the divide or take to the thickest jungles, to
lie low until the coast is clear.

Once the hunter is discovered it is usually just as well
to look for another bear. I have always found a chase
under such conditions to be a long and useless one, and
not likely to result in the death of a bear once in a hun-
dred times. Twice only have I bagged my bear under
such circumstances; and then it was in a country where
I was able to cut across and head him off as he passed
along the side of a mountain.

The hunter's first concern, of course, is to determine
as closely as possible how long it has been since the bear
passed by. Then, unless the wind is in the right direction
for direct trailing, wide detours must be made to the
right or left, striking the trail far ahead. If the bear is
still going in the same direction, another detour must be
made, and this must be kept up (sometimes for several
days) until the bear is either sighted or has taken a course
that the trailer can follow without fear of the wind's car-
rying his scent to the game. This method of roundabout

Trailing 79

trailing is not as interesting as it is to follow the trail direct,
but it is much safer and more likely to crown the hunter's
efforts with success.

In following one of these trails one will find, every
little while, where the bear has made a circuit to the side
and rear, so as to get to windward of his own back trail,
and so assure himself that no danger follows on his track.

The bear is wary and he often will make a detour of a
mile or more, and will stand quietly for some time until
satisfied that there is nothing of a suspicious nature
within reasonable distance of him. Then, if it is autumn
and in the mountains, he will resume his hunt for gophers
and marmots.

The grizzly usually goes into winter quarters among
the rocks, at a much higher altitude than does the black
bear, and as hibernating rodents are the only food he can
find along the high peaks and ridges, he devotes much
time, at this season of the year, to digging them out and
devouring them. Throughout the Bitter Root Mountains,
and in the Selkirks of British Columbia, the last food that
the grizzly obtains before denning up are the hoary or
whistling marmots, and the little animals commonly
called gophers, but which, properly speaking, are Co-
lumbian ground squirrels. These latter inhabit not only
all parts of these mountains, from the highest and most
rocky peaks to the lowest valleys, but are also a great pest
to the farmer. One of them is about as large as an Eastern
gray squirrel, but they are slightly different in shape, be-
ing less long and slim, and in fact more like woodchucks
• — short-legged and very plump and heavy of body. The
hoary or whistling marmot is much larger than the

8o The Grizzly Bear

ground squirrel. Many of them grow to weigh twenty or
twenty-five pounds. They are about the size of a very
large badger, and as several of them often live in the same
den, the bear, if he can reach them, obtains quite a feast.
It always seemed to me, however, that in the case of the
ground squirrel, the grizzly's game was hardly worth the
candle; for at best one of these little rodents is but a
mouthful for a bear, and in many instances I have found
where, after digging out cartloads of dirt and rocks, the
bears had had only their trouble for their pains. But no
amount of labor seems to daunt them. I have seen many
such holes that were from eight to ten feet deep and twelve
or fifteen feet long, where one or more grizzlies had thus
dug for a nest of marmots. And a few years ago, while
hunting through the Selkirks with Mr. G. O. Shields, we
came across a tremendous hole thus made by grizzlies.
There were literally carloads of dirt and rocks taken from
the opening and piled up on the mountainside, but
whether success had attended the diggers' efforts, and the
marmots had been captured, we were unable to determine.
When snow is on the ground it is usually possible to tell
whether a capture has been made from the telltale drops
of blood.

It is at this season that I have most enjoyed trailing
the grizzly, not only because his tracks are plain, but be-
cause so many of his doings are written by the way.

Some years ago, while hunting along one of these high
divides, I came across the track of a large grizzly that was
hunting squirrels and marmots. As it was quite early in
the morning I decided to put in the day, if necessary,
trying to get him. I saw that the bear had passed along

Trailing 81

either during the evening before or some time in the night.
I knew this because the snow that had been displaced by
him had frozen later and the tracks had not thawed out
any, as (the day before having been warm) they would
have done had they been made then. I judged the bear
had from six to twelve hours the start of me. But this
did not discourage me, for I knew that he would spend
many of them in digging for food, if he found a promising
lead.

Near the point where I found his trail he had dug for
a gopher, but after getting down some two feet he had
struck a rock and had given it up. From there he had
travelled along the side of the mountain, stopping to ex-
amine all the small bunches of bushes and loose rocks for
marmots. Here and there he had turned over a rock, but
as there was little likelihood of finding any grubs or worms
at this time of the year he only stopped to explore the dens
of the gophers. For several hours he had moved along
slowly, as I could tell from the fact that his steps were
rather short and that every little while he had stopped
and stood still, presumably for several minutes.

Twice he had made a detour up the side of the moun-
tain and had then trailed back for half a mile to a point
where he could sniff the wind and obtain a view of the
country he had passed through. Then, on the latter of
these occasions, he had made himself a bed in some
bushes and had slept for several hours, as shown by the
snow that had been melted from the heat of his body.

After his nap the bear returned by the trail he had
made, walking along back to where he had turned off to
make the detour. This they sometimes do, but not often,

82 The Grizzly Bear

and when I first saw this track I thought that another
bear had come into the game, but found, on following it
around, that it was the same bear.

From this point the animal went in rather a straight
line along the mountain for several miles. Then he found
the den of a family of marmots which he proceeded to
unearth. For half a mile before reaching the place I
could see the dirt piled up on the snow, and knew I had
gained several hours on the bear. The hole he had dug
was larger than miners are annually required to excavate
in order to hold a mining claim. The den ran in under
several layers of loose flat rocks, some of which were two
or three feet long by half as many wide, and several
inches thick. These he had ripped out easily and thrown
down hill, and the dirt and small boulders had been
hurled out and now covered the snow all about for a space
of ten or twelve feet.

On the rocks and snow were large spots and blotches
of blood, telling of the feast that had rewarded his labors,
and that there had been more than one marmot was
shown by the numerous tracks. These animals had bur-
rowed down some six or seven feet into the side of the
mountain, and under a large flat stone they had scooped
out a little cave, some three feet in diameter, where they
had a soft bed of grasses that they had carried in. When
the grizzly broke his way into their home, there had been
a great rush for freedom. And as the sides of the hole
dug by the bear were rather steep, the marmots, in trying
to escape, were at a disadvantage. The whole story was
plainly written in the soft earth and the snow. Large
impressions in the sides and bottom of the hole showed

Trailing 83

where the bear had struck at the flying marmots. One of
these latter had evidently succeeded in making the out-
side, but the tracks of the bear showed where he had fol-
lowed in hot pursuit, and a smear of blood on the snow
marked the end of the little fellow's dash for life. After
killing and eating this one, the bear had returned to the
marmot den and devoured the remaining marmots already
killed; after which he had come out, walked around for
a while, and then struck out again in search of more
provender.

For a mile or more he had now kept along the same
ridge, then turned to the right, crossed the divide, and
made off down the side of the mountain, without stopping
until he had crossed the bottom and was well up the
opposite slope. On this ridge he had stopped and taken
another nap, and I knew that he was now but a short dis-
tance ahead of me, for, although it was well along in the
afternoon, and the snow had become so soft that it would
pack, it had not melted any in the bear's trail since he had
left his resting-place.

The question was, could I catch up with him before
night ? To do it would require all the caution and skill
I possessed, for it was evident from his movements that
I was dealing with a bear of the "old school."

The animal now kept along the ridge for several miles,
going back in the direction from which he had come the
night before. There was apparently no wind, but I was
taking no chances on this score, and whenever I came to
a patch of bushes or timber, I made a detour up the moun-
tain to a point where I could see well below me, and then
circled until I had found where the be^ar had passed.

84 The Grizzly Bear

I would then search carefully the open hillside as far as
possible before moving ahead on the trail. Once I was
able, with the aid of my field glasses, to make out his
course for nearly a half mile, where he had climbed up
the side of an open hill.

By this time, however, the sun had gone down and
trailing was now not only necessarily slow work, but bad
policy, since a wrong move would spoil my whole game.
I was ten miles or more from camp, and only a short dis-
tance behind the bear, yet I did not dare follow him, for fear
he would discover me and I would lose him altogether.
I therefore turned down the mountain into the bottom
where there was a little creek, built a small lean-to of fir
boughs back some ten or twelve feet from a large boulder,
got up plenty of wood, built a fire against the rock, and ate
the lunch I had brought with me. The lean-to sheltered
me from the wind, the heat reflected from the rock made
my camp comfortable, and when my fire needed replenish-
ing during the night, Jack Frost woke me up to attend
to it.

At the first streak of day I started up the mountain to
the point where I had left the trail the evening before, and
took up the stern chase with renewed interest. I followed
up mountains and down gulches for miles without finding
where the animal had stopped to dig for anything, and
I began to think that he had made up his mind to leave
the country. At last, however, I saw a pile of dirt far
ahead, and knew that he had stopped at least for a short
time. The hole was not so large or so deep as the first
one, but it had evidently yielded a mouthful or two of
ground squirrel for breakfast. Farther along he had dug

Trailing 85

other small holes for squirrels, but none had detained him
very long.

But on the next ridge I found another bed, and knew,
since the snow was not frozen around it and there was no
frost on the leaves and grass where he had lain, that bruin
had left it after daybreak. Then, too, the heat from his
body had melted the snow and left the ground damp, and
as this had not had time to freeze I knew that he had but
recently moved on. In the next mile he had only stopped
once, and once he had made the usual detour to see if all
was well, and had then wandered aimlessly about for
a while and finally turned toward a thick clump of bushes
and stunted trees that grew on the side of the mountain in
a small ravine.

Searching the side of the hill with the glasses, I could
plainly see where he had entered the brush, but could not
see where he had left it. There was, however, one point
of possible exit that I could not see, so I climbed up and
around the spot, and looking down from above, found that
the bear must indeed be there, and within shooting dis-
tance. Selecting then a position from which I commanded
all the strategic points, I rolled a small rock down the
mountain nearly, but not quite, into the bushes. This
went bounding down, making much noise, and soon I saw
the small trees near the centre of the brush move, and
knew that the bear was on the alert. I could follow his
movements by those of the bushes, and when he showed
his head I was ready for him. He did not come out
with a rush, but walked quietly to his death; and as
his head pushed through the edge of the bushes, one
of my old six-hundred-grain bullets met him at the

86 The Grizzly Bear

butt of the ear, and the trailing was over. He never

knew just what it was that had awakened him, nor

did he ever know just what it was that put him back
to sleep.

A CHARGING GRIZZLY

FOR several years I had hunted grizzlies by stalking,
and by watching their feeding grounds, and in this
way killed many, but many also got away. Sometimes
I would see as many as five or six in a berry patch and bag
only one or two; sometimes I got three; once I got four;
and once, as I have shown, I was able to get five. Yet
on one occasion I saw nine large ones together, and suc-
ceeded in killing only one, and that the smallest of the lot.
So that I thought it might be a good plan to get some bear-
dogs, and accordingly set about finding out what I could
about them.

In one of the sporting magazines about this time I saw
bear-dogs advertised for sale, and a letter to their owner
developed a correspondence that finally resulted in a
hunting trip with a customer to whom he had sold a dog.
This customer, Mr. John D. O'Brien, in due time arrived
at Spokane with the bear-dog and another hound that he
had brought along to be taught bear hunting. The bear-
dog was a mongrel, but of what breeds no living man
could guess. He answered to the name of Nebo. The
third, human, member of the party was Mr. Martin Spen-
cer, and I secured from an old Indian two likely looking

87

88 The Grizzly Bear

pups, one of which he claimed was a bear-dog. It was
a regular Indian dog of about five or six colors, and proved
one of the best bear fighters I have ever seen. The other
was a cross between a brindle bull and a staghound, and,
while he had never hunted any, he could whip anything,
aside from a bear, that he came across.

For a hundred and fifty miles our way lay across the
Palouse farming country. We then crossed the main fork
of the North Clearwater River and struck into the Bitter
Root range from the west. Nothing of interest occurred
until we struck the hills, when Jack's hound jumped
a deer, and I suppose he is still after it, as he never re-
turned.

We soon, now, began to see bear tracks, and in order
to give the Eastern bear-dog all the chances there were,
Jack thought it better not to let my curs loose until his
dog had brought the bears to bay. When we showed
Nebo a bear track he would grow vastly excited, disap-
pear up the trail, and after a few minutes we would hear
him barking. But when we reached him we always found
that he had treed, not bears, but "fool hens" — a species
of grouse. And for two months we followed that dog up-
hill and down, and not a bear did he tree. However, we
killed a number of black bears without his assistance.

One evening after a hard day's climb over mountains
where there was no trail, we camped on the west side of
a bottom, some hundreds of yards from the large stream
that ran through it. The bottom contained several hun-
dred acres covered with high grass and willow bushes,
and as we got into camp early I took my gun, after un-
packing, and went up the stream to hunt for a way out,

A Charging Grizzly 89

since we were cross-cutting the country without regard to
trails. I soon came to a small stream, blocked in several
places by beaver dams, and in part of the bottom, which
was flooded nearly a foot deep, I noticed where some
animal had a wallow. At first I paid no attention to this,
thinking it was a moose wallow, but after crossing the
creek I saw the tracks of a large grizzly and of several
smaller ones, and in a clump of willows farther on I found
several beds where the bears had been lying. However,
I saw nothing of the bears and, having got the lay of the
land, I returned to camp.

Upon my arrival I told Jack that there were some griz-
zlies out in the willows, and suggested (this having become
a standing joke) that his dog might be able to find them.
I also told him that there were some beaver in the small
creek, since he had been abusing the country for its lack of
beaver, and had been anxious for some beaver-tail soup,
having heard that it was a great luxury. Taking his gun
and dog, Jack now went over to the willows, thrashed
around for a short time, and returned without seeing any-
thing. He said that the tracks were old, as Nebo would
pay no attention to them, and tying up the dog, he went
back to the creek to watch for beaver. After a while we
heard a shot, and soon he returned to camp, telling Martin
that he had wounded a beaver, but that it had escaped to
its house in the stream, and he was unable to get it. Mar-
tin proposed that they go and tear the house to pieces and
thus obtain the animal, and Jack again loosed the dog,
shouldered his gun, and, Martin taking a long-handled
shovel which we had brought along to prospect with,
they set out.

90 The Grizzly Bear

Jack's gun was a single-shot, .40-70 Winchester. He
claimed that a good hunter should never carry more than
four cartridges for a day's hunt, and consequently he
never carried but that number. One of these was always
in the gun, the other three were tucked away in his pocket,
one in each finger of an old kid glove.

That evening there were three old miners camped near
us, and in about ten minutes after Jack and Martin left,
we heard the dog bark and the report of Jack's rifle. In
a short time there was another report and the barking of
the dog continued. Almost immediately another shot was
heard and the miners began to wonder as to the cause of
the shooting. I told them that the boys were after beaver
and that, as Jack never took more than four cartridges
with him, the fun was about over. And just then we
heard the report of the last shot. I was about ready to
turn into bed, as I was tired after the long day, and had
already taken off my shoes, when I heard a shout and
saw Martin coming through the flooded bottom ten feet
at a jump, splashing water as he came. His hat was
missing and he acted like a limited express going through
without stops.

And as he came he yelled: "Get your gun! Turn the
dogs loose! There are some grizzlies out there and I
guess they've killed Jack," I managed to make out. So
I loosed the dogs, caught up my gun, and, without wait-
ing to put on my shoes, made the water fly nearly as high
as Martin had in coming in. I jumped the small stream,
and, landing among the stumps of some shrub willows
that had been eaten off by the beaver, punched several
holes in the bottom of my feet. I could not, however,

A Charging Grizzly 91

stop for that, and as I hurried on I could hear the water
splash behind me as Martin, having secured his rifle,
hastened after me. Then, as I came into the open, I saw
Jack standing at the edge of some timber, leaning on his
rifle, while in front of him, sixty feet or so away, a large
grizzly lay rolling and bawling as she rolled. In the wil-
lows across the creek there was a big commotion — bears
bawling and Nebo barking; my curs joined in the up-
roar; a bear showed his head and I sent a slug into it;
Martin came up in time to get a shot at another; a third
appeared and was instantly killed. We had four bears
down and there seemed to be no more coming.

Martin, in telling of the beginning of the adventure,
said that when they came to the small creek and looked
over the beaver house, they decided that they would have
to cut away a dam below it and run off the water. Jack,
therefore, placed his gun against a tree and went forty or
fifty yards down-stream to the dam. As they were about
to begin cutting this away, they were attracted by a noise
in the willows across the creek, and Martin had advised
Jack to get his gun, thinking it might be a moose. How-
ever, as they heard no further noise, they went to work
on the dam, and when they again looked up they saw an
enormous grizzly standing on its hind legs and looking
over the willows at them. The dog had then begun to
bark, and the bear, accepting the challenge, started for
them. Jack sprinted for his gun, and Martin, sticking his
spade into the mud, shinned up a tree, prepared to referee
the show. As Jack got his gun the grizzly appeared at
the water's edge directly opposite, and before he could
shoot, jumped for him, landing in the middle of the

92 The Grizzly Bear

stream. Jack now put in a shot, and as his small supply
of ammunition was unhandily packed, was compelled to
strike out for the timber, digging for cartridges as he ran.

The bear-dog had been very bold when the bear was
on the opposite side of the creek, but when it forded the
stream Nebo with great discretion retired some two hun-
dred yards across the bottom; and had Jack's life de-
pended on the dog's attacks, he would probably have
been slaughtered then and there. And yet, to do Nebo
justice, his barking saved Jack's life in the end. Martin,
from his perch, could see Jack's effort to reach the timber,
and to reload his gun before the bear overtook him, and,
as the latter got nearer and nearer, he called, "Look out,
Jack, she's after you!" Jack, with this stimulus, made
the timber, and the barking of the dog seems to have
turned back the bear. Jack now got at his cartridges and,
coming out from behind his tree, took another shot at the
grizzly from a distance of about thirty feet, but missed her,
and she, turning, again went after him. Martin, from his
observatory, again called out the news, and again, after
Jack had reached his shelter, the barking of the dog drew
the bear off. Jack reloaded again, fired again, and missed
again, and this time the bear went for him in earnest.

Martin still acted as a bureau of information, but as
the bear was now so close to Jack that he had all he could
do to dodge her claws, this was hardly necessary. This
time he had kept his cartridge out, and he loaded as he
ran, and reaching a large tree he swung himself around
it, and as the bear passed, fired his last shot — and made
a clean miss. He was now forced to continue his flight,
and as soon as he was out of sight Martin made for camp.

A Charging Grizzly 93

But Jack never got scratched. After the bear passed
the tree she went back to the creek, having now begun to
feel the effects of the first shot, which, entering her side,
back of the ribs, had ranged downward and passed out of
the groin between the hind legs. That it must have been
the first shot that struck her is proved by the downward
course of the bullet, fired from the bank when the bear
was in the creek.

This is the only instance that I have ever known per-
sonally where a grizzly attacked a man without provo-
cation, and in this case I lay it to the dog. The bear was
an old one with three yearling cubs, and the presence and
barking of the dog were naturally offensive to her. And
as the cubs and the dog were doubtless the reasons for
her unprovoked attack upon the man, so also the cubs
and the dog proved his salvation. For the bear left him
again and again and returned to interpose herself between
the barking dog and her cubs, which had not crossed the
creek.

In this case, too, the vitality of an old and large grizzly
proved to be many times less than that of the deer. Not
a bone was touched by this first bullet, and not another
ball hit her. Of this we were sure, as when we came to
skin her we examined her very closely. Jack was fully
convinced that he had hit her three, if not four, times;
and had she not been killed, he would have sworn that he
had so hit her, and that, in spite of her wounds, she had
made good her escape. Twice he had fired at her at a
point-blank range of thirty feet, and his last shot was
delivered when she was but ten feet away. This experi-
ence has, in my mind, raised the question as to how much

94 The Grizzly Bear

of the lead a grizzly is commonly supposed to carry off
has ever really reached its mark.

I may add that I heard, long after this, that Nebo
finally (by accident, I presume) came across an old bear
blocking a trail, and absent-mindedly trying to remove
the obstruction, achieved a bear-dog's finish.

XI

AT CLOSE QUARTERS

LATE in the fall of 1891 I took Dr. C. S. Penfield and
James H. Adams of Spokane into the Bitter Root
region after big game. I had just returned from a bear
hunt in which our party had killed thirteen grizzlies, and
as neither of these gentlemen had at that time killed a
bear, this made them particularly anxious to get some.
We took my two bear-dogs, the bull, and the Indian mon-
grel with us, and entering the mountains from the west,
we followed the old Lolo Trail that keeps to the crest of
the main ridge from four to five thousand feet above the
valleys on either side. It was late in the season, and, the
bear having sought the lower altitudes, we did not find
any along the trail, nor, though we camped beside it for
a couple of days and hunted elk and moose, did we have
any success. We therefore followed the Lolo for two
days more, meeting several parties of Indians returning,
heavily loaded with elk and bear meat, from their annual
hunt, and then we turned to the right, descended some
five thousand feet, and camped on the banks of the
middle fork of the Clearwater River.

This stream is about one hundred yards wide, is, at
this season, quite shallow, and like all the streams in this

95

96 The Grizzly Bear

country, very rapid and very cold. Its banks and bed are
lined with large boulders, and the water makes a tremen-
dous noise in running over them. Our camp was on a
narrow strip of flat land that paralleled the river for half
a mile, and ran back two or three hundred yards to the
foot of the mountain. Just above us the Clearwater
made a turn almost at right angles, and in the bend, on a
little patch of open ground, with two large trees in the
centre, the Indians for years had made their camp, and
the place was marked by piles of refuse and by their racks
or scaffolds for drying meat.

After unpacking our horses, I sauntered up to this
opening to see if the Indians had left any elk antlers — they
hardly ever carry them away — and the bulldog trotted
after me. As I emerged from the bush I saw, behind a
bunch of bushes and near the drying racks, what at first
I took to be a black stump. Remembering, however, that
I had camped at this place many times, and had never
seen a stump there, I took a closer look and saw that it was
an old bear gnawing the discarded bones. The animal was
so dark in color that I supposed it was a black bear, and
determined to tree it for the doctor or Adams to shoot. I
had no weapon of any sort with me, as I had taken off my
belt in unpacking the horses and had thrown it, with my
hatchet, on the ground, and had left my rifle standing
against a tree. I had, however, no idea of killing the bear,
and even had I had my gun, would not have robbed the
others of their opportunity.

The bear was near the two trees, and I thought there
would be no trouble in putting him up one of them, so call-
ing to Jim, the dog, to "sic 'em," I started toward him.

ELK SUMMIT, BITTER ROOT MOUNTAINS

At Close Quarters 97

But the dog had not yet seen the bear and, dog fashion,
simply ran back and forth looking for he knew not what,
so that I was soon within fifty feet of the bear and, not car-
ing to quite jump on him, I gave a yell; whereupon he
stood up to see what had broken loose, and Jim got sight
of him and made for his hind legs.

I now began calling at the top of my voice for the doc-
tor and Adams, while the bear moved off toward the trees.
But as he had to pay attention to the assaults of the dog,
he could not run very fast, and I easily kept up with the
procession, yelling the while for re-enforcements. But the
bear did not seem to have the least intention of climbing.
He stopped under one of the trees and made a few passes
at the dog (I, meanwhile, getting in a few more yells), and
then he moved on toward the river, the bank of which was
some thirty feet above the water, and while not straight
down, was so steep that it was quite difficult to negotiate
either way.

We came out about two hundred yards above the bend
and just where, along the bottom of the bank, there grew
a few old cottonwood trees. Here Jim grabbed the bear
from behind, and the latter, in turning to strike him, lost
his footing, and bear and dog both disappeared down the
bank. I ran to the edge and seeing them bring up against the
old cottonwoods, thought the bear, who must by now have
had enough of fighting, would surely climb. But instead he
plunged into the river, and as soon as he got to where the
water was deep, turned and faced the dog. This, as the
bear seemed to know, put Jim, who had to swim, at a dis-
advantage. But the current was swift, and swept them
both down-stream to where, at the head of a riffle, sev-

g8 The Grizzly Bear

eral large boulders stood out of the water. Jim crawled
out on one of these and the bear sat down just above it,
and every time the bear started to move Jim made a rush
for the edge of rock and the bear turned back.

On the opposite side of the river there was some heavy
timber, and I thought that if the bear got into this he
would surely tree. So I determined to drive him across,
as, once in a tree, I could watch him until the men at
camp hunted me up. I figured that if I did not return
before night they would start a search, and if my voice did
not give out, they would soon find me.

In fording a swift stream where there is danger of being
swept off one's feet, a stout pole, used as a brace down-
stream, will often make easy a passage that would be im-
possible without such aid; and I now, therefore, looked
about for a pole, and finding one, started to drive the bear
across the river. When he saw me coming he started for
the other shore, and Jim, leaving his boulder, followed
close behind him. My own crossing was a more difficult
matter. The water was swift, the boulders were slippery
as glass, and it was all that I could do to make headway.
By the time I got across, the bear and the dog had both
disappeared in the brush, but an occasional bawl told me
that Jim was still on the job; and hearing a bark behind
me, and seeing old Pete, the mongrel, just entering the
water, I felt sure the hunters were coming and started con-
tentedly ahead.

I soon came up with Jim and the bear, and whenever I
saw an opportunity to do so without getting cuffed, brought
my pole down on Bruin's back. The brush, however, was
so thick that it was hard to do the bear any harm, or indeed

At Close Quarters 99

to produce any effect beyond a snort and a more than usu-
ally vicious stroke at the dog; and my pole soon became so
shortened by constant breaking that only a small club
remained.

We now came to a little stream that drained a spring
fifty yards back from the river. Across it there was a fallen
tree about eighteen inches thick, and across this tree, and
parallel with the creek bank, another tree had fallen, form-
ing a sort of pen ten or twelve feet square. Pete now came
up, the bear and the dog stumbled against these logs and
fell into the pen, and as they tumbled over I happened to
notice the bear's paw, and for the first time, and to my
utter astonishment, realized that it was a grizzly, instead
of a black bear we were trying to tree.

I now saw that I was probably in a scrape if those
hunters did not show up, and I tried to yell louder than
ever, but I had done so much of that already that my voice
was nearly gone. However, I stood outside the log pen and
did the best I could, and now and then, when I thought the
bear was not looking, I whacked him over the head with
my club, but of course did him no harm. Jim, the bull-
dog, was on the side next the creek, while Pete, the mon-
grel, was over next to the log. When the bear came Pete's
way he slid under the tree out of reach. Jim, on the other
hand, was not so lucky, as he had to jump the two-foot
bank, and I cannot to this day see why the grizzly did not
kill him.

I saw that if I had a good two-handed, heavy club that
would not break I could likely smash the bear's head, and
regretted taking off my belt, on which a small hatchet was
slung. I never carried a hunting knife, but did all my

ioo The Grizzly Bear

skinning with a pocket knife containing one three-inch
blade and one smaller one, and as this was the only re-
source at hand I got it out. I was looking around for the
sort of club I needed when I heard a snort, and looking
back saw that the bear had decided to turn his attention
to me. I sprang back, caught my foot in a root, and fell
flat on my back in the creek, with my head about a foot
lower than my heels. "Now," thought I, "you are in for
a good chewing," and being unable to take any other pre-
caution, I grasped a bush in my left hand, got a good grip
on the knife, and determined to run it into the bear's belly
and open him up. But when the bear got his front paws
over the log, with his nose just at my feet, both dogs
grabbed him by the flanks, and bear and dogs were all
tumbled back into the pen.

As they fell I made a thrust and drove the knife in be-
hind the bear's right foreleg, and the blade slipped in so
easily that it gave me an idea. I got up and, placing one
knee against the log and the other foot against the root
that had tripped me, I waited my chance and made an-
other thrust. Had I had a long-bladed hunting knife the
fight would have ended then and there, but the knife was
short and the bear fat. So that the stab was only an in-
cident.

Up to this time I had, in a desultory sort of way, kept
on yelling; the bear, when he got an unusually hard nip,
had given an occasional bawl; and now one dog and now
the other had given a yelp when he feared the bear was
about to get him. But now these sounds were hushed.
Each of us had his work cut out and we got right down to
business. I kept my place by the log, and when the bear

At Close Quarters 101

turned to attack Jim, it was my turn to stab. When the
bear went for Pete I let him most severely alone, but this
was Jim's opportunity and he never missed it. After the
bear had been stuck by the knife a number of times he
became foxy. He would feint for Jim, and as I started to
make my thrust, would turn like lightning and make a
pass at me. Several times he came so near me that I thought
I could hear the swish of his nails, and I was soon compelled
to be more cautious and to wait until Jim became actually
entangled with the brute, when Pete and I would join forces
and make the most of our opportunity, till we drew the
fight back to our quarter.

Jim was now becoming winded; he could no longer
retreat as quickly as at first, and I myself was beginning to
miss the breath I had spent in yelling. Pete was the only
one of the attacking force that was in first-class shape,
while the bear seemed to have more wind than he knew
what to do with. Under these circumstances it was not
long before he made a pass at me and caught me through
the ball of the hand. The wound was rather a nasty one
and the blow knocked the knife from my grasp; but after
striking a bush it dropped near by, so that I was able to
recover it without losing my next turn, and we continued
the fight. Little by little the bear himself weakened. At
first this was only noticeable in that it required more bit-
ing and punching than formerly to make him turn from one
to the other. Then bloody froth began flying from his
mouth. But he held on so amazingly that I about lost
hope of killing him and saving the dogs. Still I, had got
them into the scrape, I knew that they would fight to the
death, and I made up my mind to stay with them.

102 The Grizzly Bear

Finally I saw a change come over the bear — the change
that marks the transition from doggedness to desperation
— and I knew that it would likely go hard with the next one
he grasped. This proved to be Jim, and wrapping his
forelegs round him the bear dropped on his side and be-
gan trying to rip the dog up with his hind claws. Pete
dove to the attack from under his log, but the bear paid
scant attention, and, hearing Jim's smothered cries, and
the bear lying with his head and back toward me, I grasped
the knife handle by the extreme end, laid my left hand on
the bear's head, and in a last, desperate effort to reach a
vital spot, drove blade and haft both into the bear's side.
Then I leaped away, and I was not a second too soon. The
stroke — as though it had released a spring — brought the
bear convulsively to his feet, and I barely missed the mighty
stroke he aimed at me. But this time my thrust had
gone home, and, the force of his own blow carrying him
off his feet, the grizzly fell prone across the logs and the
fight was over.

I had received no hurts other than the one in the hand;
and although I was covered with blood, little of it was my
own. Pete escaped without a scratch, but Jim, as far as
appearances went, was worse off than the bear. One of his
legs was so chewed up that he could not use it; his neck
was lacerated until it seemed as if his head was cut half
off, and there were several other severe cuts about his
body; but he was not subdued by a good deal.

For a few moments, bloody and panting, I sat on the
fallen tree and watched the dogs worry the dead bear.
Then I rolled the carcass over and out of the arena and,
the way being a little downhill, and finding that by reach-

At Close Quarters 103

ing back and grasping a side of the head with each hand
I could just drag the body along, I started with it for the
river. Several times in the short distance I was brought to
a sudden stop, and on looking around found Jim, the
bear's hind paw in his mouth and his own three legs braced,
pulling back for all he was worth. Arrived at the bank, I
rolled the body in and succeeded in towing it across, but
being unable to lift it out of the water, I drew it in behind
a ledge of rock, left it there, and went on to camp.

There, very much at their ease, sat the two hunters
who were so anxious to kill a bear. When they saw me,
wet and covered with blood, they became excusably excited
and wanted to know what was the matter. I told them
that I had been killing a grizzly. " But what did you kill
him with?" they said. "Your gun is here in camp."
"Well," I answered, "as you fellows did not come when
I yelled for help, I had to kill him with my pocket knife."
But it took the body of the bear and a post-mortem to boot
to satisfy their doubts.

It seemed that, as soon as I had left camp, they had
gone down to the river to get a drink, and the noise made
by the stream prevented them from hearing me. Once,
they said, they thought they heard a dog barking, but as
the sound was not repeated, they thought no more about
it. When we came to skin the bear — he was a handsome
animal, his pelage a deep black, scantily touched with
white — we found seventeen knife wounds back of the right
shoulder. Three of his ribs were completely severed and
the last stab had pierced his heart. Jim and myself were
considerably knocked up. The doctor sewed up our
wounds. Jim had to make the rest of the trip on three

104 The Grizzly Bear

legs, while my right hand was out of commission for a
while and I had to talk in whispers. And as it turned out,
this was the only bear we saw.

The next day it began to snow and rain, and kept it up
for a week, and when we climbed the five thousand feet
back to the trail, we found the snow so deep that we came
near having to abandon the horses, and of the six we had
with us got only three home.

XII
MY FIRST TRIP TO THE SELKIRKS

FOR years before I visited the district I had heard
wonderful stones of the grizzlies of the Selkirks. I
had heard how plentiful they were, and how ferocious they
were, and how many miners were killed by them every year.
I had met old prospectors and trappers who insisted that
several species were found among them — the Roach Back,
the Silver Tip, the Bald Face, and now and again a
Range bear. Of these they agreed that the Bald Face
was the most dangerous and the most aggressive, and
declared that he would turn from the trail for neither man
nor beast, but, with a chip on his large shoulder, was al-
ways on the lookout for some prospector whom he might
mangle for the fun of it.

I confess that these reports attracted me. I thought
that the chance to hunt bears where the sport did not re-
quire so much sneaking and crawling as I had been accus-
tomed to would be much to my liking; and I determined
to take the first opportunity to visit a region where the bears
really themselves went hunting for the hunter. Accord-
ingly one spring, in company with Mr. T. C. Coleman of
West Virginia, and Dr. C. S. Penfield of Spokane, both
old hunting companions, I made a trip to the Wilson's

105

io6 The Grizzly Bear

Creek country, a part of the Selkirk range in British Col-
umbia.

We left Spokane about the middle of April, but upon
reaching the hunting grounds found that we were about
three weeks ahead of time, since in these northern hills
the bears do not come out of winter quarters so early, by
nearly a month, as in the more southern ranges where we
had hunted them for many years. Indeed, we found that
conditions in the Selkirks differed altogether from those of
the country in the south. The lay of the land was different.
The food of the bears was different. And the methods of
hunting, which depend largely upon these two features,
were necessarily different in proportion. The only factor
that remained comparatively constant was the nature of
" Old Ephraim" himself.

In the Selkirks the mountains are very steep, and
their sides come down in the form of a sharp V to the bot-
toms of the canons that do duty for valleys between them.
In these rocky gorges run very rapid streams; and down
their steeply sloping sides in the spring, the snows rush in
great avalanches. These move with terrific force, sweep-
ing before them anything that offers resistance, and are apt
to follow the same tracks, year after year. And it is in
these tracks, locally known as "slides," that, from neces-
sity, if not from choice, one hunts for bear.

The grizzlies in this region very seldom get any animal
food, but live almost entirely on roots, bulbs, grass, and the
buds of the small maple bushes. In the early spring, when
the grizzlies first come out, the snow is piled up in aston-
ishing fashion at the bottom of these slides, and below, and
on either side of them, covers the country to a depth of

NEAR THE HEAD-WATERS OF WILSON'S CREEK

My First Trip to the Selkirks 107

from six to ten feet; but the slides themselves are nearly
free from snow, and here the bears are forced to come to
look for food.

The slides are thickly grown with many kinds of brush,
and here and there show little parks where, on the south-
ern slopes, the grass sprouts early. Here, too, grow two
plants, the dog-tooth violet and the spring beauty, each
springing from a little bulb like a small onion, and the
ground is sometimes so dug over and torn upj by bears
searching for these bulbs, that it looks as though a band
of prospectors had been at work.

Strangely enough, though both of these plants grow in
the Bitter Root Mountains, I have never seen signs of a
grizzly's having dug for them there. On the other hand, a
plant called the shooting star, with a leaf like a small
horseradish leaf, which also grows plentifully in both
places, is greedily eaten by the Idaho grizzlies, and wholly
ignored by those of the Selkirks.

The usual way of hunting in these Selkirk valleys is to
make one's way along one side of the streams and scan
the slides across the gorge. The hills are so steep and the
brush so thick that it is impossible to see anything on one's
own side of the creek, and indeed it is hard enough when
one does see anything, to make one's way to within range.
For the brush, what with the weight of constant snows, and
repeated bendings of the head to passing avalanches, all
grows downhill, and it is all but impossible to worm one's
way up against it. We cut many a mile of trail and felled
many a foot log across the streams, before we got through
with Wilson's Creek.

However, when we first reached this forbidding and

io8 The Grizzly Bear

inhospitable region, not only had the grizzlies not yet put
in an appearance, but we ourselves were stalled ten miles
below our intended destination. We had already travelled
some miles through snow from two to four feet deep, and
now, being unable to make further headway, we cut down
enough timber to open a clearing for our tent, unpacked
the horses, and sent them, with the man who drove them,
back to the settlements where we had hired them.

And now the weather, which had been warm and pleas-
ant, turned suddenly bitter, and for two weeks we three
held our little camp against a wintry siege, and when this
finally was raised and pleasant days were promised, the
doctor's leave of absence had expired. He therefore
walked out to the settlements, ordered our horses sent back
to us, and left for home, and the next morning, our pack
animals having arrived, we moved on up-stream and made
our intended camp.

On our way up we saw our first bear track of the season,
the animal having evidently passed only the evening before,
and worked along the edge of a large slide, where here and
there there was a patch of bare ground. The next morn-
ing, when the packer had taken the back trail for home
with his horses, Coleman and myself took up the old
bear's trail and tried to follow it. After crossing the slide,
the bear had stopped several times to dig up small roots
and bulbs, but as there was little vegetation to speak of,
he had worked around toward the south side of the moun-
tain, where there were several other slides. It was very
difficult to trail him where there was no snow, and we soon
decided to drop the trail and strike straight for the south-
ern slides, thinking to find him on one or the other of them.

My First Trip to the Selkirks 109

After several hours' slipping and struggling, and re-
peated disappointments at several likely looking slides, I
crept across a welcome bed of soft pine needles to the
edge of a big opening, and craning my head carefully for-
ward, looked about me. Now, it is one thing to creep for-
ward yourself to get a shot at a bear, and quite a different
one to take another man to where he can obtain the shot.
Coleman always kept in the rear, because, he said, he was
not quick enough at sighting game; so, when we started
out, it had been understood that he was to keep close to
me, and in case there was any chance of a shot, I would
reach back, seize him, and place him in front.

When I poked my head through the brush on the edge
of this slide, the first thing I saw was our old grizzly only
fifty or sixty feet away. I therefore reached silently back
for Coleman and, not touching him, turned to see what had
become of him, and there he was some forty yards in the
rear. I made frantic motions for him to come on, and
seeing from my actions that something was in sight, he
hastened up as rapidly as possible. As soon as he reached
me and had regained his wind we looked out over the
slide, and were dumfounded to see it tenantless; the bear
had gone. We went out and found the trail, followed it
into some cedars fifty yards above us, and found that it
then made up-stream the way we had come, and that, had
we remained at a little creek where we had rested on
our way down, we would have got a shot, as the bear
had passed close to where we had been sitting. We
trailed him for about a half mile, and finding that he
was taking advantage of all the thickets he could find,
and that he was evidently on the jump, we decided

no The Grizzly Bear

that it was more than useless to follow. So we returned
to camp.

The next morning we started up-stream on snow-shoes.
When we had gone about five hundred yards I looked up
at a slide on our left, and there was a huge grizzly walking
over a mass of snow that had slid down about a week be-
fore. We watched him, and as he soon began feeding on
the grass that had started to come up along the edge of the
snow we determined to make a try for him. We found a
fallen tree across the stream and, clambering over, shinned
up the steep bank and then crawled through the bushes and
came out at the spot where we had seen him feeding. But
no bear awaited us. He had evidently got wind of us in
some way and moved quietly away.

Since now the snow was too deep and soft for us to get
through the brush without snow-shoes, and as the brush
was so dense that it was impossible to get through with
them, we could do little for nearly two weeks, but watch
the two slides where we had seen these two bears, and two
others that we could overlook with our field-glasses.

About a half mile up the mountain, a little below camp,
there was a large slide where the snow, starting from an
altitude much greater than usual, had dashed over the
edge of a cliff some five hundred feet high, to lie piled up a
hundred feet or more against its base. One morning while
looking over the slides, we happened to glance at the top of
this clifF and, on a little green patch of grass underneath
some bushes, saw an old grizzly as white as a goat. For
a long time we watched him through the glasses, and that
evening he again appeared, and we watched him until dark.
He was a fine specimen and looked as though he might be

My First Trip to the Selkirks in

one of those bald-faced fighters that we had come to find,
so we determined that if he was there in the morning we
would make an effort to get him.

In the morning, sure enough, the bear was there, so we
took our guns and started for the cliff. It was a terrific
climb. The hill was so steep that in many places we could
only proceed by literally pulling ourselves up hand over
hand by the bushes. However, after three hours of heart-
breaking work, we gained the slide, but only to find our
patch of grass unreachable. In fact, the bushes were so
high and thick that we could not even see it; nor, guarded
as it was by declivities and obstructions, could we be cer-
tain where it lay. Fagged and footsore we climbed back
to camp. And there, high above us, and serenely beckon-
ing in the sunlight,Fhung our elusive clearing, and that even-
ing the big white grizzly again came out to mock us. We
named him "White Jim," and morning and evening, for
nearly three weeks, we saw that bear on this same patch of
ground. He had a way of sitting on his haunches near the
edge and swinging his head from side to side as though
enjoying the view. At last, as day by day the memory of
our difficulty grew fainter and the lure of that great white
skin grew greater, we could stand it no longer, and de-
cided to make another try, and this time to go prepared to
stay all night. So, for the second time, we scaled the all
but unscalable mountain, but not a place that was level
enough to lie on could we find, and worse yet, just as we got
there, a sudden and heavy wind set in. It snowed on the
hills and rained down in the bottoms, and, soaked and slip-
ping, we were glad enough to get back to camp with whole
bones, and never again tried to steal the pelt of White Jim.

H2 The Grizzly Bear

Every day during this time we had seen one or more
bear, and had tried all kinds of dodges to get a shot. We
cut trails from two directions through the brush to each
slide, so that whichever way the wind blew we could creep
up against it. We felled foot logs across the streams, and
as the high water took them out, we felled more. We ex-
hausted our strength and our ingenuity in ceaseless stalking
and planning, and our knowledge of the English language
in expressing our opinion of the country and the bears;
but the bears were shrewd, and not a bald face among them
offered to give us a scrap. And so five weeks after our
arrival, satisfied that whatever might be said of their cour-
age, the Selkirk bears were our superiors in cunning, we
tied up our tent door and walked twenty-two miles to the
settlements, intending to get horses and pack out our be-
longings. Arrived at the town, we called on an old pros-
pector who was said to have been up this stream, and who
had, if rumor spoke true, killed quite a number of griz-
zlies. Up to this time I had prided myself on being a
hunter, and was not a little crestfallen to think that we
had been unable to get so much as a shot at a bear. If, I
said to myself, this prospector had been able to get so
many, I should at least have been able to get one small one.
We asked him if he had, by clean hunting, ever killed a
bear up that creek. He said no, that he had not; he had
always baited them and then watched the bait.

We therefore decided to go back and try the bait
scheme. We. had thought of this before, but it seemed so
like taking unfair advantage of the animal that we had put
the thought aside. But now our sensibilities were some-
what blunted. We were bent on bear at any price, and we

My First Trip to the Selkirks 113

looked around and found a fellow who had an old wind-
broken horse which we bought for twenty dollars, and
started back for the bear country. It took us two days to
get that old horse to the point we wanted it, for every two
or three hundred yards we would have to stop and wait
until he got his wind; but at last we got him to a spot about
three miles above camp, led him across the creek, and
killed him at the edge of a slide fifty yards from the creek
and fifty feet from a cedar thicket. This, we had found,
was a sort of a general converging point for the bear, and
we had counted the tracks of twelve that had passed it in
a single night. About a hundred yards away we built a
blind, so arranged that we could climb up and enter it with-
out going near the bait.

We had already, some distance up the creek beyond
the blind, found an old deadfall that some prospector had
set up a few years before. Indeed, we afterward learned
that the man who said that he had shot the bear had
caught them in it. Coleman, who was determined to have
one of those bears, whether or no, now proposed that we
fix up and set this old trap. We therefore dragged the
head and neck of the horse up there, rebuilt the trap, set
it, and piled upon the top of it the largest and 'heaviest log
we could roll up. The trap was built between two large
cedar trees, so as to compel the bear to enter by the front
door, and Coleman rubbed blood over the lintel at the
entrance. We also cut off one of the front legs of the horse
and dragged it back to camp and placed it on the slide
where we had seen the second bear. This slide was about
four hundred yards above the creek and we had just got
back to camp after placing this last bait, and I was doing

H4 The Grizzly Bear

some cooking, when Coleman rushed in and said that
White Jim from the high cliff was after the bait that we
had just placed. We had been careful to place it so that
it could be seen from camp, and when I hurried out, there,
sure enough, was our old white bear, who had evidently
concluded to try another slide for a change, eating grass,
digging roots, and nipping off buds, not over fifty yards
from the bait. He worked up almost to the bait, but never
so much as sniffed at it, and soon most provokingly turned
into the brush and disappeared. Later the bears actually
fed all around this bait, but not one ever touched it.

We kept a sharp lookout on the old deadfall and on
the horse, but for four days nothing touched either bait,
although we saw several bears on the slide and their tracks
indicated that they had passed close by it. One morning
I went up to the old horse's carcass and saw that a bear had
made his breakfast from a portion of the shoulder, and so
we arranged to keep watch that evening. We did not ex-
pect that the bear would return that soon, but we were
taking no chances.

During the entire time we had been at this camp we
had never seen a bear out later than ten o'clock in the morn-
ing, and none had ever come out before two in the after-
noon, so we figured that it would be useless to watch
between those hours. That evening we watched until
dark, but no bears came. The following morning we
reached our blind a little after daylight, and finding that
nothing had been disturbed, we waited there until ten
o'clock and then went to camp. We did some cooking, cut
some wood, and returning to the blind at two o'clock found
to our amazement and chagrin that the horse had vanished

My First Trip to the Selkirks 115

— lock, stock, and barrel. An old grizzly had come during
our absence and had dragged the carcass into the cedars.

As it was quite beyond our combined strength to drag
it back, we went to camp, got a rope, and fastening this to
the feet of the horse, turned the body over. We then swung
the carcass around and, with the rope, once more turned it
over. And by repeating this operation we finally got it
back to its original position. We now determined to keep
an unbroken watch as long as there was light enough to
see by, and as it was near the first of June, and there were
only about four hours of real darkness, we had to leave our
beds soon after midnight, get our breakfast, and climb the
three miles of trail by lantern light, in order to reach the
blind by the time it was light enough to see our bait with
field-glasses. We would then watch until about nine
b'clock in the morning, when one of us would go to camp,
do the cooking, get a lunch, and return about noon. Then
the other would go away and return about three o'clock,
when both would watch until it became so dark that we
could not see the bait.

For seven days we kept this up, and a good part of the
time it rained and was very cold, so that we had to carry up
blankets and rubber ponchos to wrap about us. When
tnbrbughly chilled, we took turns stealing down trail to a
hill behind which we would run back and forth until
warmed up, and all this time the bear never came, except
at night when it was so dark that we could not see to shoot,
and every time he came he dragged the remains of the old
horse to the cedars, and then we, in turn, would drag it
back again. And thus, finally, there remained nothing
but polished bones.

n6 The Grizzly Bear

All this time nothing had happened at the deadfall.
After there was nothing more to pick from the horse's bones
at the blind, we came to the conclusion that we had had
enough, and as we were now out of supplies, we decided to
take a last look at the deadfall, spring it, walk out and get
the pack-horses, and give it up until the next year. Cole-
man, as a last attention, had placed the bones in a neat pile,
and the next morning on our way up the canon we were
astonished to find that the bear had again been there and
that the bones were gone. We went on up to the deadfall,
and here another surprise awaited us. The bear had been
there also. He had climbed up by the back way, had torn
out the logs, had hurled them to the four winds, had taken
the head and neck of the horse, and had left for parts un-
known. When Coleman looked at the wreck, he sat down
on one of the logs and, rubbing his head, said, "Let's go
home. We are babes in the wood, compared to these
bears." So once more we fastened up our tent door and
took our guns and walked out of the country. We had
seen twenty-one grizzlies and had never fired a shot. We
had only once been near enough to shoot at one, and that
was the first one we had seen. So we went home to think
it over, and plan and scheme until another spring, when
we were determined to try it again.

XIII
THE SELKIRKS REVISITED

THE next spring — for we held to our determination
to again match wits with the Selkirk grizzlies — we
reached our old hunting grounds during the first week of
May, Mr. G. O. Shields being also of the party. This
time, however, in pursuance of a plan settled upon during
the winter, we took along three dogs, purposing to see what
could be accomplished by running the bear. We hired
these from a man who bred them for running coyotes and
cougars, but who guaranteed them to run "anything that
wore hair," and we paid fifty dollars for the use of the
three for the trip, agreeing that if we wished to keep any of
them, or if any of them were lost, we would pay one hun-
dred dollars each for them. They were a cross between
the foxhound and the bloodhound, and had good speed,
being able to run down a coyote in a few hours.

When we arrived at our former camp, we found that
an old trapper had already moved in on snow-shoes and
had about a dozen traps set. He had not yet caught any
bear, although he had seen two the day before our arrival,
and, as we did not care to run hundred-dollar dogs among
set bear traps, Coleman decided to buy the old fellow out

and have the field to ourselves. It took two days' talking

117

n8 The Grizzly Bear

to strike a bargain, and then it was agreed that, for one
hundred and fifty dollars, the trapper would spring his
traps and leave the country until we were through hunting,
when he was to be at liberty to come back and take up his
work where he had dropped it.

Just as the bargain was closed I looked up the slide
where we had seen our second bear the year before, and
there, six or eight hundred yards away, was an old grizzly
unconcernedly eating grass. Coleman and I seized our
rifles and started across the valley toward one of the trails
we had cut for such occasions, and the old trapper, in a
holiday mood, reached for his gun and brought up the
rear. We had the creek to cross and a steep bank to climb
beyond it, and between the camp and the creek there was
at least four feet of snow, its surface made treacherous and
insecure by hidden cavities that had melted around the
warm trunks of fallen trees. Just as we reached the creek
we heard a cry, and turning, saw the old man's face pro-
jecting ludicrously from a snow-drift, and looking like a
red and angry sun poised at the horizon. It was no time,
however, for either jokes or rescues, and Coleman and I
crossed the creek, climbed the bank, struggled through a
thicTcet of brush surmounting it, and gained the trail that
we had cut the year before; and then, with bent backs and
silent steps, we worked our way to the edge of the little
stream fed by the melting snow and just beyond which we
had seen the bear. Cautiously we covered the last few
steps, cautiously we peered between the branches, and (it
was so like old times that it made us feel at home) the
bear was gone.

As we stood for a time peering carefully about us, my

The Selkirks Revisited 119

eye was caught by something in the bushes just across the
slide — something that looked like hair moving in the
wind — and I told Coleman that I believed the bear was
lying down over there in the sun. He, however, pooh-
poohed the idea, saying that for his part he did not be-
lieve these northern grizzlies ever lay down anywhere; and
he proceeded to jump the creek and start across the slide.
As he did so I saw the spot I had taken to be a sleeping
bear move, raise its head, look over its shoulder at Cole-
man, and start to move away; and as there was no chance
to give Coleman the shot, I hurriedly fired myself and
scored a clean miss. The bear was now well on his feet and
under pretty good headway, but I would have reached his
shoulder with my second shot had he not, just as I pressed
the trigger, turned his head to look at us and taken the
bullet full in the mouth, which it swept clean of front teeth
on both jaws. Coleman now got into the game, and as the
bear was going straight away from him, planted a shot
fairly in the centre of his back, cutting the spine, and he
rolled down the bank to our very feet. And so, at last,
tamedly enough we made our first kill among the reputedly
savage grizzlies of the Selkirks.

The bear was not a large one, weighing only about
three hundred pounds, and Shields, who, with the old
trapper, now came up, said it was not the one we had
started after. That one, it seems, had moved off into the
bushes almost as soon as we left camp, and examination
showed that the one we killed had had a very comfortable
bed in the brush and had probably been lying there for
some time.

The next day the old trapper made the round of his

120 The Grizzly Bear

traps, sprung them, and taking one or two of them with
him, went over the range to our left, to where he said there
was also good bear country. We were now anxious to find
a fresh trail and see what the dogs would do with the griz-
zlies, or — for we owned ourselves subject to doubts — what
a grizzly would do to the dogs. The following morning,
some distance up-stream, we came across tracks that
had evidently been made the evening before, and as these
led toward camp, and we thought the animal might be
near by, we followed them up and jumped the bear within
two hundred yards. He immediately plunged downhill
into a thicket near the creek, and leaving Coleman to
watch the place, I went back to camp to fetch the hounds.
On our return I found that the bear had not come out, and
when the dogs saw his track in the snow they stopped, took
one good sniff, and then gave tongue in a way that made
the canon sound like a hurdy-gurdy.

But the bear at the very start had a surprise to spring
on us. The water in the creek was bank high, and so boil-
ing swift that we thought nothing could live in it for a
moment. We had therefore taken it for granted that the
bear, when the dogs dislodged him, would have to run
either up or down its banks or toward the hill. Instead of
this, however, he made straight for the creek, plunged in,
and had crossed before we could come within shot of him.

A moment later the three dogs, baying their best,
plunged into the current and were instantly swept down-
stream at race-horse speed; while we stood open-mouthed
and mentally entered up three hundred dollars for drowned
dogs on the debit side of the ledger. But the dogs were
game. Swimming desperately, they at last, far down the

The Selkirks Revisited 121

creek, managed, one by one, to make the shore. And then,
giving but a moment to shaking themselves free of cold water
and bad memories, they once more gave tongue and took
up the pursuit. Coleman and I, in order to cross, had to
go down-stream quite a distance to our foot-log, and by the
time we had retraced our steps the chase had swept out
of hearing. We followed the trail for half a mile or so and
found that the bear was making straight up the side of the
mountain, and thinking it likely that he was heading across
toward the little bottom where we had killed the horse the
year previous, and where so many trails converged, we
decided to skirt the base of the hill instead of scaling it.
But when we reached the bottom we found no trace of the
bear, nor could we hear the dogs, and as Coleman by now
was nearly tuckered out bucking the deep snow, he de-
cided to return to camp.

But for my own part I had no such intention. Seeing
the first part of the bear's trail had fired me to see more of
it, and so, parting from Coleman at the point where the
grizzly had left the water, I followed in his wake. For
some distance he had kept alongside the hill, and then, find-
ing that the dogs were nearing him, he had turned straight
up the mountain. The surface of the snow was soft and his
tracks told their story plainly, and he was a wily old cam-
paigner, and a strategist that knew his own advantages.
In going up the mountain he had deliberately picked the
worst possible going, and, in places, had even scaled cliffs
that the dogs had had to go around. Again, he had turned
at right angles and run horizontally along hillsides so steep
that the dogs, to keep from falling headlong, had had to
give ground and veer downhill. He accomplished this

122 The Grizzly Bear

feat and kept his huge weight from slipping downward by
simply twisting his fore paws till his huge claws engaged
the snow like hooks. To put it plainly, when he was
headed south, his fore claws pointed east, uphill.

What with these tactics, and his natural speediness,
he was so far ahead of the dogs when he reached the sum-
mit of the mountain that, as his trail plainly showed, he
had stopped and stood on his hind legs to look or listen for
them, and then, dropping again on all-fours, he had started
down the opposite slope. Now, if his tactics in the ascent
had been masterly, his method of going down was spec-
tacular. The snow was comparatively soft for a depth of
two feet or so, and that bear's trail looked like the track of
a huge boulder. He had simply turned on full steam,
pulled the throttle wide open, and let her go. There were
places where I took nine steps to cover one of his jumps.

Arrived at the bottom of the mountain I found that,
after all, the bear had made for and passed the place at
which we had looked for him, and that had we waited we
would probably have got a shot at him. As it was he
had followed one of our cut trails for half a mile and then
again turned up the mountain; and as it had begun to rain
and I had no coat, and as no man could successfully follow
a bear afoot in that snow, I also decided to return to camp.

But fortune is a capricious lady, especially in the wil-
derness. She takes the keenest delight in making game of
our best efforts and in mocking our pet vanities, and then
she tosses the unexpected into our laps. Just as I turned
back a large grizzly came breaking through the brush at
my right, straight into the slide where I was standing, and,
without moving a step, I dropped him with a single shot.

The Selkirks Revisited 123

He was a fine animal, much larger than the first one we had
killed, and after looking him over I left him where he had
fallen, and we came up the next day and skinned him.

The dogs did not return to camp for about nine hours,
and while we never knew whether they caught up with the
bear or not, we had our own opinions. I doubt, indeed,
if, master of strategy as he was, and with the lead he had
when I turned back, the dog ever lived that could have
caught him, or, for the matter of that, any grizzly in those
hills that felt disposed to run. As we were to discover
later, however, by no means all of them were so disposed.
But the alternative that they adopted and its effect upon
these particular dogs was a puzzle we were a long time in
solving.

Meanwhile our enthusiasm for hunting bears with dogs
suffered an eclipse. It seemed to us that the bear and the
dogs had all the fun, and we could not see where our
chances of a shot came in. So we tied the hounds up in
camp and reverted for a while to our original tactics.

Toward evening the next day we climbed up to the big
slides where we had once set the old deadfall, and sighted
two grizzlies feeding along the edges of the bushes. When
we had succeeded in creeping up to within three hundred
yards of them I thought it best to risk a shot; but Coleman
decided that, as they had not yet seen us, we could get a
little nearer, and although one of them stood up and
sniffled over his shoulder, when he dropped down, and both
went on feeding their way toward a clump of brush, Cole-
man started to cross a small creek in order to approach
them. As he did so we saw the bears, now on the opposite
side of the brush and two hundred yards further away,

124 The Grizzly Bear

sprinting for all they were worth for the mountain. We at
once began to shoot, but though we saw dirt fly up, now
in front and now behind them, we failed to hit them, and
they soon veered to the left and disappeared up a gulch,
while we returned to camp, promising each other to be
more prudent another time.

We had already seen the tracks of the old grizzly that
had eaten our horse the previous year, and that we had
nicknamed " Big Foot. " He had evidently made several
trips to the old bones, and we decided to make a try for
him in the morning. After breakfast, therefore, we walked
up to the slide and, as luck would have it, the first thing
that we saw was our old friend about four hundred yards
away, digging roots and browsing in the open ground. We
immediately sat down and held a paw-wow, the subject of
debate being whether we should shoot from where we were
or try to get nearer. The experience of the previous day
finally decided us and, taking careful aim, we both fired at
the same time. Big Foot jumped about five feet into the
air, turned his nose up the hill, and beat his own best rec-
ord into a clump of juniper bushes. We thought we had
wounded him and I was about to go to camp and get the
dogs, when we saw him appear far up the side of the moun-
tain on a boulder that overlooked the valley. And when
I planted a ball against the rock directly under him, he
turned a complete back somersault and, landing in a cloud
of dust among the bushes, disappeared. This time we
returned to camp as disgusted with prudence as the day
previous we had been out of humor with rashness.

We now thought we might get a bear by baiting, so we
took the body of the grizzly we had shot, roasted it, and

The Selkirks Revisited 125

placed it where the old horse had been killed the year be-
fore. But the bears did not touch it.

The old trapper came over to see us and reported seeing
quite a number of bears in his part of the country. He had
wounded one, but it got away, and he had also set several
traps, but none of the animals could be coaxed to walk into
them. He had used fish, honey, and molasses and had even
killed wild goats for bait, but the bear would have none of
them. After he had gone back, however, having killed a
goat ourselves, we laid some pieces of meat near the bones
of the old horse. We had also tied a choice piece for our
own use to the end of a rope, and had swung it from a high
limb for safe keeping. The next day we found that the bait
had not been touched, but the piece we had swung from
the tree was gone. The tree was clawed and torn, the rope
was broken, and our goat ham had vanished.

This was almost too much for Coleman. He said he
had tried it the year before, and he was satisfied that no
one was smart enough to get ahead of these northern griz-
zlies, but I could not for the life of me understand how a
grizzly got up that tree. I would not, indeed, believe that
a bear had stolen the meat, and so proposed to set a trap,
not, however, with the expectation of catching one. We
therefore took one belonging to the old trapper and set it
at the foot of the tree, tied the rest of the goat meat to the
rope, and again swung it in the branches, and the next
morning we had a very large brown bear. This was the
first bear other than a grizzly that we had ever seen in that
country, and we were, of course, sorry to have caught it.
It was the first bear I had ever caught in a trap.

We were now at our wits' end and ready to follow up

1 26 The Grizzly Bear

any hint that the dogs gave us. We had turned them out one
morning for a few minutes' exercise, and although startled
when they immediately bolted howling across the creek,
when they stopped barking after running a few hundred
yards, we paid no further attention to them; but when they
did not come back by the time we were through lunch, we
decided to go after them. The truth is that we were rather
uneasy because, when the old trapper had left, he had told
us of one trap that he had forgotten to spring, and we had
promised to attend to it; but it had slipped our minds, and
now that the dogs were out we became worried about it.
He had told us where it lay, and I started to go up and
spring it, but as I crossed the creek I stopped about half-
way over to listen, thinking I heard the dogs, and just as I
halted, the bark on the log gave way and I shot down,
striking my side heavily on the log and breaking two ribs.
After climbing out of the creek and getting my breath, I
dragged myself up to the trap and sprung it, and then got
back to camp, and when Coleman came in we took some
flour sacks, made a corset for my broken ribs, and then sat
down and waited for the dogs. They did not return, how-
ever, until some time in the night, when they came in and
stuck their cold noses in our faces. We tied them up and
returned to bed, deciding to go up-stream in the morning
and find out what they had been doing.

After an early breakfast we started, and not over two
hundred yards from camp we saw bear tracks that meas-
ured eight by twelve and a half inches and dog tracks par-
alelling them on either side. This bear, evidently, had not
run; he had crossed the creek and walked steadily along up
the trail. Every little while we could see where he had

The Selkirks Revisited 127

turned and struck at the dogs, and where they had jumped
aside, but only to come back when he moved on. But
why we had not heard them bark was a mystery to us, and
this only deepened as we followed the trail for about three
miles and found that during this entire distance the bear
had not gone out of a walk. Of course we felt that we
had lost a fine bear.

We decided, therefore, to try the dogs again.

There was a slide across the creek from us that we had
named the Gateway. It ran through a deep gulch in the
face of the mountain, and opened out suddenly into a fan-
shaped declivity that sloped to the creek nearly half a mile
below, and was covered clear to the bottom with fifty feet
of snow. Above this opening, the mountain on one side
showed steep, high cliffs, broken into terraces. On the
other grew an open forest with little underbrush, but much
down timber, and just beyond, round a point of the hills,
was a mountain stream that fairly hurled itself down to the
creek. The whole mountain was so steep that we could
only climb it by grasping at bushes and fallen trees.

Just as we came opposite to this slide on our next ex-
cursion, we missed the dogs and, turning to look for them,
heard a chorus of barks receding up-stream on the other
side of the creek. We followed, but after going half a mile,
the dogs turned and made straight for the Gateway, and
when they suddenly stopped barking, determined to dis-
cover the meaning of such conduct, we crossed the stream
and found them sniffing about the edge of the mountain
torrent, the bear evidently having taken to the water and
put them off the scent. We waited some time, but the dogs
seemed unable to pick up the trail, and as my broken ribs

128 The Grizzly Bear

incapacitated me from much climbing, we gave it up. The
next day we tried the Gateway by ourselves. When about
halfway up the slide, we saw a big grizzly some hundreds
of yards away, moving along as though time were no ob-
ject to him. Coleman tried to get within range, but when
he had gone fifty yards or so the bear turned and, still with
every appearance of leisure, disappeared behind some
bushes. After some waiting, as he did not reappear, we
went to investigate, and found that, as soon as he had got
behind the bushes, he had started on a dead run. I then
went back to camp for the dogs, and when we put them
on the trail, they promptly followed it round the point to
the torrent and again lost it.

The first of June, the date when we had ordered our
pack-horses to be sent in for us, was now approaching.
The last week of May, Dr. C. S. Penfield, of Spokane,
joined us, and we continued to hunt every day, but with
no better success. At last we had but one day left before
we were to go out, and we decided to take the dogs and
look up our old friend Big Foot. We had no trouble in
jumping him, but, as usual, he easily threw the dogs off the
trail, and so, as a last resort, we thought we would give the
old fellow in the Gateway a final try.

We laid very elaborate plans. The doctor and Coleman
were to stand at the main creek, one above the slide and
one below it. I was to take the dogs across, let them loose,
and then hasten to the torrent around the point of the
mountain, and lie in wait to see what it was the bear did
to throw the dogs off his track. Almost as soon as I started
up the slide, the dogs struck a scent and headed up-stream.
This was something we had not counted on, as they had

The Selkirks Revisited 129

nearly always, after circling about in the thicket, made for
the point. It was useless, however, for me to try to change
the programme, so, for lack of anything better to do, I kept
on toward the Gateway. The dogs swept on up-stream
and soon passed out of hearing, and I kept on up the slide.

As I approached the point where the dogs had always
lost the trail, I saw that an old she bear and two cubs had
been digging there for roots that morning, it having
rained nearly all night and the tracks having been made
since it stopped. I then climbed the high snow banks and
listened for the dogs, and soon I could hear them, appar-
ently returning. On they came nearer and nearer, while
I, with a clear view for two hundred yards in every direc-
tion, stood with my gun half raised, waiting for the bear to
break cover and make for his favorite place at the point.
I was certain that this time he was making his last run.
But when the dogs appeared, going like mad, there was
not a solitary thing in front of them. They passed just
below me and, when they reached the bank of the stream,
turned suddenly to the right, ran up into the point, and
as suddenly ceased barking.

I watched and waited, and they soon came out and
ranged about — interested, but not at all excited — where
the bear and cubs had been digging. I was now utterly
at sea and thoroughly determined to find out what had
become of that old she bear and her cubs, and why the
dogs should run so fast and true to this point and then lose
the trail. It seemed certain now that this bear was the
one they were after, and that they had simply followed her
in her various meanderings up the stream and back again.
I therefore whistled to them and started to crawl through

130 The Grizzly Bear

the thick brush into the open timber beyond. My broken
ribs were not yet healed and I had my gun in my hand and
a camera on my back, and as it was hard work, I made no
effort to get through without noise. The last thing I
thought of was that that bear was in there.

Upon reaching the farthest edge of the tangle I came
to a fallen tree that lay about four feet from the ground,
with the brush so thick underneath it that it was necessary
to climb over it. Catching hold of a limb with each hand,
I drew myself up, painfully enough, till my knees rested
on the trunk, and there, not over fifty feet up the hill
from me, with her fore paws planted on another log, I
saw a grizzly that, just then, looked to me to be about the
size of a cow. I made a frantic effort to get on my feet,
and as soon as she saw that it was not the dogs that were
after her, the bear started pell-mell up the hill. I had no
time to stand up and aim, so I fired off-hand from my
knees and then quickly grasped a limb to keep from pitch-
ing forward on my nose. I hit the bear somewhere, for she
rolled back against the log, but, almost instantly recovering
herself, again started up the mountain. I took another
off-hand shot and again grabbed the limb to keep from
falling. Again the bear rolled back, started off again, and
for the third time I sent a shot after her; but this time she
kept on up the hill, and the last I saw of her she was dis-
appearing round the bluffs into the timber with those fool
dogs now yelping in pursuit.

And then the solution of our mystery suddenly dawned
on me. The bear had not fooled the dogs at all. The dogs
had fooled us. They were guaranteed to "run anything
that wore hair," and as long as the thing that wore hair

The Selkirks Revisited 131

would run, they were as good as their guarantee. But
there their responsibility ended. When they struck a bear
trail they followed it, yelping with anticipation; when they
jumped the bear, if he ran, they ran after, still yelping. If
he refused to run and contented himself with walking,
they followed in silent hope of his changing his mind. But
if he entered a thicket and stopped, they took it as a sign
that there was nothing doing, and came home. This was
why we had heard no sign from them the day they had es-
corted the bear three miles up the trail from camp. This
was why they had always stopped at the Gateway, where
the bear took refuge in the down timber. This was why
Big Foot was still living up Wilson's Creek. I sat down
and laughed. Then I took up the bear's trail and found
such a showing of blood as to make me believe that she
lay dead not far away. But it gave me so much pain to
pull myself up the hill that I soon had to give over, and as
it set in to rain that evening and kept it up all night, the
blood was washed away so that we never found the bear.
We did take the dogs and go after the cubs, and we jumped
them at the point where I had shot the mother. I saw one
of them as he ran with the dogs after him, but these
stopped barking as soon as he stopped running, and after
a couple of hours we gave it up. It was impossible to get
the cubs out of that brush with those dogs. That night
the horses came, and the next day we packed up and re-
turned home.

Up to this time I had never doubted that a she grizzly
would fight for her young. I would have staked almost
anything that an old grizzly with cubs would charge every-
thing within fifty yards. Here, however, was one that I

132 The Grizzly Bear

got within fifty feet of and wounded, and yet she scuttled
off and left her cubs to look after themselves. One other
instance I saw, a year later, at the same place. I was hunt-
ing with another party when we saw from the opposite
side of the creek an old grizzly and three cubs come out on
the snow, walk across, and go to digging roots. We began
a stalk, and when some two hundred yards away, they
got wind of us and started back. My companion and I
took several running shots at them, and one of the cubs
was slightly wounded across the back. The four fled up
the trail where I had chased the wounded bear the year
before, and in this trail our old friend the trapper, who was
in there again, had set a trap, and the wounded cub ran
right into it. He at once, and very naturally, began to
bawl, and we fully expected the old bear to charge us. As
she did not, I went up and forced the cub to continue his
bawling while the other man stood, with his gun ready to
shoot when the mother appeared. But she and the other
cubs continued their retreat and left the bawling cub to
his fate.

XIV
THE UNEXPECTED

IN hunting, as in other matters, it is more often than not
the unexpected that happens. The actual earned runs
in the game, especially in the game of grizzly hunting, are
few and far between. To make one of them requires a
varied knowledge, the skill that comes from long experi-
ence, dogged perseverance, and an infinitude of patience.
And the memory of success is a joy forever. But the
candid hunter, when he looks backward, will own that,
for the most part, the grizzlies he has worked hardest for
are the ones he never got, and that more opportunities are
grasped than made.

Some years ago Mr. M. W. Pope, of Baltimore, and
myself were hunting wild goats in northern British Colum-
bia. This was virtually the only game to be found in that
part of the country, and there were none too many goats.
There were, it is true, a few sheep, but they were so few
that we did not consider them; and as for bears, there were
practically none.

I had but recently spent three months in the same
region, trying to photograph game, but with little success.
At a large lick I had seen about twenty goats, and in an-
other valley a few sheep, but I did not see a single deer or
bear, and only two or three bear tracks.

133

134 The Grizzly Bear

Mr. Pope joined me the last of August, and we worked
our way back to where I had seen the goats, this being the
game we had come to hunt. The animals, however, had
moved, and we decided to go farther up toward the divide
between the Saskatchewan and the Athabaska Rivers, and
finally camped on the Saskatchewan side of the divide, not
far from the summit.

The next morning we saddled two horses and rode up
toward the crest, some three miles away, and when near
the point where we would have to leave our horses, I looked
up to our right and, on top of the ridge above the tim-
ber line, saw quite a large grizzly, running for all he was
worth. I called Pope's attention to him, and as he was en-
tirely out of range, being some eight hundred yards away,
and as we supposed from his rapid flight that he had seen
us, we sat quietly on the horses and looked at him. The
horses, too, saw the bear and they also watched him. For
two hundred yards or so he continued his flight, and then,
to our amazement, he turned down the ridge and came
straight toward us on the jump. This was another story,
and, while we both dismounted, I held the horses by their
heads so they could not make any disturbance, and Pope
stepped a few feet ahead and dropped on one knee ready
for a shot in case the bear came near enough. He was armed
with a .45-70 rifle, while I had only a Stevens .38 shot-gun
for shooting grouse.

The bear came on downhill at the same mad gait until
he had covered half the distance and was not over four
hundred yards above us, when he suddenly dashed into a
little thicket of fir bushes and disappeared. As he did
not come out again we went into a committee of the whole

HE LANDED IN THE LITTLE TRAIL THAT WE WERE FOLLOWING

The Unexpected 135

to discuss our chances of crawling up on him. We were
sure now that he had seen us, but there was not a bush
between us and the bear, and there was nothing we could
tie the horses to, and we did not dare leave them for fear
they would run and frighten the bear. At this stage of the
discussion, however, we saw the bushes sway, out jumped
the grizzly, and down he came again straight toward us. It
seemed as if he must surely have seen us, but I told Pope
to let him come as long as he would, and he actually came
up within a hundred and fifty yards of us, when he turned
to the left, stopped, and commenced digging out a ground
squirrel.

This was our chance. The bear was standing broad-
side on, and Pope fired, hitting him just back of the shoul-
der and piercing the heart. It was a good shot. The bear
turned a somersault, cart-wheeled down toward us, and
never stopped until he landed in the little trail that we were
following, and not more than thirty yards from where we
stood.

This was Pope's first grizzly, and from the stories he
had been told of how wild these bears were and how hard
to kill, he had felt that it was doubtful if he ever got one.
Yet we, with the two horses, had been standing all the time
in plain view. Not a bush screened us, and the horses kept
their ears pointed forward and watched the bear from the
time he left the ridge until Pope shot him. It was a
strange adventure.

A year or so later, while photographing in the Bitter
Roots with Mr. W. E. Carlin, we spent most of the sum-
mer and early fall on one of the divides between the South
and Middle Forks of the Clearwater River. We were

136 The Grizzly Bear

photographing small birds and animals, and were only
doing enough hunting to supply the larder.

Once, when we had been without meat for a couple of
days, Carlin, who was not feeling well, urged me to go
out alone and bring in some game. I wished him to go
with me, however, and, as an inducement, suggested that
we take the horses and go some twelve miles to the west
over to a large marsh and hunt for small moose. After
some coaxing he consented, and we got the horses and rode
over to the marsh. This was always a fine place for moose
and grizzlies, and I have seldom been there without seeing
one or the other, and more often both, but we were not
thinking of anything but moose at the time.

The marsh was two or three miles long and from a few
hundred yards to a mile in width, with several little ponds
scattered about it and a small stream running zig-zag
through it. It was mostly covered with small birch brush
from two to six feet high. And there were little open parks
here and there, in which grew a plant much relished by the
grizzly. Arrived at the marsh we saw a good many fresh
tracks of moose, and also noticed where an old grizzly with
two cubs had been working among the plants; and as the
bear signs were of different ages, we concluded that this
family had been spending the summer there. We worked
slowly up the stream, but saw neither moose nor bear, and
the farther up we went the less sign we saw of bear and the
more of moose.

After a time Carlin said he felt ill and would have to
sit down and let me go on alone, but I persuaded him to go
with me to a little bend in the creek, promising that if we
saw nothing then he could wait and I would try and get

The Unexpected 137

the meat. He went on then, in a half-hearted way, and we
had gone perhaps three hundred yards, when, on looking
across the creek and behind some bushes among a few fir-
trees, I saw what I took to be a moose. I had scarcely
called out, "Look at the small moose," when the moose
suddenly stood up on its hind legs and looked over the
bushes at us.

Carlin said, "It's a bear," and gave her a .30-40 bullet
through the shoulders, and she reversed ends so quickly
that we could not afterward remember seeing a motion
until we saw the bottoms of her hind feet two yards in the
air. Then she struck the ground with a loud roar, and two
cubs joined in with their bawls. We sprang across the
creek, found the old bear down and moaning fearfully,
and Carlin planted another bullet in her head that shat-
tered it into many pieces.

The cubs were in the bushes and they now set up a roar.
One of them showed itself and I laid it out, and about the
same time Carlin got a shot at the other and ended the
encounter. This was the first time that either of us had
had the opportunity of observing the effect of high-power
bullets on living targets. When we skinned the old bear,
notwithstanding that no shot had hit her back of the
shoulder, we found that the bottoms of her hind feet were
clotted with blood under the skin, presumably owing to
the shock.

The excitement cured Carlin of his illness, and in spite
of the fact that there was no meat for dinner, we returned
to camp in high spirits.

XV
A SPRING-GUN AVOIDED

THE grizzly bear far excels in cunning any other ani-
mal found throughout the Rocky Mountains, and
indeed, for that matter, he far excels them all combined.
I have seen many and various examples of his shrewdness,
but never, perhaps, a more striking instance than one
which took place while I was hunting with a party in the
Bitter Roots. We had been trying to catch a grizzly alive,
and had been using for the purpose a bear trap with ropes
stuffed into the corners of the jaws, so that these would
only come together far enough to hold the bear's foot with-
out inflicting an injury.

We were camped on a large branch of the Clearwater
River, and one of the party having killed an elk, we
dressed it and carried the trimmings to a point about a mile
from camp. Here we had built a pen of logs and in this
we planned to set the trap, attached to a light log so that
the bear would not pull his foot out in his struggles to get
free. On the second day I went to examine the trap and
found the pen demolished, the bait taken out, and every-
thing that was movable piled on top of the trap. Fifty feet
away I saw a large pile of moss and leaves scraped together
and beside it a bed, where the bear had been lying. I
kicked open the mass of leaves and found the remains of

138

A Spring-Gun Avoided 139

the bait hidden there. I then dug the trap out from the
wreck of the pen, set it, and slid it in among the leaves and
moss, throwing some meat around it, and that night the
bear came again, picked up all the loose meat, but touched
nothing under the moss.

A mile up the stream there was an open hill, in the side
of which there was a large elk lick where three of our party
had been watching, hoping to bag an entire family of elk
that frequented it. The morning after the bear made his
second visit to the trap this family of elk, a bull, a cow, and
a calf, were killed on a small flat above a stream that en-
tered our river near the lick. This stream ran through a
deep gully and at the point where the elk were killed the
sides of this gully formed a sort of shoot, sloping at an ex-
tremely steep angle, from a point a hundred feet above the
water, sheer to its edge. At the north end of this shoot a
mass of down timber, their ends sticking in the water,
formed an effective barrier. At the south it was bounded
by an outcropping of rock which fell, in a succession of
ledges three or four feet high, to the water in front and to
the shoot at the side. Twenty-five or thirty feet from the
creek, in the middle of this shoot, grew an old cedar-tree.

Of the three animals that had been shot, we dressed
the calf and took it to camp, all except the entrails; we
saved the head and hide of the cow, together with the loins
and the other choice cuts, but of the bull we took only the
head and the hide. All that was left we dragged to the top
of this shoot and rolled down it. The carcass of the cow
happened to hit the tree and lodged against its trunk. The
old bull brought up at the bottom. And there we left
them.

140 The Grizzly Bear

The next morning one of the party happened to pass
the place and found that our grizzly had been there, had
made a meal off of what was left of the cow, had then gone
down, seized the carcass of the bull, dragged it up the
steep hill, and placed it on top of the cow. He had then
gone down again, gathered up the remains of the calf,
added them to the pile, and, digging into the side of the
hill, had buried the lot.

On the opposite side of the creek the bank was equally
steep. At its top there was a heavy growth of timber and
underbrush, and we found that the bear had come from
this cover, and that his trail, winding down the bank,
passed between two large cedar-trees on his way to the
creek. We therefore set the trap between these two cedars
and watched the place until dark, but the bear did not
show himself. The next morning, however, we found that
he had been to his cache for a meal, but that, instead of
travelling his old trail between the cedars, he had circled
them, and although we watched again that night, we saw
nothing of him.

We were now within two days of the expiration of our
stay, and some members of the party, who had never seen
so large a bear (his track measured fifteen inches), de-
termined to set a spring-gun for him. After some planning
they settled upon the following scheme : A few feet down-
hill from the old cedar tree, behind which the bear had
buried the meat, they rigged up a gun with its butt against
the base of the rocks, and its muzzle pointing toward the
barrier of down timber. A silk fish-line was then attached
to the trigger and fastened at the other end to one of these
fallen trees. Thus, if the bear approached his cache from

A Spring-Gun Avoided 141

below, he would of necessity run into this stretched cord,
and receive the bullet in his side. He had, heretofore,
always approached from this direction, but in order to
make assurance doubly sure, another gun was rigged
above the tree, with a line stretched parallel to the first and
about twelve feet from it.

Having completed these arrangements we returned to
camp, but though we slept with one ear open, the expected
report was never heard. The next morning when we went
out to examine our trap we found written in footprints on
the dirt as wonderful a record of animal sagacity as I have
ever seen.

The bear had come as usual for his evening meal. He
had come down from his covert, circled the two cedars
where our trap still waited for him, crossed the creek, and
climbed to where the lower string was stretched across his
path. But though he had come up to it he had not touched
it. On the contrary his tracks showed that he had turned
to his left, followed the string to the barrier of fallen trees,
had found himself unable to get around it there, had
turned and followed it to the rocks, had found himself
blocked there also, and had retraced his steps to the creek.
He had then circled the rocky point, had climbed to the
flat above, and had tried to reach his cache from the other
side. But here he had again encountered the suspicious
string. Once more he followed it to the down timber,
turned and made his way along to the rocks, and then the
wily old fellow had climbed out on to the rocky point and,
making his way from ledge to ledge, had arrived safely
between the two strings, eaten his meal in comfort, and
gone out the way he came. We never got that bear.

XVI
A PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPEDITION

A GREAT many years ago my interest in natural his-
tory, which grew out of my interest in hunting,
caused me to give a certain amount of attention to photog-
raphy. Little by little, as I became more expert in this,
I took to carrying a camera with me on my various expe-
ditions, and finally I came to making excursions with no
other end in view than the photographing of game. It was
a long time, however, before I developed a definite am-
bition to photograph a grizzly, because the difficulties
which presented themselves in that field were so many
that at first I saw no way of overcoming them.

Much hunting has not only made the grizzly very shy,
but has caused him gradually to become even more noc-
turnal or, to be accurate, crepuscular, than he was origi-
nally. It follows that in these latter days the chances of
obtaining a daylight picture of a grizzly are almost negli-
gible, and though by some lucky chance one might meet a
bear in a snap-shotting light when one had a camera ready,
the coincidence would be too unlikely to depend upon.
When, therefore, I began to think seriously of attempting
to photograph these bears, I of necessity turned my mind

to flash-light, and for several years I worked and experi-

142

A Photographic Expedition 143

mented to that end. The most favorable time to operate
being between sundown and dark, it was impracticable
to set up a camera and leave the lens open and provide for
the exploding of a flash when the bear came along, and I
therefore set about perfecting an electrical device which
at the same time would explode the flash and spring the
shutter of the camera. My first idea was to have this
apparatus operated by the bear himself, and to that end
I constructed it so that the trigger could be tripped by
pressure applied to a fine thread or wire, which could be
stretched across the trail; but though I soon succeeded in
getting this mechanism to work well at home, actual
practice in the field developed a succession of difficulties
which had to be overcome little by little, and as field trials
were scarce and expensive, it took me a long time to ar-
rive at satisfactory results.

By the time my camera was in working order, the bears
on which I had expected to use it were all but things of the
past; and having heard for a number of years that the
grizzlies of the Yellowstone National Park had become
comparatively tame, and that it was no difficult task to
photograph them, and having hunted grizzlies in all the
country round the park without finding the bears there
different from what they were in other parts of the country,
I determined to take my camera to the park and study the
grizzly in this field. This was in 1906.

I was armed with a permit from Major Pitcher, the
acting superintendent, which allowed me to photograph
and study the grizzlies, provided I did not molest them in
any way. I went first to the Grand Canon. I found
there quite a number of grizzlies feeding in the evening at

144 The Grizzly Bear

the garbage dump back of the hotel, and for a few evenings
I watched them there in order to determine the direction
from which they came, and to ascertain how many were
using this feeding ground. After watching for a few even-
ings I found that there were about thirty grizzlies all told
that came there. There were several old she bears with
litters of cubs, several litters two and three years old that
had left their mothers, but were still running together, and
several old fellows that came and went by themselves.

While I was watching the dump in the evening, I trav-
elled the surrounding country by day to see if any of these
bears could be seen by daylight, and though I scoured
every thicket and gully, not a grizzly did I thus see during
some two weeks' sojourn there. In this respect they were
much more timid than they were in a great many places
throughout the Selkirk and Rocky Mountain ranges.

My next move was to find out where these bears hid
when they were not feeding, for I have never yet seen a
grizzly that did not have a home, either in some dense
thicket or in some heavy timber or in some high mountain.
I followed some of the more travelled trails for several
miles and found that nearly all of these grizzlies had their
headquarters in the range of mountains around Mt.
Washburn. I then selected their largest highway, and
after setting up my camera, concealed myself one evening
about a hundred feet from the trail and to leeward of it,
and watched for the coming of the grizzlies. Across the
trail I had stretched a number forty sewing thread, one end
attached to the electric switch and the other to a small
stake driven into the ground beyond the trail. Just below
where I had located, there was an open park in which the

A Photographic Expedition 14^5

bears had been feeding, as was shown by the grass that had
been nipped and the holes that had been dug for roots.

For some hours I waited in the bushes and fought gnats
and mosquitoes. I saw several black bears pass along the
hillside, but not a grizzly showed his nose until after the
sun had set and the little marsh in the park was covered
with a mantle of fog. Suddenly then, far up the trail,
appeared what at first looked like a shadow, so slowly
and silently did it move. But I knew at once, by the mo-
tion of the head and the long stride, that a grizzly was
coming to the bottom for a few roots and a feed of grass.

I watched closely to see if he acted differently from
bears elsewhere that are supposed to know less of man. I
could not, however, detect the slightest difference in his
actions from those of bears that had never seen Yellowstone
Park. All his movements were furtive and cautious, as if
he expected to meet an enemy at every step. He would
advance a few feet, and then stop, turn his head from side
to side, scent the air, and peer in every direction.

I was, of course, very anxious to see what he would do
when he came to the thread across the trail, and I had not
long to wait, for he came on steadily but slowly and, when
within ten feet of the thread, he stopped, poked out his
nose and sniffed two or three times, raised up on his hind
feet, took a few more sniffs, and then bolted up the trail in
the direction from which he had come. This bear did not
seem to have been very successfully tamed.

A few minutes after he had gone three more appeared.
These were evidently of one litter and appeared to be be-
tween two and three years old. They came on with the
same cautious movements, and when they were close upon

146 The Grizzly Bear

the thread, they also stopped and went through a similar
performance. The one in front pushed out his nose and
sniffed gingerly at the suspicious object. Those in the rear
also stopped, but being curious to learn what was causing
the blockade, the second one placed his forefeet on the
rump of the one in front, in order to see ahead, while the
third one straightened up on his hind legs and looked over
the other two. They made a beautiful group, and just as
they had poised themselves, the one in front must have
touched the string a little harder than he had intended to,
for there was a sudden flash that lit up the surroundings,
and I expected to see the bears go tearing off through the
timber, but, to my utter surprise, nothing of the kind hap-
pened. They all three stood up on their hind legs, and
looked at each other as much as to say, "Now, what do you
think of that ?" and then they took up their investiga-
tion where it had been interrupted, followed the thread to
where it was fastened to the stick, clawed up the spool,
which I had buried in the ground, sniffed at it, and then
went back to the trail, where they had first found the
thread. Here they again stood up, and then, having either
satisfied their curiosity or becoming suspicious, they
turned around and trailed away through the timber. As
far as I could see them they went cautiously, and stopped
at frequent intervals to stand up and look behind them to
see if there were any more flashes or if anything was fol-
lowing them. Unfortunately this picture was utterly
worthless. I had failed to use enough flash powder, and
when I came to develop the plate, it showed only the dim-
mest outline of the animals.

Soon after this an old she bear with three cubs came

A Photographic Expedition 147

down the trail, but they were just as cautious as the others
had been. Every few feet the mother would stop and sniff
the air, and the cubs, fascinating little imitators that they
are, had to copy her every move. If she stood up on her
hind feet, they also stood up on theirs. If she stopped to
sniff the air, they would run up and, placing their tiny feet
against her sides, would peer wisely and anxiously ahead,
until the old lady started on again. When she came to the
thread she stopped short, and while she was making her
investigations the cubs stood with their forefeet against
her and awaited the verdict. It was sudden and apparently
surprising, for, after satisfying herself that the obstacle was
placed there for no good, she gave a lively snort that
could have been heard for a hundred yards, and without
waiting for her youngsters to get down, suddenly turned
tail and, upsetting the whole lot, disappeared up the trail
like a whirlwind, with the cubs trying their best to overtake
her.

After this last delegation had gone I waited for an hour
or more, but got no more photographic opportunities.
Several bears came out, but it was too dark for me to fol-
low their actions, and none of them saw fit to run into the
thread. However, just before I was about to leave, I
heard something coming down the trail as if pursued by
the devil, and it occurred to me that whatever it was would
be in too much of a hurry to stop and examine the string,
and so it proved. There was a bright flash, and for an in-
stant the forest was lighted up, and I saw an old black
bear travelling as if for dear life. I had thought that he
was at his best gait before he struck the string, but in this
I was mistaken. He had only been fooling along before.

148 The Grizzly Bear

Now he got down to business, and in less time than it
takes to write it he was out of sight and beyond hearing.
When I developed the plate it looked as though a cannon-
ball of hair had been shot across it.

This was my first evening, and it did not pan out very
heavily in practical results. But I had had a lot of sport,
and had begun to find out, as later on I was to prove more
thoroughly, that the Yellowstone Park grizzlies differ in no
material respect from others of their species.

The next afternoon at about two o'clock I was again
in my place of observation, with everything again in
readiness for business. This time, thinking that it might
not be so easy to detect, I had substituted a tiny wire for
the thread. The wire was the finest that I could buy, the
kind that florists use for winding flowers, and unless I
knew exactly where it was, I could not see it myself when
ten feet away from it. I had now selected a spot where the
trail wound around between some fallen trees, where there
was little danger of the bears getting scent of the wire be-
fore they came immediately upon it.

About six o'clock there came up a heavy thunder-storm
and for more than an hour it rained in torrents. When I
saw the storm approaching, I walked over a little way
from the trail, peeled the bark from a couple of small trees,
and covered my camera and my can of batteries, to keep
them from getting wet. The flash-pan was fitted with a
loose cover, easily thrown off by the exploding powder, and
having thus protected my apparatus, I put on my rain coat,
crawled under a thick-limbed, umbrellalike tree, and
waited for the storm to pass. In the middle of it I saw a
small black bear coming through the timber and headed

A Photographic Expedition 149

for my shelter. At every flash of lightning he would make
a dash for the nearest tree, but by the time he reached it
the flash would be over and he would come on again. Just
as he got within fifty yards of me there came a tremendous
bolt, and chained lightning seemed to run down every tree.
This was followed, or rather accompanied, by a splitting
crash of thunder, and the small bear made one jump into
the nearest tree, and never stopped till he got near the top,
where he crouched down on a limb, rolled himself into a
little ball, with his nose between his feet, and never
moved until the disturbance was over.

When the rain had passed, I returned to where I could
watch the trail, and waited for the grizzlies. It was not
long before I saw an old bear coming down the trail. He
was very large and fat and would, I imagine, have weighed
from six to seven hundred pounds, and when I saw him
advancing with the usual precautionary tactics, I was well
pleased that it had rained, for I imagined that the water
must have obliterated all scent, and that this old fellow
was sure to run against my wire. But I was mistaken.
When some six feet away he stopped, nosed his way slowly
up, and stood for some seconds only a few inches from it.
Then he became interested and worked a little nearer, and
then there was a flash and he immediately stood up on his
hind feet, much startled, and looking first in one direction
and then in another. Then, like the three bears of the even-
ing before, he started an investigation. He dropped down
on all-fours, started to follow the wire toward the switch,
changed his mind, worked along till he came to the little
stick, and finally dug up the spool that was buried there.
After thoroughly examining this he returned to the trail

150 The Grizzly Bear

and followed my tracks down to where I had taken the
bark off the trees. Here he nosed about for some time, and
then finally turned to the right and disappeared in the tim-
ber. This negative proved to be a fairly good one, but it
was not quite what I had hoped to obtain, as the bear had
stopped short at the flash, while I would have preferred
him in motion.

I now put in a new fuse and rearranged the camera, and
it was not long before an old she bear and two cubs came
down the trail; but she, after the usual preliminary exami-
nation, proved suspicious of the arrangement, and after
smelling carefully along the wire, turned to the right and
passed around the machine. I had brought with me on this
evening a hand camera of the reflex type, built expressly
for natural-history work, and I had set up my apparatus
near the edge of the open park, thinking that perhaps a
bear might come out in time for me to get a snap-shot of
him before dark. After the old bear and cubs had passed,
I crawled very cautiously to the edge of this opening and
waited for them there. It was really too dark for a picture,
but I thought that I might at least have the satisfaction of
making a try for one. I expected that, after circling the
camera, they would come out into the marsh, and this they
did; but instead of passing along it as I had looked to see
them do, they turned and came across it straight toward
me. I was standing with the camera before my face, watch-
ing in the mirror all that was going on, and, as I remained
perfectly quiet, the animals did not see me until they were
within fifty or sixty feet of me. Then they went up on
their hind legs, with a cub standing on either side of the
old bear, and as the camera clicked, the mother dropped

A Photographic Expedition 151

down and scuttled away up the marsh. About fifty feet
from where they had stood there was a large tree, and as
the old bear passed around this she was, for an instant, out
of sight, and the two cubs, that had just then turned to fol-
low her, stood perfectly still and appeared to be thorough-
ly mystified. Apparently she missed them about the same
moment. She jumped back, and poking her head around
the tree, gave two quick, short, emphatic " whoofs," and the
way those cubs dropped and flew to her was a caution.
She waited until they reached her side, and then gave each
one of them a sharp cuflFthat bowled it over, and then both
mother and cubs disappeared in the gathering darkness.
When I developed the plate it was not even fogged by the
exposure.

For another hour or more I watched my set camera.
The storm had now entirely passed and the moon was
shining, so that it was quite light in the little glade outside
the timber. I saw four more grizzlies, including the three
that had come out the night before, but they all avoided
the wire. On the following evening I again tried for flash-
lights, and while I saw ten grizzlies, they acted in about the
usual way. Not one of them set oflPthe flash. Those that
had already had experience with the apparatus did not
come within a hundred yards of me, and even those that I
had not seen before seemed suspicious. This night I saw
an old she grizzly with four cubs, and although I have seen
quite a number of black bears with that number, this was
the second time that I had ever seen a grizzly with so many.

For three nights more I tried different places along the
trails, but did not get another exposure. Some of them
came and nosed about, but most of them turned off at quite

152 The Grizzly Bear

a distance from the wire, and finally they abandoned this
trail altogether, and made use of two others that ran
through the timber at quite a distance from it. Finding,
therefore, that the bears at the canon had evidently taken
alarm at my operations, I determined to move over to the
lake, sixteen miles away, as there were also said to be many
grizzlies at that point.

Here, as at the canon, I watched the garbage pile for
two or three evenings, and scoured the country thereabout
during the day. Finally I decided on a trail that led out of
the range of thickly timbered hills, down through some
heavy woods and underbrush toward the west. Here,
also, I selected a spot for my camera at the edge of a little
open glade, that was covered with grass and small willows.
Through this glade the main trail ran, and a branch trail
also wound around at its edge near the timber. I chose the
through trail for my work, because its being nearly covered
with grass afforded me a longed-for opportunity to conceal
the wire. I also avoided setting my camera on the ground,
and fastened it to an iron spike made for that purpose, and
driven into the trunk of a large tree about twenty-five feet
from the path. The flash-pan was set near the same tre%
and the whole effectually concealed by means of cut willow
branches stuck upright in the ground. The wire from the
switch was led through the long grass about a foot from
the ground, and its further end tied to a small willow.

When things were thus fixed to my liking, I myself
retired to a spot from which I could see some two hundred
yards up the trail, and get an unobstructed view of the
glade itself, and I took care to finish these arrangements
early enough in the evening to give the man scent a chance

A Photographic Expedition 153

to dissipate before the grizzlies came out. I found, how-
ever, that there were so many black bears in this neighbor-
hood that I was frequently obliged to show myself in
order to frighten them from the trail, and protect my appa-
ratus from their mischievous curiosity.

The first grizzly came down the trail about sundown.
He acted much as those at the canon had, and like them,
he detected the wire before he touched it. He nosed along
it inquisitively, and then in a rash moment tried to claw it,
when, of course, there was a flash, and he actually turned
a complete somersault and disappeared up the trail at such
speed that, as I discovered the next day, he fairly tore up
the earth as he went.

Somewhat to my surprise my next visitors proved to
be the three grizzlies that had sprung my flash at the
canon. I recognized them easily by the markings on the
shoulder and neck of one of them. I may say here in pass-
ing, if it surprises any one to speak of recognizing a bear
previously encountered, that there is to the full as much
individuality in bears as in people, and that it is perfectly
easy for me to recognize a grizzly once seen and closely ex-
^mined, and under such circumstances as I am here de-
scribing I could tell a newcomer the moment he came into
sight on the trail.

These three bears came up to the spot where the wire
was stretched, took one good sniff, and appearing to recog-
nize it as the same outfit with which they already had had
experience, turned unconcernedly to their right and passed
by on the other side.

just before dark a she grizzly and two cubs made
their appearance, but just as they arrived at the fork of

154 The Grizzly Bear

the trail they stopped, stood up, sniffed anxiously at the
air, and then dropped down and sidled off, with uneasy
backward glances, as though they not only suspected
something wrong, but feared that it might pursue them.
This old bear was unusually light in color, appearing in-
deed, in that light, almost silvery white over her entire
body, while both her cubs, from where I stood, appeared
to be almost jet black. After this I waited until it was
so dark that I could not see a bear in the timber, and hav-
ing obtained no more shots, I returned to camp.

All this time I had been struggling against a number of
difficulties, photographic and electrical. Chief among the
latter was the fuse for my flash-pan. I had found no diffi-
culty in this regard when using a shutter exposure as slow
as one-quarter of a second; but if, as was apt to be the
case, there was any daylight remaining, this exposure was
too slow and recorded movement on the part of the animal.
I had, however, succeeded in finding an extremely fine
imported German-silver wire, which fused rapidly enough
to allow me to use the shutter exposure of a hundredth
second.

My first supply of this wire having been limited, I hail
ordered more, and discovered, when too late, that it was
of a slightly different size; and hence, to my chagrin, when
I came to develop the three exposures which I succeeded
in getting, I found that my shutter had worked too rapidly
for the fuse, and my plates showed no trace of an image.

At the time, however, I thought that I was getting along
satisfactorily, and the next evening I again set up my cam-
era at the same place. It now occurred to me that it might
be possible, by reversing my former tactics and leaving my

A Photographic Expedition 155

scent liberally scattered over the neighborhood, to allay
the suspicions of these bears who were reputed to be ac-
customed to the presence of man. I therefore walked up
and down the trail for some hundreds of feet and again
concealed myself where I could watch without being seen.

The first bear delegation numbered three, but they
were not my friends of the canon, being, for one thing,
considerably larger. I judged them to be nearly three
years old, and they would have weighed, I should say, in
the neighborhood of three hundred pounds apiece. They
were as sleek as seals, and one of them had a beautiful silver
coat. When they reached the point to which I had walked
up the trail, they stopped and scented for a few moments,
turned their heads in the direction in which I had gone,
and then came on, paying no further attention to the mat-
ter. This encouraged me, and I began to think that my
ruse was to prove successful; but when he reached the
wire the leader stopped abruptly, and the three then stood
up, looked at each other knowingly, and then, for all the
world as though they inferred a connection between my
scent and the presence of the wire, began methodically to
track me up.

I was standing near a tree, and, not having expected
any such move on their part, I had not taken the pre-
caution to step back out of sight, and now I did not dare
to move for fear of frightening them. I therefore stood
absolutely still and watched their play with close atten-
tion and absorbed interest. They followed my every turn
as unerringly as a hound follows a hare, and came on
withal as silently as three shadows. Of course I had been
careful to select a station to leeward of the trail, and this

156 The Grizzly Bear

now helped to postpone their discovery of me. When
within fifty feet of me they came to a fallen log, and, when
the leader had his front paws on this, he stopped and
looked ahead as though he felt that he was nearing that
which he sought. The second bear started to pass him,
but he turned his head and very gently took his com-
panion by the nose with his mouth, whereupon he also
stopped, and they both looked straight at me. However,
as I did not move a muscle, they seemed unable to make
out whether I was a living object or an inanimate one,
and they again moved cautiously forward, still in abso-
lute silence. When about twenty-five feet away, they
again stood up and examined me intently, evidently
doubting whether I were a bona-fide stump. Here, in-
deed, would have been a glorious opportunity, had I had
a camera in hand, and had there been a trifle more light.
But they had come as far as they cared to. Dropping
silently on to all-fours, they suddenly abandoned their
investigations and bolted, only to stop at the end of a
hundred feet, stand up again, again approach within fifty
feet or so of me, and then turn aside and trail away
through the trees. Soon after this, three more grizzlies
came down to the forks of the trail. These were a trifle
smaller than the others, but by far the handsomest that I
had seen. Two of them were rather dark, while the third
was a fine-looking animal, with a snow-white head, and
silvery as far back as his shoulders. This is a typical
marking, but in this case it was strangely accentuated,
in spite of which, however, his companions seemed to
approve of him since they had intrusted him with the
leadership.

A Photographic Expedition 157

Like the others, they stopped at the string and, still %
like the others, they then took up my trail and that of
the first three bears, and followed it as surely and as
silently as the others had done. This time I took the
precaution to keep behind the tree, and these three bears
actually came up within ten feet of me before they dis-
covered my presence. Then, up they went on tneir hind
feet, and for a second there was another great picture
before me: their thick, furry coats were magnificent, and
the long hair standing out stiffly under their jaws lent a
curious expression to their faces.

But, the second over, they too, after retreating and
advancing once or twice, made their way silently into the
forest.

After some waiting, an old she bear with two yearling
cubs came along, apparently in a hurry, and acting as
though they were late for an engagement. I thought for
a moment that they were going through without stopping,
but just as she reached the wire, the mother stopped
short, took a hurried sniff, and then, apparently thinking
it of no consequence, hurried on again. She changed her
mind, however, almost instantly, but although the three
turned tail and reared up on their hind legs, instead of
running away, they appeared to be more curious than
frightened; and it was only after rather a thorough ex-
amination of the wire and its surroundings, that they
retreated up the trail, lingeringly, and with repeated
glances over their shoulders.

I had hardly reset my apparatus when an old fellow
came along, so huge of frame that, had he been in good
condition instead of gaunt and famished looking, he would

158 The Grizzly Bear

have weighed eight hundred pounds. But he looked as
if he had not had a square meal all summer. His neck
was long, his body thin, his legs ungainly, but still showing
the tremendous muscles typical of the species. He seemed
to take four-foot strides, and I thought that surely so
great a brute would not stop to bother over a little wire;
but, on the contrary, he not only stopped, but nosed his
way carefully along until he came to the flash-pan. This
was placed upon a pole, and was about six feet above the
ground, and the old bear stood up on his hind legs and
looked into it, after which he followed the battery wires to
the camera, and then, returning, stood up a second time
and stuck his nose into the flash-pan. I am afraid that if
I had had a finger on the wire that controlled the switch,
the temptation to pull it would have been too much for me.
Meanwhile the bear, having again examined the camera,
deliberately turned back and disappeared up the trail,
and, much to my surprise, I saw no more of him.

My next visitor was the largest grizzly that I had yet
seen. He would, I should judge, have weighed close to a
thousand pounds, and he was at once so old and so fat
that it was laughable to see him walk. He was rather
dark in color, his back looked as if it were two feet broad
and perfectly flat, and his legs did not seem to be more
than a foot long. His ears were hardly visible. Perhaps
he had lost most of them in the riots and ructions of a
long-vanished youth. Hope dies hard, even at the hand
of experience, and I again flattered myself that this old
veteran would not pay any attention to my petty schemes.
He came to the forks of the trail and — took the other
turning. Then, appearing to change his mind, he turned

A Photographic Expedition 159

back and came down my trail; and, accepting this as an
omen, I counted a picture of him, broadside on, as already
secured. But when he reached the wire, he not only
stopped and sniffed at it for several seconds, but then
reared up on his hind feet, gave a snort that could have
been heard for a hundred yards, and then whirled about
like a demoralized coward, and tried to run. Even in my
disappointment I could not help laughing at the ludicrous
spectacle. I am sure that he touched the ground in at
least five places at every jump, and he seemed to think
that he was going along at a tremendous gait, whereas, in
reality, he was making the slowest kind of time. And he
was so frightened that he had no time to look where he
was going; he smashed into pretty much everything he
came to, and for five minutes I could hear the breaking of
brush and dead branches as he crashed through the timber.

Just as I was about to pack up for the night, I heard
a commotion down the trail, and looking up I saw the
three bears that I had first met at the canon coming
toward me in full flight. They had evidently taken some
other path to the feeding ground, and, something having
frightened them, they were now coming back my way at
their best gait, and quite oblivious of the wire, into which
they ran with such force that it parted. This time, how-
ever, they did not stop to investigate the result, but acted
as though they felt the devil himself was after them, and
disappeared up the trail, at what I think must be about
the limit of a grizzly's speed.

I had to leave in the morning for a trip to the Pacific
Coast, and now gathered up my outfit and started for
camp, supposing that my adventures were at an end.

160 The Grizzly Bear

In a knapsack on my back I had my tripod and flash-
pan, the switchboard, and the connecting wires. In one
hand I carried my camera, while in the other I had a
covered sheet-iron box containing six dry batteries, the
whole being securely tied with a small rope. I intended,
on my way to camp, to see the agent of the transportation
company, and arrange for a seat on an outgoing coach
for the next morning; and to this end I approached the
rear of a small mess house belonging to the transportation
company, situated behind and on one side of the hotel.
Now it happened that back of this mess house two barrels
of refuse had been left standing. This was contrary to
the regulations of the park, and Major Pitcher, the acting
superintendent, told me afterward that all the trouble
they have ever had with grizzlies arose from breaches of
this rule. However, knowing nothing of this at the time,
I was walking along without making any noise, and when
directly back of the building, and not more than fifty feet
away from it, I heard a sudden rattling among the cans,
and out shot two grizzlies, followed, at a distance of about
twenty feet, by a larger one. Taking it for granted that
they saw me, and having, under such circumstances, no
fear of the animals, I kept straight on, and thus, after a
few steps, interposed myself between the last bear and the
barrel from which he had been feeding. This he seemed
to resent, for he turned angrily and started toward me.
The whole situation developed, and indeed concluded,
suddenly, so that I had no time for conscious planning.
As the bear turned toward me I stopped rather mechani-
cally, thinking that he, too, would stop before he came up
to me; for I had never, in all my experience, had a bear

A Photographic Expedition 161

attack me, and had always maintained that no grizzly
would attack a man except under peculiar circumstances.
However, this bear was either an exception to my rule,
or else he considered the circumstances "peculiar."

It did not take him long to reach me, and, as he did
so, he rose up and struck at my ribs with his right paw.
The only weapon at hand being my can of batteries, and
this, weighing about twenty pounds, being no mean
defence if handled rightly, I swung it at him, hoping to
stop him with the blow. As I did so, however, I ad-
vanced my left hand, and the bear's paw caught my
camera, ripping out the front board and the magnet and
wires attached to it. Almost at the same time I landed
somewhere with the can, and, although the stroke did him
no damage, it did set him back a foot or two, and turned
what had doubtless been nothing but ill-temper into rage.
With a loud snort he came at me again, and this time he
raised himself to his full height and aimed a vicious
stroke at my head; and I, seeing what was coming, ducked
and closed in on him. And I was just in time, for I felt
the wind from the blow, and his paw tore my hat from my
head, and then, passing down the side of my face, struck
me a glancing blow on the shoulder. Nothing, I think,
but my nearness to the bear saved my life. Meanwhile,
as I had ducked and closed in, I had swung my right hand
back of me, and just as the bear delivered his blow at me,
I landed mine on him; and as I had swung my can of
batteries in a half-circle over my head, they came down
with tremendous force.

I must have caught him somewhere about the head,
for it felt as though I had struck a board, and the bear

1 6z The Grizzly Bear

went over backward with an astonished bawl, and when
he regained his feet, he was tail toward me and kept this
position as long as I could see him. The first jump he
made landed him head on against a dry-goods box; at the
next he smashed into a tree; but he finally got his bearings
and made off, if anything, faster than he had come at me.

When I had got my bearings, I looked around for
my hat, but, being unable to find it in the half light, de-
cided to hunt it up in the morning. I was not, at the
moment, conscious of very great excitement, but when I
reached camp I found that my hands were trembling
rather uncomfortably, and it was several days before I
recovered my usual absence of nerves. The next day,
when I rescued my hat, I found two holes in the soft brim
through which the bear had driven his claws, and one
corner of my iron battery case was broken open like a
ship's bow after a collision.

I am quite satisfied that had I made any noise as I
approached the place where the bears had been feeding,
they would have retreated before I reached them; but the
ground was soft and my steps were noiseless. And, hun-
gry as they doubtless were, one of them resented my
sudden interruption of their feast.

Altogether I did not find the grizzlies of Yellowstone
Park in any degree more tame or less cunning than they
are to-day, for example, in the Selkirks. Many of them,
it is true, come to the garbage piles to feed, but these very
bears, fifty yards back in the timber, are again as wild as
any of them anywhere. I was both surprised and inter-
ested by this, and, after watching them carefully from the
positions provided for the public, I repeatedly concealed

A Photographic Expedition 163

myself and watched them from the woods back of these
feeding grounds. I can think of no better way to describe
their actions and their attitudes than to liken them to the
actions and attitudes of a man about to dive into the
water. At the canon, the garbage pile is in a hollow at
the foot of rather a steep incline that leads up to the edge
of the woods. Bear after bear coming down the trails
that converge toward this point will stop as he reaches the
brink of this declivity, glance downward, turn his head
from side to side, and launch himself downhill, with the
same air of committing himself to a foreign element that
one sees in the upward glance and deep breath of a man
launching himself from a diving-board. On their return,
they invariably halted for a few seconds at the top of the
hill, looked around, occasionally shook themselves, and
with their first step up the familiar trail, resumed every
sign of their habitual caution and alertness. While on the
garbage pile itself they appear to pay scant attention to
the people gathered behind the fairly distant wire fence,
but even there, an eye familiar with their actions would
note the constant watch they kept on what was going on
and the hurried way in which they fed; and, fifty feet
from the edge of the surrounding timber, they would, at
the least scent or sound or sight, bolt as incontinently as
in the farthest hills. Grizzlies are no more plentiful
around the park to-day than they were twenty-five years
ago in the Bitter Roots, and a hundred yards from the
garbage pile they are no different.

XVII
FLASH-LIGHTING GRIZZLIES

IT was over two years before I had another opportunity
to tackle the problem of flash-lighting grizzlies, and in
the meantime I had brought my apparatus to the stage,
not, indeed, of perfection, but of fair reliability. I had an
improved switch, a plentiful supply of proper wire for
fuses, and two complete outfits.

Affairs so shaped themselves in 1908 that I saw my
way clear to spending the summer of that year in and
about the Yellowstone National Park, and I planned to
reach the ground early enough to be on hand, soon after
the grizzlies of Mt. Washburn had come out of winter
quarters. But a serious washout on the Northern Pacific
Railroad sidetracked both me and my camp outfit and
horses, and it was well on toward the end of June when I
finally succeeded in reaching my field of operations.

I had now about given up all reliance on wires stretched
across the trails, or, indeed, upon any device looking to
inducing the bears to spring the flashes for the taking of
their own pictures, and was determined to lead the string
from the switch to my point of observation, and so operate
the apparatus myself.

This, in itself, was simple enough, and I could easily

164

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 165

make out to handle the business alone; but I was anxious
to use two cameras, and thus not only double the chances
of results by covering two trails, but make better use of
the time before my presence made the animals suspicious
and induced them to abandon for a time their accustomed
lines of travel. I was therefore anxious to have the help
of an interested and intelligent companion.

This want, however, was not easy to supply; and as
an impatient, or a careless, or even a timid, assistant in
this kind of work is far worse than none, I had little real
idea of trying the experiment. I happened, though, in the
interval between my two expeditions, to meet Mr. J. B.
Kerfoot of New York, an amateur photographer of ex-
perience and a lover of life in the open; and as he seemed
vastly interested in the casual accounts I gave him of my
experiments and made some good suggestions in regard
to the disposal of apparatus, etc., I finally proposed that
he join me in my projected trip, and he fell in with the
suggestion with enthusiasm.

At this time Mr. Kerfoot did not have so much as a
bowing acquaintance with grizzlies, and his ideas about
them would, I think, have pretty fairly summed up the
misinformation current in the popular mind. But these
facts did not bother me, and I may take this occasion to
say that he proved to be a quick student and a resourceful
and most helpful ally. He was not, however, able to join
me until the latter part of July.

Meanwhile, early in that month, our party reached the
canon, and I spent the first evening of our stay watching
the same trails and the same little parklike bottom where
two years before I had seen so many bears. At that time

1 66 The Grizzly Bear

I had remarked upon the number of females with cubsc
This time I only saw one, and she had but two little ones.
There was also a great falling off in yearlings and in two-
year-old bears, and, all told, there did not seem to be
more than eighteen grizzlies working in the neighborhood.
Among these was one litter of three two-year-olds who were
still running together, but most of the others were old
bears. One of these was a very large old male, nearly as
broad as he was long, and that would, I should say, have
weighed close to a thousand pounds. The trails that had
been continually used two years before now showed few
signs of travel, but the main trail leading to and from
Mt. Washburn showed that this retreat was still the home
of what grizzlies remained.

This first night I set both my cameras on the same
trail, and while I had arranged to spring the flash myself,
I had nevertheless stretched wires across the trail in the
hopes that the bears, stopping to examine them, might
give me an opportunity to catch one standing on its hind
feet. I also made a different disposition of the flash-pan,
and instead of placing it on top of a pole five or six feet
high, I set it within a foot of the ground, hemmed in on
all sides, except that next to the trail, with pieces of log
and branches from trees. I then took up my own position
some fifty yards to one side in a conveniently located
tangle of down timber. Nothing of consequence, however,
happened this first night, as, though several bears appeared
in my neighborhood, they seemed to sense that something
was wrong, and shied off before they reached me.

The next evening I replaced one camera on this trail,
and set the other on a well-beaten path some distance to

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 167

one side. After some hours of waiting, the three two-year-
olds came down the side trail, but stopped before reaching
my wire. Two of them then turned back, but the third
apparently made up his mind to avoid the danger by cir-
cling it, and, as it happened, took the side toward the
camera. As he walked he kept his eyes upon the wire
where it crossed the trail, and thus failed to notice that
it extended beyond the edge of the path and still blocked
his progress. This fact he discovered too late by springing
the flash, and he was then so near the camera that his feet
do not show upon the plate. The picture, however, gives
an excellent idea of the formation of a grizzly's head.

While I had been watching the movements of these
three bears, another old fellow had come unobserved down
a trail to the left of my other camera, and then worked
back toward the main trail between that camera and
myself. As the first bear set off" the flash and I rose from
my place of concealment, I was startled by a loud snort
just behind me, and saw a huge grizzly bolt up the trail
toward my second outfit. The fright of seeing me rise
from the ground just in front of him, together with the
flash and the flight of the other bears, had evidently driven
from his mind the remembrance of the danger that he had
just avoided, and it was not until he had almost reached
my second camera that he remembered for a moment
where he was. His evident dilemma was most amusing,
for it was clear for a second or two that he thought of
stopping, and then almost instantly changed his mind and
forged full speed ahead.

I had stretched a good-sized wire across the trail,
hoping that the bears, when they saw it, would stop and

1 68 The Grizzly Bear

stand up in the course of their examination; and when the
old fellow ran into this one it failed to part, but the stake
to which it was fastened pulled out of the ground and,
bouncing back, caught him in the side and completed his
demoralization. As he disappeared in the gathering dark-
ness he looked like a big ball of fur shot from a high-
power gun. I reproduce the picture of this grizzly be-
cause it is a good example of many failures, and at the
same time gives some notion of how recklessly a frightened
bear dashes away, unmindful of obstructions.

The next night I tried a new trail. This time I set
both cameras on it, but about fifty feet apart, hoping that
the bears, frightened by one flash, would retreat and, as
they often did, stand up to look back in front of the other
camera. I concealed myself in a little thicket of pines,
from which I had a good view of both cameras and of the
trail in both directions. And I had only been here a short
time when I saw the old grizzly and two cubs making
their way along one of the many trails which passed near
my hiding-place. They did not, however, come within
range of my cameras, and I thought no more about them.
It was only a few minutes, however, before I heard a snort
near my thicket, and a small black bear raced by within a
few feet of me and went up one of the trees among which
I was standing. Peeping out to see what had so excited
it I caught sight of the old grizzly and her cubs not more
than fifty feet away and hot on its trail, and as I had no
desire to get mixed up in any family quarrels I sidestepped
and went up the next tree to the one occupied by my black
friend. The grizzly, seeing this new animal appear and
seem to take sides with the black bear, stood on her hind

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 169

feet and looked at us for a few seconds, and then, knowing
that we were beyond her reach, dropped down and made
off through the timber.

When she was well out of the way I resumed my watch,
and it was not long before I saw my friends of the other
evening, the three two-year-olds, coming my way. Having
already had some experience of their wariness I watched
each branch of the trail with anxiety as they neared it, and
drew sighs of relief as they passed these in succession. At
last one of them was just in front of my first camera, and
as he appeared to be suspicious of its presence, I was
about to pull the string when a second one ranged along-
side of him. The third was also coming on, but, being
some little distance in the rear, I did not dare to risk
waiting for him, and sprang the flash on the two as they
stood, heads up, listening in the stillness. The instant the
flash went off all three darted back and then stood up,
making a beautiful picture; but they were too far away
to get them with my second camera, and they ran away
when I emerged from the thicket to put in a new fuse and
reset my apparatus. It was now growing late and I was
just thinking of giving up for the night when I saw, coming
down the trail, an old bear that seemed actually to brush
the trees on both sides at once. This was the old male of
which I have spoken, and before the summer was over I
was destined to see him many times, to spring several
flashes on him, and yet never to get a perfect picture of
him. At the moment, however, I knew nothing of all this,
and watched in breathless anxiety as he came slowly down
the trail with its many branching paths. But he passed
them all, and at last, one of the largest grizzlies I have

170 The Grizzly Bear

ever seen, he rounded a bend in the trail and his mighty
strides brought him directly in front of my first camera.
He did not stop, and I could not bring myself, for the
chance of getting two shots at him, to wait until he
reached the second camera. As I pulled the string, the
enormous beast seemed actually to go up in the air with
the flash. Then he bolted sideways, keeping his eyes on
the point from which the flash had come, and, paying no
attention to where he was going, he crashed into a tree
with low-hanging branches, and the noise of the impact
filled the forest. Then, like the rest, he stood up and
looked back, and then, still with many backward glances,
moved silently away.

For a couple of nights now I had no luck. The bears
seemed to have taken to other trails, and, wishing to find
out in what part of the woods they were working, I per-
suaded a young doctor who was in the party to come out
with me and tend one of the cameras. I placed him and
his camera on a likely looking trail and stationed myself
some hundreds of yards away. I stretched the wire across
the trail at his post and also ran a string from the switch
to him, and I instructed him to watch in silence until a
bear should stop to examine the wire, and then to whistle
sharply, and, when the bear stood up at the sound, to pull
the string. In the meantime I asked him to keep a sharp
lookout that he might let me know later by what trails and
from what directions the bears had come up.

The doctor had assured me that he was not in the
least afraid of bears, and for the first two hours he was as
good as his boast. I could watch him from my station.
Later on, however, as the sun neared the horizon and the

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 171

shadows became longer and deeper and that hushed silence
settled on the woods that searches the heart of the timid
in the wilderness, my friend's daylight courage began to
ooze away. Any one who has never seen a grizzly in such
a setting is more than likely to experience a softening of
the bones when one appears, and the doctor was no ex-
ception to the rule. A couple of young bears now came
hurrying down a trail a hundred feet or so to his right and,
swinging his arms in the air, he gave a loud whistle, like a
policeman signalling for help, and called out to me in a
loud voice, "There go two."

It happened at the moment that I was watching a
grizzly on my own side of the woods, and did not care to
spoil my chances of a picture by going over and clubbing
my friend into a more quiet state of mind, so I stuck to my
post and hoped for the best. But before my bear had had
a chance to get within range the doctor's whistle again
rang out, and once more the information was bawled
through the woods that "There go three more down the
same trail!" This sent my grizzly back into the woods
at double-quick and, making up my mind that that kind
of help was too much of a hinderance for my taste, I took
up both cameras, gave the doctor my professional opinion
of him as a grizzly photographer, and went back to camp.

After the doctor's retirement another volunteer pre-
sented himself in the person of Frank, one of my camp
assistants, a man who had lived much of his life in the
mountains and who said he was not afraid of any bear
that might show itself. So I took him along and set him
to watch over the second camera, with the same instruc-
tions as those issued to the doctor, and stationed myself

172 The Grizzly Bear

some fifty yards away, accompanied by a young friend
who wanted to see the bear and promised to keep still.
Frank was seated on a fallen tree, peering through the
upturned roots at one end. Another tree, some fifteen feet
behind him, lay across the one on which he was seated.
He was lazily fighting mosquitoes with a small switch,
and his whole attitude spoke of phlegmatic and easy
attention to business.

For perhaps two hours nothing happened, and we-all
three remained at our posts. Then the young man at my
side whispered to me that there was a large brown bear
some twenty-five yards in our rear, and as I turned to
look, I saw the huge grizzly that I had taken a snap at a
few nights before sneaking up behind Frank with extended
nose and every appearance of puzzled curiosity. Frank
was still gazing between the roots at his camera and lazily
swaying his switch, and, knowing that the big grizzly was
aware of his presence and only trying to satisfy his curiosity,
I made no sign. When the bear reached the dead tree
that lay at right angles to Frank's seat, he placed his fore-
paws on it, stretched his head out, and began to sniff-
well, out loud.

Frank turned around casually at the sound, and for a
hundredth of a second there was a tableau that I would
have given a good deal for a picture of. Then Frank's
switch began a frantic tattoo on the nearest root. Frank
himself leaped to his feet and the fat old grizzly shot away
sideways — as luck would have it — in our direction. His
first two or three jumps covered more than half the dis-
tance between us, and, as it began to look as though we
would be trampled, we also jumped up, when, with a loud

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 173

<

snort, the old fellow again changed his direction and made
off puffing and blowing. Frank allowed after that that,
although he was not afraid of bears, he would just as soon
not have anything to do with any animal of that size that
could get up near enough to smell the back of his neck
without his hearing them come. So for the few remaining
nights of our stay I went it alone.

However, the bears were by now becoming very
crafty, and it was so difficult to tell to what unused trail
they were resorting that I got but few shots. On one
occasion, however, I secured a picture which, though not
in perfect focus, illustrates very clearly one of the charac-
teristics of these animals. Two good-sized grizzlies were
coming down a winding trail on which I had posted my-
self, and the larger of the two, happening to notice my
apparatus before he reached it, turned out of the trail and
approached the camera with a curiosity that looked suffi-
ciently like ferociousness to disturb any one not familiar
with the creature's habits. Finally, just as he paused with
one foot raised and his nose extended, I sprang the flash, and
he almost broke his neck in his haste to get away. The next
day we moved camp to the shores of Yellowstone Lake.

Here, in order to be nearer my field of operations, I
separated temporarily from the rest of the party and made
a small camp near the bear ranges, and for two nights
worked on my old grounds of two years before. Here,
too, the number of bears had greatly decreased, and the
only animals of any marked interest seemed to be a mother
and three cubs. On my return to camp the second evening
I found Kerfoot waiting for me, and the next day I took
him with me for a general survey of the ground.

174 The Grizzly Bear

We determined, after a pretty thorough discussion of
the matter, to devote ourselves to securing a picture of
this grizzly mother and her family; and as, after my ex-
perience with my volunteer helpers the week before, I did
not propose to try any more amateurs without having them
serve an apprenticeship, I only took one camera out the
next night. We set that on the trail the she grizzly had
been using, and stretched a fish-line to our hiding-place
about a hundred feet away. We placed no wire across the
trail, and from this time forward never again used that
device.

The old lady and her youngsters proved to be on time,
and just about seven o'clock I caught sight of them in an
open glade to our left. It was my first near view of her,
and I saw at once that she was as cross-grained and. ugly
a brute as one was likely to meet in a lifetime. I in-
stantly decided that two hundred feet was none too much
space to interpose between her and the man who proposed
to challenge her with a flash, and, whispering to Kerfoot
to come quietly, we backed away, unrolling the fish-line
as we went, until we came to the end of it. The mother
was an old bald-face; one of the cubs was almost black,
one was gray, and the third had a silvery sheen to its fur.
The whole family came on, the mother looking neither to
the right nor left and paying little attention to the cubs
that ran, now ahead and now behind her. She did not
seem to suspect the presence of the camera, and when she
and two of the cubs were opposite the lens I pulled the
string. The flash, however, refused to explode, and when
I pulled again, to my utter disgust the string broke. It
proved to have become entangled with an intervening

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 175

branch, probably during our retreat, and the incident,
costly as it was, taught us a lesson that we never forgot.
Indeed, from this time on we almost invariably handled
our cameras from the branches of some convenient tree,
thus guarding against any necessity of changing our
positions unexpectedly, and we took great care and con-
siderable pains in so running our strings that they were
sure to work smoothly when needed. We got no other
shot this night, and returned to camp, feeling that we had
lost the chance of our lives.

The next night we again went after this old bear, but
she did not put in an appearance; and the third night,
feeling that Kerfoot was now able to handle that part of
it himself, I left him in charge of the flash-light apparatus,
and stationed myself, with a natural-history camera, in a
tree by the little open glade where we had first seen the
old bear and her cubs.

About seven o'clock she made her appearance, but,
instead of going on down the trail toward where Kerfoot
was waiting for her, she and the cubs stopped to dig roots
at the side of a small marsh. I now understood why we
had not seen her the night before, and while she offered
me several opportunities for long-distance shots with my
hand camera, I refrained from risking them in hopes that
she would ultimately move on in the right direction.

It was just beginning to get dark when I saw a medium-
sized bear come up the trail from the direction of the flash
camera, and when the she grizzly saw him she called her
cubs and retreated into the woods. I was at a loss to
explain this, as she was larger than he, but the sequel led
me to believe that she had mistaken him for a much larger

176 The Grizzly Bear

bear occasionally seen in the neighborhood. At any rate,
she reappeared in a few minutes, took a good look at the
bear that was now sampling the roots that she had been
digging up, and then, with a snort, took after him and
chased him clear out of sight. She then returned, grunted
to the cubs, and stalked off down the trail, looking as
though she was mad as a hornet.

She had hardly disappeared from sight when the whole
woods was lighted up by a flash, and this was followed by
a roar that fairly made the trees shake. About ten sec-
onds later the roar was repeated, and when I thought of
my tenderfoot apprentice perched in his tree, I could not
help laughing over the initiation he was getting in the art
of photographing grizzlies.

A little later on, when I went to join him, I found him
packing up the apparatus, but casting nervous glances
over his shoulders the while, and the next day, when we
developed the plate, I told him that I guessed he'd do.
We worked two more nights in these hills, but got no other
shots at any bears.

We now spent some weeks camping on Shoshone Lake,
in the Snake River country near Jackson's Hole, and
along the Firehole River, and while in this neighborhood
spent three evenings in the hills near the lower geyser
basin. We had found few signs of grizzlies in this place,
although black bears seemed to be plentiful; but one trail,
that led straight up the wooded hillside to the plateau six
or eight hundred feet above the level of the basin, was
evidently used by them.

We followed this trail for some miles, hoping to find
the daylight retreats of the grizzlies that used it; but

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 177

when we turned back it was still stretching away like a
boulevard in the direction of the lake.

We had seen a group of four really magnificent grizzlies,
apparently three-year-olds, come out of these woods the
first evening of our stop, and were more than anxious to
get a picture of them; but though we spent two long
evenings beside the big trail we never laid eyes on them
again. The first of these evenings it was raining hard,
and we had covered our cameras and had turned down
the hinged tops of our flash-pans, and were huddled under
such shelter as we could find, when a red squirrel ran up
the tree to which our switch was nailed and sprang the
flash. There was an explosion that was heard two miles
away at our camp, and we were at a loss to determine
whether it was caused by the hinge of the flash-pan top
having rusted, and so confined the charge, or whether
some new powder we were using for the first time was un-
reliable. The next week we learned that it was the latter.

On the last day of August, having left the other mem-
bers of the party at Gardner, Mr. Kerfoot, Frank, and
myself started back for a week's final photographing in
the neighborhood of the canon. There had, meanwhile,
been a heavy storm; the mountains were white with snow,
and the air was clear and wintry. We reached our des-
tination and made camp by two o'clock on the first of
September, and Kerfoot and I climbed to the scenes of my
earlier efforts and made a hasty survey of the region now
so familiar to me. It was already late, and, as we had no
time to seek out new locations, I placed my camera near
the point where I had been treed by the old bear and cubs,
and where I had secured some of my earlier pictures,

178 The Grizzly Bear

while Kerfoot placed his apparatus at the intersection of
two more travelled trails.

We found that while the same bears were to be met
with as earlier in the season, they were, while fatter and
sleeker of coat, more cautious than before, and it was all
but impossible to so place and hide our apparatus that
they would not detect it.

This first night I secured the two pictures that I have
called "Grizzlies Feeding" and "A Grizzly Walking Out
of the Woods"; but it turned out that Kerfoot had had a
disheartening time of it, and, while many bears had come
his way, a change in the direction of the wind about sun-
set had wafted the scent of his apparatus up the trail and
warned the approaching animals of his presence. And
for several nights thereafter we had little success.

Kerfoot by this time had become both enthusiastic and
expert, and, as the weather was fine, the moon at the full,
and our last days slipping away, we stayed late in our
trees and did not give up till the bears themselves retired.
We sometimes worked as much as a mile apart and, to the
best of our skill and ability, covered the whole range.
But though we had to make our way home through the
dense forest that we knew contained many large grizzlies,
none offered to molest us as long as we were moving
openly and with some noise through the woods.

One evening, however, I had set my camera beside a
well-worn trail that ran along the marshy bottom of a
valley, and I had led the string to a big tree well up the
steep hillside, whose three trunks offered me an ideal
screen and peep-hole. I was working on the ground this
night, and just back of me and my tree there ran a faint

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 179

and little-used trail. I had been on watch for some hours
and had not seen a sign of any bears when, hearing the
sharp panting sound that, unlike the black bear, the
grizzly always makes when excited and running, I turned
sharply round and saw a bear coming full tilt up the dis-
used trail and within a few feet of me. I instantly dodged
around my tree, broke a dead limb to make a noise, and
let out a "whoof!" to scare the bear. Then, as he passed,
I stepped out again and almost faced a second grizzly
that was following him. I dodged again, and as this one
passed me he raised one paw as if to strike, but he did not
pause, and was soon out of sight.

What had startled them I do not know, but they were
evidently bent on getting away from something and did
not propose to have their retreat cut off. As for myself, I
felt that I had had enough grizzlies for one night, and
pulled out for camp as soon as I could get my things
packed up.

The next night, while working in quite another part of
the hills, I got a splendid picture of these two bears, fine
fellows in the pink of condition, and this time they showed
no desire to resent my presence, even standing up at a dis-
tance of fifty yards or so and looking at me while I reset
my camera.

But if the park bears, like all others I have ever known,
showed no disposition to molest us unless interfered with,
there were individuals among them that paid no respect
to our camp. Early in the summer we had been much put
to it to protect our cook tent from them, and on one occa-
sion one of the men had even driven the point of a pros-
pector's hammer, through the tent and into a bear's

180 The Grizzly Bear

nose. And on this second visit we fared even worse,
until we hit upon the expedient of setting our flash-pans
just outside the canvas walls at night, and baiting them so
that thieving bears would set off a small pinch of powder
in their own faces. One night four grizzlies visited us in
succession, but by this device we were spared a repetition
of our first night's experience, when our camp arrange-
ments were literally wrecked and the inside of our tent in
the morning looked like a hurrah's nest.

One of our keenest desires was to get a good picture
of the big bear that I had already taken once, and that had
frightened Frank the night he went out to help me.
Kerfoot had got one shot at him, but the powder burned
so badly that the bear had time to move his head clear
across the plate. This animal, the undisputed lord of the
range, was always the last one to appear, and now that it
was drawing toward fall it was very dark when he came
out. The night after I had photographed the two bears
last mentioned we had determined to place both cameras
upon the main trail from Mt. Washburn, hoping to get
a shot at this old fellow, and determined, if necessary,
to spend the night in our trees. I was stationed near the
foot-hills, and Kerfoot about a mile farther down, and we
hoped if one missed the bear that the other would be more
fortunate. We had contrived our seats in the afternoon,
and mine was high among the branches of a clump of firs
that screened me completely from the trail, but left me a
small hole through which to keep watch.

For several hours nothing appeared, and finally it be-
came all but impossible to see except where the moon
cast a stray beam of light among the shadows. Then, at

Flash-Lighting Grizzlies 181

last, in one of these light spots, I saw a dark shape that
could only be the big bear I wanted. If he passed the
next lighted space and kept on into the farther shadow he
would be in range of my camera. So, to be ready for him,
I reached for the string that I could no longer see, and I
suppose in doing so must have made some slight sound.
At any rate, the bear did not enter the second lighted
space, and a few moments later I saw him pass across a
moonlit park, three hundred feet or so to the left of my
camera. Slight as was my movement, he had either
heard or seen it, and veered off.

And a mile down the trail Kerfoot, a little later, had
the same experience. He caught sight of the big fellow
just as he reached the camera, and in reaching for the
string touched a branch, and the big bear shied instantly
and circled out of range. The same night, and just before
the big bear came along, Kerfoot, by guessing at the posi-
tion of the animals that he could not see in the darkness,
sprang a flash on two bears, whose picture I have called
"Three-Year-Olds."

It was not till the last night of all that I got another
chance at the big fellow. Early on this evening I had
flashed a pair of young bears, and the powder, which had
been acting badly throughout our stay, again exploded
instead of burning, and bent my flash-pan quite out of
shape. I had repaired the damage as best I could, and
had reset my apparatus when, about nine o'clock, my big
friend came along. He was just passing a small fir-tree
when I pulled the string, and it seemed to me, and I dare
say to him, as though the end of the world had come.
The flash exploded with a noise like a twelve-inch gun,

182 The Grizzly Bear

and a shower of burning particles rose in the air and
glowed for more than a second.

When we developed the plate we found that the old
bear had backed up against the tree and, with bared teeth
and savage mien, had faced the unexpected danger. The
picture was far from perfect, but it gives a notion of his
splendid proportions and of his savage courage. I have
called it "At Bay."

And so ended our summer's work. We brought away
a thousand memories and about a dozen flash-light photo-
graphs.

PART III

CHARACTER AND HABITS OF THE
GRIZZLY

XVIII
DESCRIPTION AND DISTRIBUTION

AS we have seen in the classification of bears, science
recognizes, besides the Rocky Mountain grizzly
(JJrsus Horribilis Ord) and the very distinct Barren
Ground grizzly (Ursus Richardsoni Mayne Reid), two
sub-species of the Rocky Mountain type — the Sonora
grizzly (Ursus Horribilis Horriaus Baird) and the Nor-
ton Sound grizzly.

Taken together, these animals range from the moun-
tains in southern Mexico, throughout the Sierras and the
Rockies, all the way to the Barren Grounds; but Ursus
Horribilis Ord, the true grizzly bear in the sense that it
was the species first recognized by science, has a more
wide-spread geographical distribution than any of the
others. While its type locality is, of course, Montana,
where it was first discovered, its proper range extends
from Wyoming and northern Utah, throughout the Rocky
Mountain chain, to Norton Sound, Alaska; and neither in
Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, nor in the interior of British
Columbia south of the Barren Grounds, is any other
species to be encountered. On the other hand Horribilis^
Ord wanders, to a considerable extent, into the domains
of other grizzlies.

185

1 86 The Grizzly Bear

I wish once more to call attention to the fact that,
throughout the following chapters, the term "grizzly
bear," when unqualified, refers to the Rocky Mountain
grizzly, Ursus Horribilis Ord.

This bear is generally considered by scientists to be
somewhat smaller than the Sonora grizzly, also smaller
than the Norton Sound grizzly, but rather larger than
the Barren Ground grizzly. He is described as having
hairs elongated over the shoulders so as to give almost
the effect of a hump; and this collar, or "roach," while
typical of the species, varies greatly in development in
individuals, so that one sometimes sees a grizzly with
no noticeable ruff, and again sees specimens with this
feature so marked that the old hunters claim "the roach-
back" to be a distinct variety.

The grizzly is also described as having larger fore
claws than any other species, and these of a whitish color
and nearly straight. This last distinction will not, how-
ever, judging from my own observations, apply to the
species as a whole. I have seen many hundreds of these
animals, and, while the claws of some are white, as de-
scribed, I should say that a majority of them have dark
nails, and these rather curved than otherwise. Of course,
as to this, it makes a great difference whether the bear is
examined in the early spring when his claws are fresh-
grown, or in the late fall when they are worn with much
use. The accompanying illustration will give a better idea
than any description. These powerful claws are, when
not worn down by use, from four to six inches in length;
they are narrower at the base in comparison to their
length than those of other bears, and do not curve sharply

Description and Distribution 187

downward and backward as do those of the black bear;
nor are they so sharply pointed. But, as may be seen from
the photograph, they cannot be justly spoken of as
"nearly straight."

The hind paws of all bears differ from their front paws
more radically than those of most quadrupeds, and while
those of the grizzly do not differ from those of other bears
as markedly as do their fore paws, they are none the less
easily distinguished. The tracks left in snow or mud or
dust by these hind paws bear an uncanny resemblance to
the mark of a human foot, and it is to this the animal owes
its nicknames of "Old Ephraim" and "Moccasin Joe."

It may, perhaps, be of interest to note, by means of
reference to the accompanying photographs, the more
salient and easily recognized differences in the tracks of
the black and the grizzly bear, these animals being fre-
quently met with in the same regions. On the fore paw
of the black bear the pad is quite round at the front, and
slightly convex at the rear. It does not have the in-
dentation found on the inside of the grizzly's front foot,
and is, roughly speaking, somewhat kidney-shaped. The
outer side of the pad is also much narrower than that of
the grizzly. The claws are not so long and are different
in shape, curving much more at or near the point, and
they are proportionately broader at the base, growing
more like the claws of the cat. The foot is also much
thinner. Both the front and hind feet have greater mus-
cles, presumably developed by climbing. The black bear
does not do so much digging as the grizzly, and therefore
does not wear his claws down so short in proportion to
their length as does the latter. To be sure, he turns over

1 88 The Grizzly Bear

logs and rocks much as the grizzly does, but he uses his
entire paw for this purpose, whereas the grizzly will often
use a single claw, almost as though it were a finger. The
black bear is an agile climber, and, at times, when forced
to climb against his will, will cling to the trunk of a tree and
circle it like a squirrel to keep out of sight of the hunter.

On the grizzly's front paw the pad is only slightly
rounded out in front, while in the rear it is convex instead
of concave, as in the case of the black bear. It also shows
a decided indentation just back of the big toe, and the
marks left on the ground by the long curved claws are at a
distance of two or three inches from the ends of the toes.
These claws are not at all adapted to tree climbing, as
will be seen at a glance, but are used for digging roots,
turning over logs and rocks, and are invaluable for fight-
ing. These claws vary in color; sometimes they are
striped, sometimes white, and sometimes almost black.
The three middle ones are much longer than the two out-
side ones.

There are also distinct differences in the hind feet of
these two animals. One salient characteristic of the
grizzly's hind foot is a protuberance on the outside of the
pad just back of the little toe. This is not found on the
hind foot of the black bear; but the latter has, on the other
hand, two small protuberances on the inside of the pad,
one near the big toe and one near the heel. In some cases
these are more noticeable than in others, but their im-
pressions are always to be found. Another noticeable
difference lies in the shape of the heels. That of the
grizzly is sharply pointed, and if a line be drawn from the
middle toe along the axis of the foot, the point of the heel

1. HIND FOOT OF A BLACK BEAR

2. HIND TRACK OF A BLACK BEAR

Size, 8x4 inches.

3. HIND FOOT OF A GRIZZLY BEAR

4. HIND TRACK OF A GRIZZLY BEAR

Size, 10 x 5^ inches.

Description and Distribution 189

will be found to lie to one side of it. The heel of the black
bear is blunt and rounded, and a line from the middle of
the toe along the axis of the foot will exactly strike the
point of the heel. Again, in the grizzly's hind foot the
front line of the pad next to the toes is but slightly curved,
while in the case of the black bear it is rather strikingly
rounded out. The hind foot of the grizzly is also much
slenderer than that of the black bear.

In comparison with the black bear, the grizzlies are
longer of body and straighter along the back, and do not
show the same marked hump over the haunches. They
are narrower in the forehead, their jaws are longer, and
their muzzles much less tapering. This latter characteristic
is very marked, and appears even in old bears that have
grown fat. Several of the flash-light pictures reproduced
in this volume show this square muzzle excellently. The
grizzly's fore legs also differ greatly in build from those of
the black bear, being smaller in the ankle and marked by
a heavy and symmetrical development of muscle.

Another peculiarity of the species, also found in varying
degrees in the allied group of the Alaskan brown bears, is
the great length of the third incisor tooth on each side of
the upper jaw. This almost gives the grizzly the appear-
ance of having four upper canines, and the lower canines,
fitting in between these upper teeth, give him a peculiarly
formidable armament.

The color of the grizzly bear has given rise to much dis-
cussion. This is no doubt partly due to the implication in
the common name of the animal, and partly to the unusual
and apparently endless variability of the species in this
respect.

190 The Grizzly Bear

That Lewis and Clark found striking differences in
color among these bears is, as we have seen, amply attested
by their journals. They not only refer to them in varying
terms as the "grizzly," "gray," "white," "brown," and
"variegated" bear, but put down at some length their own
conclusions and the opinions of the Indians in regard to the
bearing of these color variations upon species. Nor in this
respect is there any difference between their day and ours.

I have seen grizzlies in all shades of color, ranging
from almost jet black, through the browns and creams, to
practically snow white; and it is, indeed, rarely that one
finds two of exactly the same color. It may be well, at
this point, to say a word in regard to the use of the word
"white" with reference to the grizzly bear. The word is
not used in a spectroscopic sense, but exactly as we use it
when we say that a man has white hair. If it be permis-
sible to say of an old man that "he had snow-white hair,"
then I have seen grizzlies of which it was permissible to
say the same. I have seen them as white as a mountain
goat, or as white as what is commonly called a "goat-skin"
rug. It is not uncommon to see an old she bear with three
cubs, each of a different color; one, for instance, of a dark
brown, verging almost upon black, a second of a light buff,
and the third nearly white, or white as far back as the
shoulders. In fact, we seldom see a litter of cubs that are
all of the same color as the dam, or, for that matter, all of
the same color. Whence comes this great variation of
coloring I am wholly unable to say. It is, however, an
indisputable fact and typical of the species throughout its
range.

It is interesting to note, however, in this connection,

Description and Distribution 191

that a great variability in color is also shown by the black
bears throughout the Rocky Mountain region, where these
animals are to be found of various shades from dark
brown to buff, and even, occasionally, of a uniform cream
color. I have never seen a jet black grizzly, or a black
bear as nearly white as some grizzlies; but between these
extremes I have seen many bears whose species was not
to be determined by color alone. Indeed, throughout the
North-west, so far as the color of either the grizzly or the
black bear is concerned, it no more determines the ani-
mal's classification than does the track indicate its color.
One often hears the cinnamon bear spoken of as a dis-
tinct species, and this idea is, I think, widely entertained;
but while there are many bears of a cinnamon color, they
may be either of the "grizzly" or of the "black" variety.
I have seen cinnamon colored bears in both species.

One is often asked as to one's opinion as regards the
"typical" color of the grizzly bear. This is a natural
question, both from the stand-point of the layman and
from that of the naturalist; for it is customary, in de-
scribing an animal for the purposes of scientific record, to
select a typical specimen, and base the description upon
that. But having myself seen so many hundreds of these
animals, and having seldom seen any two exactly alike, I
have always both hesitated to give a categorical answer to
this query, and questioned in my own mind the value of an
arbitrary selection. Yet, in view of the emphasis often
laid upon the point, I wrote to my friend, Dr. William
T. Hornaday, of the New York Zoological Society, and
asked him what his observations have been.

Dr. Hornaday says : " Regarding the color of the grizzly

192 The Grizzly Bear

it remains to-day just as Lewis and Clark found it a cen-
tury ago. I have never taken the pains to acquire from
other authorities any special information about the color
of the grizzly bears — chiefly for the reason that I have
myself seen a sufficient number of skins, and also living
bears, ranging all the way from Chihuahua, Mexico, to
White Horse, Yukon Territory. I have seen, all told, at
least two hundred skins of grizzlies, and not far from forty
living bears. Having seen these variations for myself, I
have never taken the pains to collect data from books,
but have learned much from practical, bona-fide bear
hunters like yourself. So far as I can judge, the color of
the grizzly conforms with no known law of coloration. I
do not know of any other bear species in which the colora-
tion of the pelage is so erratic as it is in that of the Rocky
Mountain grizzly. At this moment we have* a female
grizzly from Colorado which is very dark, and so nearly
destitute of the usual light color on her hair tips that she
is at times not easily distinguished from the Alaskan brown
bears — the latter being wholly without grizzled hair tips.
With this bear is exhibited a medium light-colored grizzly
from Wyoming, which, to judge by color alone, might well
be called another species. It is the kind frequently spoken
of as the bald-face grizzly — the hair of its entire head being
of a light buff color.

"I have seen grizzly bear skins from El Paso, Texas,
said to have come from old Mexico, that were almost a
golden yellow. Our grizzly bear from White Horse,
Yukon Territory, is about the same color as the so-called
bald-face from Wyoming. The hair of some grizzlies is

* In the Zoological Park, New York, of which Dr. Hornaday is Director.

Description and Distribution 193

light at the base, and in others it is dark. In my opinion,
there is no way in which to explain the erratic color of the
grizzlies.

"Unfortunately, there is no type specimen to which
naturalists can refer. The animal was described by Lewis
and Clark in varying terms, according to the different
colored specimens that they saw; but they brought back
no skins for permanent preservation, as representing the
species. Mr. Ord merely describes the animal on the
strength of the writing of others, and not according to what
he himself saw, and he had no type specimen. It is very
unfortunate that this important species should have been
described without a type specimen. Inasmuch, however,
as it was so described, it remains for you, or any other
author, to describe according to his own observations what
should be regarded as the standard and the most typical
color. For myself, were I to choose a skin to offer to the
world as a type, I would pick one which is dark colored,
but having the terminal third of its longest hairs colored
gray. In other words, the grizzly-gray wash on the coat
should not be ignored. The very light and the very dark
phases I should regard as extremes, and in no sense
typical."

Such a skin as Dr. Hornaday describes does, un-
doubtedly, represent that non-existent thing, the " average
grizzly." That is to say, it is, more nearly than any other,
typical of the abstract idea of this bear entertained, not
only by the general public, but by those who have seen a
good many specimens. But as a matter of actual observa-
tion I myself would not select this kind of hide for a
typical one. My experience has shown me that there are,

194 The Grizzly Bear

perhaps, fewer bears of this particular color than of any
other, and if one is to be governed by the comparative
commonness of a particular type, I would select as a
typical hide one with the head very light in color and
shading away to a point back of the shoulders, and the
remainder of the body rather dark, with the long hairs
slightly tipped with white. It is to be noted that, among
the bears described by Dr. Hornaday as at that time in
the Bronx Zoo, the one from Wyoming and the one from
Alaska approximated to this description. I have seen more
grizzlies of this general color scheme than of any other,
and that, too, in all parts of their range.

Of course the time of year at which the grizzly is seen
may, and, I believe, often does, make a difference in its
color; for a bear that is dark in October may be a rusty-
red or a golden-brown in June. But, so far as I am able
to judge, this change in the color of the pelage of a par-
ticular bear occurs only in those of one dark color, and,
even then, is the result of particular conditions, and fol-
lows no established or dependable rule. A bear that is
white about the head and shoulders is, I believe, more than
likely to remain this color at all times.

At one place in British Columbia, where I hunted for a
number of years, there was a bear that we saw year after
year that was apparently snow white from the tip of his
nose to the end of his tail. This bear was seen not only by
myself, and by various gentlemen who accompanied me
at different times, but by others at different times of the
year. I have also seen and recognized, year after year,
grizzlies of a dark hue, and know for a certainty that they
changed scarcely at all in color.

Description and Distribution 195

It is no doubt due to this remarkable range of coloring
that hunters and trappers have so persistently maintained
that there are many different kinds of grizzlies throughout
the Rocky Mountains; such as the "bald-face," the
"roach-back," the "silver-tip," the "range bear," and
now and again the real grizzly. These old fellows, good
hunters, no doubt, but infrequently discriminating ob-
servers, have insisted that there is a difference as to spe-
cies in these different colored bears, and that some are
more fierce than others; that a roach-back or a bald-face,
for example, will give the trail to neither man nor beast.
But this, in my experience, is all a myth. I have never
found that those of one color were any more ferocious
than those of another; or, indeed, that those of one color
differed from those of another color in anything but color.

The size of the grizzly is another mooted question.
There seems to be a wide-spread idea that a grizzly must
weigh a ton or more. Even in the mountains, among those
who ought to know better, I have often heard the state-
ment that "it could not have been a grizzly as it was not
large enough." Now, to whatever size the grizzly may
attain, it is not born weighing a ton. As a matter of fact,
as we shall see later on, they weigh only a few ounces at
birth, and, so far as my observations go, I am inclined to
think that they are rather smaller at birth than the black
bear. I have often seen females of both species, with their
cubs, in July, and have found that the grizzly cubs were
not nearly so large as those of the black bear; although the
mother grizzly was fully as large again as the black bear dam.

Moreover, full-grown grizzlies differ vastly in size. I
have myself killed small grizzlies, and have seen such

196 The Grizzly Bear

killed by others, that were extremely old. Their teeth were
worn down to the gums, and many of them decayed and
broken off, and there was every other indication that the
animals were full of years; and yet these bears would not
have tipped the scales at more than two hundred and fifty
or three hundred pounds. Again, the finest and largest
specimens of the grizzly I have ever seen appeared to be
in the prime of life. Their teeth were white as ivory, and
they were the personification of strength, size, and vigorous
bearhood.

Unfortunately, the weight of the grizzly has been more
a matter of guess work than of knowledge, as few of them
have been reliably weighed. Some that have been raised
in captivity have, at their death, been carefully weighed;
but none of these have tipped the scales at any such
weight as some old hunters have claimed for the animal.

Dr. Hornaday says, regarding the weights of grizzlies
raised in captivity: "The largest grizzly of which I ever
have had an authentic record is the one which lived and
died in the Lincoln Park Menagerie, Chicago, and which
was weighed to oblige Mr. G. O. Shields. Its weight was
eleven hundred and fifty-three pounds. That is, I am
certain, the heaviest record for any grizzly whose weight
was ever ascertained by scales."

The largest grizzly that Lewis and Clark killed, or at
least the largest they mention, they "conjectured" would
weigh a thousand pounds. This bear measured, as they
state, nine feet from the end of his nose to the root of his
tail, and a bear of these dimensions is a very large animal.
Judging from my own observations, I should say that they
underestimated, rather than overestimated, its weight.

Description and Distribution 197

James Capen Adams, according to Mr. Hittell,
claimed that his grizzly bear Sampson had been weighed
on a hay scale, and tipped the beam at fifteen hundred
pounds.

I have never weighed one myself, nor have I ever seen
one weighed. Many years ago there was a large grizzly
killed in Idaho, hauled into Spokane, and sold to a butcher,
who claimed that he weighed it and paid for eleven hun-
dred and seventy-three pounds of bear meat. These fig-
ures were placarded on the carcass as it hung in front of
the shop. I, with many others, saw the bear, and, had it
been recently, I should certainly have had it weighed and
had the weight certified to. But at that time no one
thought of doing such a thing, and thus, unfortunately,
the statement of the weight of one of the largest bears I
have ever seen is uncorroborated.

The gait of the grizzly is peculiar and almost impos-
sible to describe. His walk is a kind of shuffle, similar to,
yet very different from, that of the black bear. It is less
awkward, less loose-jointed, and yet in a way more un-
gainly, because more suggestive of power. It differs,
moreover, from that of the black bear in that at no time
while in motion does the grizzly give one the impression of
being off its guard, or, so to say, of there being any point
in its stride when its muscles are not under instant and
complete command. Any one familiar with these two
bears can tell from one glance at the back or at the legs
of an animal in motion to which species it belongs. I
have mentioned a case in which I mistook a grizzly for a
black bear, and did not discover my error for some time.
This, however, was wholly due to the fact that my original

198 The Grizzly Bear

assumption closed my eyes, and, having once definitely
accepted the animal as a black bear, I simply let it go at
that. The grizzly's walk has the appearance of leisure,
but he will cover long distances in a remarkably short time
without once going out of it. His run is something be-
tween a lope and a plunging gallop. He can outrun the
black bear by nearly a half, no man can match him in
speed, and it takes a mighty good horse to catch him.

XIX

CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS

GRIZZLY cubs (it seems, on the whole, just as well to
begin at the beginning) are brought forth in the
winter den, and at about the same time as those of the
black bear; that is, about the end of February or early in
March. The period of gestation is seven and one-half
months.

Ordinarily a grizzly has either two or three cubs to a
litter, with the chances somewhat in favor of the smaller
number. Twice I have seen an old grizzly with four cubs,
and, very occasionally, one with only one. In the summer
of 1906, in one locality, in the mountains on the eastern
side of Yellowstone National Park, I saw two old grizzlies
with two cubs each, two with three each, and one with
four.

After the cubs are born, the family continues to occupy
their den for a month or two, according to the locality;
and during this time the conditions make it impossible for
the mother to get food. Whether she drinks or not I am
unable to say, but she could get water only in the form of
the snow that has closed them in. As no food is laid up in
the den, and as the old bear does not come out to forage,

we know for certain that she does not eat during this time.

199

2OO The Grizzly Bear

We also know that the cubs must be at least two months
old when they emerge from the den.

When the cubs are first born they are wee little chaps,
not larger than the common gray squirrel, and I do not
think that at the time of birth the size of the mother
makes any material difference as to the size of the cubs;
although I have reason to believe that, as is often the case
with other animals, when but a single cub is born to a
litter, it is likely to be larger than where there are two or
more. I have examined the little fellows shortly after
birth, and where the mothers differed greatly in size, but
the cubs were always of about the same weight.

Adams, in describing the capture of Ben Franklin,
refers to the enormous size of the old mother and to the
smallness of the cubs, whose eyes were not yet open. He
says that he carried them both in his shirt front, and it will
be remembered that he put them to nurse to a greyhound
that happened to have puppies of about the same age,
and he says that the cubs were little, if any, larger than
the puppies whose places they usurped.

As I had never actually weighed a young grizzly cub,
and as I had found that many persons unacquainted with
the facts in the case seemed to regard it as impossible that
the young of so large an animal should be so small, I
asked Dr. Hornaday whether he had ever weighed any
cubs born in captivity. He replied that "a grizzly cub,
which was born to our Colorado grizzly, 'Lady Washing-
ton,' on January 13, 1906, weighed eighteen ounces."

A year or so later, on the evening of January 18, 1908,
while in New York City, I received word from Dr.
Hornaday that two cubs had just been born to a Rocky

Characteristics and Habits 201

Mountain grizzly in the Bronx Zoo, and that if I would
come up the next morning I might see them, and photo-
graph them. They were just twelve hours old when I
arrived, and the two weighed one pound, that is, eight
ounces each. They measured nine inches from nose to
tail, and the accompanying illustration gives an excellent
idea of their appearance. The mother weighed about six
hundred pounds.

Grizzly cubs are born with their eyes closed, and do
not open them for about the same period as puppies and
kittens. There is very little hair on their bodies at birth,
and what there is is so short that they have every appear-
ance of being naked. They are born without teeth, or,
rather, their teeth are so little developed that they can
barely be felt by pressing one's finger down on their gums.
These teeth, however, grow very rapidly, and are early
replaced by a new set as sharp as needles.

The dam and her family leave the den anywhere be-
tween the first of April and the middle of May, according
to the locality. I have never found the fresh track of a
grizzly in the Kootenai country earlier than the 5th of
May, while in the southern part of central Idaho I have
seen where a grizzly had left his den as early as the middle
of March. The male bears leave their dens from one to
three weeks before the female and her cubs come out;
yet in any one locality, nearly all of each class leave their
dens about the same time.

How the brutes can tell just when to come out is one
of their own secrets. In the Selkirks they den so high up
among the peaks that when they emerge there are from
four to six (and in some cases even ten) feet of snow still

2O2 The Grizzly Bear

lying over the country like a great white blanket. Only
on the slides, which have been swept by the tremendous
avalanches that usually come down in March, is the
ground clear. Yet on one of our trips to this region we saw
where thirteen grizzlies came down the mountain side in
a single night. They all came down an open place not
over half a mile across, and it was in following their trails
back up the mountain that I found the six dens hereafter
mentioned. These were all natural caves among the
cliffs, their mouths well concealed by thick firs and juni-
per brush, and the animals, in coming out, had broken
through some five feet of snow. As it is, therefore, not the
melting snow that arouses them, it would seem that there
must be some kind of nature's alarm clock, known to the
bears, that informs them when it is time to get up.

It is some months before the young cubs begin to forage
for themselves, even in part. Dr. Hornaday, speaking of
bears in captivity, writes me: "I think the average age at
which a grizzly cub begins to feed independently of his
mother's milk is about four months. Of course, the be-
ginning on solid food is made very slowly, and the young-
sters nurse vigorously all summer."

I am, however, sure that this weaning process begins
later in the wild state. I have many times seen a mother
grizzly digging roots and feeding on grasses in August
while her cubs were running about or lying in the sun,
and seemed to take no interest whatever in the food that
she was so busy in getting. Yet a bear cub, when the
time comes, knows just as much about the proper food of
the bears in the locality where it was born as does the
oldest bear on the range.

Characteristics and Habits 203

I have caught them when they first came from the den,
and when the earth was covered with a thick mantle of
snow, and have then taken them from their mothers, and
for weeks fed them milk and such soft foods as I could
make them eat; and then found that, when they were old
enough, they would go out and, wholly untaught, select
the food that the old bears were eating at the time. One
black bear cub that I took in this way I kept with me all
through the summer and fall hunting, having caught him
early in June, in the Bitter Root Mountains, when the
ground was covered with snow and when he first came
from the den. He was then a little fellow not larger than a
common house cat, and cried for his mother the greater
part of the time for a couple of weeks.

This cub I took about with me all over the mountains
for more than four months, and I learned many a thing
about bears from him. Whenever, as he grew older, we
were in camp and he wished to get loose, as he would show
by pulling at his chain and bawling, I would free him,
and then follow to see what he was after. He invariably
made for some bottom land and dug for roots, or nipped
off the grass where it grew young and tender. I have seen
him dig more than a foot down into the ground for some
root that had not yet sent up its shoot, and — although how
the young rascal could tell just where to dig was beyond
me — he always found his tidbit. Moreover, he knew the
berry bushes from the others by the same inherited knowl-
edge. He would reach up and pull down the branches of
these to examine them, although there might not be any
berries on them at the time, and he never, that I saw,
made a single mistake. He soon came to pay no attention

204 The Grizzly Bear

to my presence, and whenever he dug up anything from
the earth that I did not recognize, I would open his mouth,
take it away from him, and keep it while I examined it.

When the cubs first come from their dens at from two
to three months of age, they are about the size of a house
cat, and will weigh from ten to fifteen pounds. At from
five to six months of age, that is to say, in July or August,
they will probably weigh about thirty pounds. Late in
the fall, when ready to den up again, they will tip the
scales at from fifty to seventy-five pounds. When a
grizzly is nearly two years old, that is, in the second fall,
when he is ready to den up for the winter, he will ordinarily
weigh anywhere from one hundred and fifty to two hun-
dred pounds.

In their wild state the cubs den up with the mother
for the winter following their birth, and follow her during
the second summer, after which they are cast aside to
shift for themselves, and the old lady will again den up
alone, bringing out another litter of cubs the following
spring. Naturalists, who have studied these bears in
captivity, claim that they then breed every year, but I am
satisfied that this is not true of them in a state of nature.
In the open, one sees as many she grizzlies with yearling
cubs as one sees with little spring cubs.

When a litter of young grizzlies come to leave their
mother they do not, as a rule, separate, but travel in com-
pany for at least a year; and it is, I imagine, this habit of
theirs that has given rise to the idea that the full-grown
animals are gregarious. I know that in some cases, and I
believe in most, if not all, the cubs den up together for
their second winter, and it is (or used to be, alas!) a com-

Characteristics and Habits 205

mon sight to see them, during their third summer, working
together under the undisputed command of the one to
whom they had yielded the leadership. I incline to the
belief that they do not separate and breed until the follow-
ing spring.

When not feeding, grizzlies lie up in some dense thicket
near a stream, or, if in a region where they are apt to be
disturbed, far back in some high canon. I have seen
many of their beds. In the Selkirks, these sleeping places
are far above timber line, dug out from the side of steep
mountains where there is not a shrub or a bush to screen
them, and where they have an unobstructed view of miles
of country. Here, as the signs indicate, they return to
sleep day after day.

I have sometimes almost thought that these bears, in
a way, enjoy the grand view to be had from these heights.
Not only have I found their bedrooms high up among the
crags and overlooking range upon range of highest moun-
tain, with restful, wide-spreading valleys below; but it has
been no unusual experience, while hunting in these high
regions, to see an old bear, after feeding for an hour or
more far out of reach of my rifle, stroll deliberately out to
the edge of some high cliff overlooking all creation, and
sit there on his haunches like a dog, swinging his massive
head slowly and dignifiedly from side to side. I have
already mentioned the grizzly that we called White Jim,
on Wilson's Creek in the Selkirks. This old white bear
went through this performance nearly every day for three
weeks.

Grown grizzlies do not climb trees. And this for a
simple reason. They are not built that way. Once in a

2o6 The Grizzly Bear

while I have seen a grizzly cub go up a tree whose branches
started at the very ground and grew in such a way as to
allow him to step from one to another; but they never
climb smooth and straight-bodied trees as do black bears
of all ages, and they never encircle the tree with their
arms, as such an animal must, in order to climb a smooth
trunk. Grown grizzlies will walk out on a leaning tree
such as a man might walk out on with rubber-soled shoes,
and they are very expert walkers on fallen logs and timber,
and often take to them when trailed. But they not only
do not, but cannot, climb.

The grizzly is not, as many hunters and sportsmen
suppose, a gregarious animal. One may, and, indeed,
often does, see several of them feeding at the same time in
the same bottom, or among the bushes of a single berry
patch. But, except in the case of a she bear with cubs,
or of a litter of cubs that have left their mother, but have
not yet disbanded, they will always be found to come
singly, and to depart in like manner. Indeed, the etiquette
that appears to govern these chance meetings is one of the
most amusing things about these animals. An old bear
will emerge from the bushes surrounding an open glade
where several others are already feeding; he will pause and
look critically about as though examining the lay of the
land and the distribution of the trees and bushes; but he
will show in no way that he is conscious of the presence of
the other bears; and these, in their turn, will go on about
their business, and by not so much as a batted eyelid show
any recognition of his arrival. Sometimes, later on, if two
of them meet, or clash over some tidbit, their first move-
ment is always one of surprise at the other's presence, and

Characteristics and Habits 207

this enforced dropping of their incognito is more likely
than not to be followed by the retreat of the smaller of
them from the feeding ground.

I have seen as many as nine grizzlies in one berry patch,
and as many as five fishing on one riffle of a salmon
stream; but they not only came and went singly, but,
while there, they gave no outward sign of mutual recogni-
tion or even of mutual consciousness.

It is even open to doubt as to whether the males and
females travel together during the mating season, and I
have never seen full-grown grizzlies living or travelling in
company.

The mating time of the grizzly throughout the North-
west extends, according to locality, from about the middle
of June until about the first of August. I have been
unable to determine whether individual males and females
deliberately seek each other out during this time, pair off,
and stay together for a month or more, or whether they
meet by chance and again separate. I am inclined to
believe the latter, as I have never yet seen the two together
at any time of the year. That they do not stay together
during the winter I am absolutely convinced, and I do
not believe that they remain in company for any material
part of the summer.

This opinion, like most others expressed in this volume,
is based on many observations, no one of which was con-
clusive, but all of which, taken together, were not to be
ignored. I may, for example, cite the following instance:
On one occasion, while on a bear-hunting expedition in
May and June, I was camped in a part of the Bitter Root
range near an old trapper who was trapping bear. It was

208 The Grizzly Bear

near the end of the trapping season, and this old fellow
was about to take up his traps, as fur was becoming poor.
Near where he had one of his traps set we had, on several
occasions, seen the tracks of a large grizzly, and he had
left this trap to the very last in hopes of catching him.

It was now the mating season, and although there were
bear tracks all over the country, we could never find where
more than one large bear had gone at a time.

The last morning that he went to look at the trap near
where we had seen the large tracks, I went with him,
thinking that, as the bears were so much on the move, I
might, perhaps, get a shot. There were also some large
snow-banks near by, upon which these bears are very fond
of lying when the weather is warm, and as I had already
shot several bears there, I thought it likely that I might
catch the old fellow cooling himself on the snow.

As we came near the pen in which the trap was set we
saw the old grizzly rise up just outside of it, but, as we
both supposed that he was fast in the trap, we did not
shoot. To our- surprise, however, after taking a look at
us, he bolted for a thicket and disappeared in a twinkling.
It was all so sudden and unexpected that we simply stood
agape, and as the bear had only to make a couple of
jumps to get out of sight, he was safe before we had any
chance of shooting him.

But a greater surprise than this awaited us. On com-
ing up to the pen we found a large female grizzly caught in
the trap, and chewed, mauled, and pounded to death.
From the looks of things there had been a hot old fight.
Of course we had seen from a distance that the logs form-
ing the pen had been thrown down, but we had assumed

Characteristics and Habits 209

that the bear that ran away had done this before he knew
that he was not fast in the trap. The head of the dead
bear was chewed to such an extent that her most intimate
friends would not have recognized her, and, upon taking
off her skin, we found great masses of clotted blood under
the hide that showed how fearfully she had been mauled.

Why the male had killed her can, of course, only be
surmised; but the facts seemed to point to only one con-
clusion. The two had come to the pen, as the tracks
showed, from different directions. The female had, of
course, come first, as she had been caught in the trap, but
the male must have arrived at about the same time, or
the one in the trap would have dragged it from the pen.
Probably, being exasperated by her predicament, the
female had been unable or unwilling to reciprocate in
love-making, and the male had become enraged and killed
her.

This is one of the experiences that lead me to believe
that these bears do not travel together during the mating
season. It also leads me to doubt the claim sometimes
made that they are more pugnacious at this season than at
any other; else this one, already enraged and disappointed,
would surely have attacked us as we approached him.

I have never yet seen a whole family of grizzlies to-
gether; that is, the male, female, and cubs; and I do not
believe that they consort together in this way. I am, in-
deed, inclined to the opinion that the male will kill the
young when they are under four or five months of age. I
have noticed that a mother bear, when with her young
cubs, takes every means to avoid meeting any male bear,
and is always cranky and ready to scrap with any other

2i o The Grizzly Bear

grizzly, be it male or female, that chances to put in an
appearance.

On two occasions I have known an old male grizzly
to kill and eat a small cub that was tied up with a chain,
and once, while hunting bears in the spring, I witnessed the
following incident, or, rather, found the evidences of it.
A trapper had caught in one of his traps a female grizzly
that was accompanied by her two cubs. She had dragged
the trap and clog for several hundred yards, where the clog
had finally caught in a clump of brush and stopped her.
And while thus held fast, an old male grizzly had come
along, and had not only killed her, but had killed and
eaten the cubs. When we arrived, he was sitting under a
tree close by, and we shot him through the head. We
found a few scraps of the cubs lying about, and part of one
of them was buried near where he had been sitting.

All my observations, as I say, have led me to believe
that a free male grizzly will, if he gets a chance, kill his
young cubs; but as the matter is not susceptible of proof,
I consulted Dr. Hornaday as to what his observations had
been on this point, in the matter of bears in captivity, and
I give herewith what he says of the matter: "Of course,
male bears in captivity would be likely to destroy young
cubs during their first six months — if they got the oppor-
tunity. It is absolutely necessary to sequestrate the males
and give each female a den wholly to herself and her cubs.
We had great trouble in keeping our young cubs from
getting their paws into adjoining dens and having them
bitten off* by older bears."

The grizzly does not den up for the winter at as low an
altitude as does the black bear, but seeks the higher hills,

Characteristics and Habits 211

where he usually goes into his winter quarters some time in
November, or perhaps a little later, according to the
locality and the weather conditions.

The den is usually in some natural cave, although
occasionally it may be made by the bear himself. I have
found a number of the winter homes of the grizzly, and
he usually selects a dryer and warmer shelter than does the
black bear. Black bears will den in almost any place, and
while they usually dig a hole under an upturned root, or
under a fallen tree, I have seen where they have used
natural caves, into which they have scraped a bed of
grass or leaves; but the grizzly seldom, if ever, takes his
long nap under fallen timber. He usually seeks the higher
altitudes along the timber line, and sometimes even goes
higher yet. Here, in the canons among the cliffs, natural
caves are found, and into these a grizzly will scrape and
drag anything that can be converted into a bed, and, thus
hidden and protected, will pass away the several months
of winter undisturbed by snow and storm.

Under certain conditions they will dig large holes
under big rocks, in which to make their beds. I have ex-
amined several such places, and in two instances found
where the bears had dug clean through to the other side.
I have also seen where, the elements having in the course
of time caved in the earth close to the rocks, the bears had
pulled old logs and brush over the breaks, and thus re-
paired the damage. These were evidently favorite places
for dens, and the bears, loath to give them up, had done
this in order to retain their old bedrooms. My friend,
Mr. A. L. A. Himmelwright, of New York, found a den of
exactly this sort a few years ago in the mountains west of

212 The Grizzly Bear

the Big Hole country, in Montana. It was rather late in
the fall, with a veneer of snow on the ground, and he found
the den by trailing the bears, an old female and two cubs.
It is sometimes claimed that when the denning time
comes, the male and female go into the same den; but
this, I think, is a false notion. Not only do I believe that
the male bear would kill and eat the cubs after they were
born, but I have never discovered a den that showed evi-
dences of having been occupied by more than the old
female bear. In the case of a barren she bear, a partner-
ship arrangement as to winter quarters may possibly be
made, now and then; but I cling to the belief that no two
full-grown grizzlies go into the same den for the winter.
In the Selkirks, where the bears den along the high moun-
tain tops, and in the spring come down from their winter
homes over the deep snows, it is an easy matter to back-
track them and find where they have wintered. I have
often done this and, having gone into the mountains two
or three weeks before a bear track could be found, have,
when the first track appeared, taken the trail and followed
it back to the den.

I have seen as many as four grizzlies come from one
den. But they were of about the same size, and were
youngsters not over two years old, and presumably all of
one litter that had not yet been broken up.

James Capen Adams, in describing his capture of Ben
Franklin in the den whence the cubs' mother had just
issued to her death, says that, before going into the dark
den to look for the young bears, "I trembled for the
moment at the thought of another old bear in the den; but
on second thought I assured myself of the folly of such an

Characteristics and Habits 213

idea; for an occurrence of this kind would have been
against all experience."

I once found six of these dens in a single day in the
Selkirks, and not more than one bear had come from any
of them, although, while some of the dens were only large
enough for one to lie in, others were of a size sufficient to
hold several bears had they wished to sleep together. In
the smaller caves, because of restricted quarters, I found
much hair that had been rubbed off the animal by contact
with the sharp rock, as each had changed his position from
time to time during his long period of slumber. Now,
were it a common practice for bears to den together in the
same cave, it seems that they would have done so here;
for all six caves were in the same ridge, and the two ex-
treme caves were less than half a mile apart. I thought,
at the time, that I would visit these caves in the fall and
see if the same den was occupied year after year, but the
opportunity to do so never presented itself.

The grizzly is rather a restless fellow just before den-
ning up. The bed is usually prepared beforehand and
made ready for occupancy at a moment's notice. After
which, long excursions in search of food are often made
about the country, some of them to points as far as ten or
twenty miles away.

To what age the grizzly lives in the wild state is
entirely a matter of conjecture. I am of the opinion, how-
ever, that, under favorable circumstances, they live to be
from twenty-five to forty years old. I have come to this
conclusion from the fact that I once, for twelve successive
years, kept track of one identical bear that was full grown
when I first met him, and that showed no evidence of old

214 The Grizzly Bear

age when I lost sight of him. This was in the Bitter Root
range in Idaho. Every fall, for these twelve years, we saw
where this old grizzly had made his way up to the main
range to den up for the winter; and each succeeding
spring we saw his track as he again sought the lower
country to spend the summer among the berries and the
salmon. That it was the same bear I am certain, for not
only was his track a huge one, and not likely to be du-
plicated, but I have seen the bear himself many times, and
on several occasions could have shot him. He was, as I
say, full grown the first time I saw him, and there was
during all these years no appreciable difference in the size
of his track, which measured nearly fifteen inches. Each
fall, as we came from these hunting grounds, and made our
way out into Montana, we looked for the track of this
old monarch, and invariably saw his footprints. Where
he kept himself during the summer and early fall I was
never able to learn, as I could not, during these times, find
even his track.

Dr. Hornaday, in speaking of bears in captivity, says:
"The bears of North America generally reach full ma-
turity between the ages of six and seven years. Some are
full grown at six years — others not until seven."

I am inclined to believe that in the wild state grizzlies
do not usually reach full maturity until somewhat later.
I have watched several that inhabited certain localities,
and they, I am sure, did not reach their full growth under
eight years. Allowing, then, for the time it must have
taken this grizzly to attain his growth, and adding to this
the time he roamed the hills under my observation, his
age when I last saw him would have been beyond the

Characteristics and Habits 215

twenty-year limit. Of course, bears in captivity may, on
an average, live longer than those exposed to the dangers
and vicissitudes of the open. Yet they have not the induce-
ments to live so long, nor do they, I believe, grow so large
as those in the wild state. Those in captivity have neither
the fields to roam in, nor the streams to plunge into, nor
the sunlight that a bear loves, nor the exercise that all
bears take so freely in the wilds. All these things work
together for the health and vigor of the bears in far places.
On the other hand, those confined in man-made dens and
pits have the certainty of food, security from enemies, and
the vegetating chances of a life of sloth. Nevertheless,
something of the allotted age of free bears may be
inferred from the known life span of those in captivity.
On March 22, 1909, a grizzly was chloroformed in the
Central Park Menagerie, in New York, that had been
purchased from Barnum's Circus in 1884, and had, during
these twenty-five years, been confined in the pits in New
York.

That many bears in the open live to what, for a bear,
constitutes a ripe old age, I am able to testify. I have
seen them so decrepit that they walked like octogenarians,
and I have killed those that showed unmistakable evi-
dences of being full of years. Strangely enough, I have
never yet seen or found dead a grizzly bear that had died
a natural death. In no one of the caves where they hiber-
nate have I ever found a solitary bone, and, although I
have more than once seen an aged bear in a certain locality
one season, and found the next year that he had disap-
peared, I have never, even after careful search, found
trace of his remains or hint of the manner of his end.

2i6 The Grizzly Bear

Probably in some hidden cave, in some remote and lonely
spot, the old hero of a hundred fierce contests had passed,
all unconsciously, perhaps, from his winter slumber into
his unwaking sleep.

XX

FOOD AND FEEDING

THE grizzly bear is, in the technical sense of the
word, omnivorous; that is to say, he is both her-
bivorous and carnivorous, fitted by nature and accustomed
by instinct to feed upon flesh or to graze upon grass, to
dig roots, gather berries, catch fish, and lap up ants, grubs,
and other larvae.

He is, however, taken by and large throughout the
range inhabited by him, almost as erratic in his food
habits as he is in color. But these frequently astonishing
differences in taste and dietary seem to be entirely the
result of environment, and, with occasional exceptions,
the feeding habits of the grizzly in any given region are
identical.

At first sight these divergent traits and habits appear
puzzling, but I think that the explanation is, after all, a
simple one. The grizzly is not, I believe, much of a
traveller, and hence, those of a given region, having for
generations been restricted to the obtainable food of their
habitat, are found to have quite lost their taste for food
natural to the species, but which they and their immediate
ancestors have never seen.

Let us, for example, consider the food of the grizzly in

217

2i 8 The Grizzly Bear

that part of the Bitter Root Mountains known as the
Clearwater country, in Idaho. First, in the early spring,
he eats the tender shoots of grass that he finds on the hill-
sides having a southern exposure, and for some little time
this constitutes his sole sustenance. He then seeks the
streams, where for nearly a month he fishes for salmon.
He is, as we have already seen, a deft fisherman, but at
this time of year he is not as successful as when the later
runs of salmon appear, when the water is lower and
clearer. However, for some weeks he manages to live on
his catches. After the salmon run is over, he again be-
takes himself to the hills, where he turns over rocks and
dead trees, tears up stumps, rips open logs, and overhauls
things generally, hunting for ants, grubs, and any larvae
that he can find to eat. These suffice him until the berries
are ripe, and after the berry harvest is garnered he turns
to the autumn run of salmon. The fish now supply his
larder abundantly for another month, and then he once
more seeks the sidehills and forages for any stray grubs or
ants that were fortunate enough to escape his first cam-
paign. Such is the bill of fare of the grizzly throughout
the Bitter Roots.

Let us now turn to the same animal a few hundred
miles away in the mountains of northern Wyoming.
Here the grizzly does not dig to any great extent for roots,
nor is he the confirmed grass and fish eater that he is in the
Bitter Roots; but, aside from the berries that all grizzlies
love, and the ants and grubs that they never refuse, he is,
spring and fall, very decidedly carnivorous. In this
Wyoming region there are thousands of head of elk and
other game. During the winter many perish, and their

Food and Feeding 219

bodies lie until spring under the snow. During the fall
many are shot, and their carcasses left lying where they
fall. These the grizzly feeds on. In the Bitter Root
country, strange as it may appear, not one grizzly in fifty
would touch a carcass thus found.

Farther north, in the Kootenai region, and throughout
the Selkirks in British Columbia, it is again true that not
one grizzly in a hundred will touch flesh. In the Kootenai
there is little game of any kind, except bears and Rocky
Mountain goats. In the higher Selkirks there are not even
fish for them to catch, since, on account of the precipitous
nature of the country and the number of waterfalls, the
creeks cannot be ascended by the fish. In these regions,
therefore, the grizzlies live and die vegetarians. They do,
however, spend much time in the late fall in travelling
along the higher ridges, hunting for Columbian ground
squirrels and whistling marmots, and digging these out of
their winter homes. These little animals hibernate, as do
the grizzlies, but they turn in earlier; and in a region where
they are found the bears take great delight in unearthing
them, and sometimes will dig out carloads of earth and
rocks to secure a small feast of the little fellows. This is
the last food the grizzly obtains before he goes into his
long winter sleep.

The claws of the grizzly are well adapted for this
peculiar sort of work; yet, long and strong as they are, so
much of it does he have to do that, by the time he is ready
to go into winter quarters, they are worn down to the quick,
and not much, if any, longer than those of the black bear.
After his long winter's sleep, however, when he emerges
from his den in the spring, he is once more armed with

22O The Grizzly Bear

strong curved claws, from four to six inches long. In
those parts of the country where he does not have to hus-
tle so hard for roots and ground squirrels — for instance,
in some parts of Wyoming, central Idaho, and Montana —
the grizzly does not wear his claws down so close. Yet he
seems, on the whole, to attain a larger growth where he
has to work most — just as a hen lays most eggs when she
is compelled to scratch hardest.

I have already spoken of the old trapper whom we
found on the headwaters of Wilson's Creek. He claimed
to be something of an expert, and figured that he was
going to reap a rich harvest in grizzly-bear pelts; but in
two seasons' trapping he caught only one grown grizzly
and one cub, the latter being the one we wounded and
chased into one of the traps which he had set in the trail.
This man had killed goats and porcupines for bait, had
brought in fish, cheese, honey, and molasses; in fact, he
had tried everything to be found in the country, and
many things that he had packed in from outside; but the
bears simply ignored them all, and seemed perfectly con-
tented to eat grass, dig roots, and nip off the tender buds
of the soft maple.

In all our experience in this region we found but a
single bear that had any appetite for meat, this being the
old fellow that ate part of the horse we led in and killed
for bait. On the other hand, it will be remembered that
we detached a shoulder from the carcass of this horse,
dragged it across the hills for two miles or more, and
placed it on a snow slide in full view of camp, where we
could watch it with the field-glasses; and that, although
this bait remained there until putrefaction set in and the

Food and Feeding 221

bears kept the grass cropped close in the little opening,
not one ever touched it, nor, so far as we could discover,
did they even smell of it or look at it.

I should say, unhesitatingly, that the reason these
bears do not care for meat is because they have never
known the taste of it. In districts where game is plentiful
the bears have been accustomed to live for a part of the
time on flesh, and will eat it whenever found. But where
they have been forced back into the remote fastnesses of
the mountains, where meat and fish are scarcely to be had,
and where, from the time of their birth, they are plant
eaters, it is not surprising that the carnivorous instinct is
not at all, or but slightly, developed.

Almost any mountaineer will testify that animals have
to be taught to eat food different from that to which they
have been accustomed. We are, for instance, used to
thinking of the horse as a grain eater, and most people
will scoff at the idea of a horse that is afraid of oats. Yet
many times, when no grazing was to be had, I have seen
horses, that had been caught up wild and broken to
packing, pull back and snort with fright at the sight of a
feed of grain, and stand all night with oats in front of
them and refuse to eat them. So, I think, it is with the
bear.

But aside from the grizzlies in one locality eating meat,
and those of another refusing it, there are other idiosyn-
crasies in the taste and food habits of these animals that
teach us to be careful how we generalize from local ob-
servation. And this lesson may well be taken to heart by
both the hunter and the field naturalist. Above all things,
it is important that, when we make a note or mention an

222 The Grizzly Bear

occurrence, we state the locality. All animals act differ-
ently under different conditions, and a knowledge of these
is necessary to draw proper conclusions or form just judg-
ments.

All through the Bitter Root Mountains there grow
three plants, commonly called the shooting star, the dog-
tooth violet, and the spring beauty. These plants may
also be found in the Selkirks in British Columbia. In the
Bitter Roots the grizzlies are very fond of the leaves of the
shooting star, which somewhat resemble the horse-radish.
This plant grows on all the marshes, along all the streams,
and in any place that is at all wet, and the grizzly feeds
on it more or less all through the summer, or until the
leaves get too tough. It is particularly sought for by she
grizzlies with cubs. But I have never, in the Bitter Roots,
known a grizzly bear to dig up the bulb-like roots of either
the dog-tooth viol-et or the spring beauty. In British
Columbia, on the contrary, I have yet to find the first leaf
nipped by a bear from the shooting star, while I have
seen acres of ground torn up by them for the roots of the
other plants. Here the argument of opportunity and
environment fails, and I can only record the facts without
offering any explanation.

The feeding time of the grizzly depends altogether on
the locality. In a country where he is hunted and dis-
turbed, he will either leave the region altogether or will
come out to feed at night or just at dusk or break of day.
In localities where he is free from annoyance, he will feed
up to ten o'clock in the morning, and from two o'clock in
the afternoon until dark, and perhaps longer.

In the spring, when they first come from their dens,

Food and Feeding 223

the grizzlies are likely to be found feeding later in the
morning and to return earlier in the evening, and at this
season I have even seen them out at all hours of the day.
But later in the season, after the ravenous appetite of
early spring has been somewhat appeased, they will
usually, on the one hand, be seen only between four
o'clock in the evening and dark, and, on the other, will not
remain out long after the break of day.

The grizzly is the only animal I have ever hunted
whose habits one cannot depend upon. The fact that you
have seen him out and feeding on berries every morning
for two weeks, at precisely eight o'clock, is scant reason
for expecting to see him to-morrow at the same time. It
would be just like him to then come out at high noon — a
time when usually no self-respecting grizzly would think
of showing himself. In a way I attribute this to the fact
that the grizzly is very wary and, among other peculiarities,
likes seclusion. He will change his routine instantly if
intruded upon, and if he is molested to any extent will
leave his regular feeding grounds for others.

The grkzly, as I have said, does not seem to be much
of a traveller. He generally, I believe, spends his life in
a restricted area of country, and likes to live where he will
not have to go far for food. He loves a dark, wooded
canon near good feeding grounds, and, winding across this
canon, his trails will be found. He is also fond of
marshes where there is a stream, and where the small
willows grow thick and the grass heavy. Near the edge
of such a stream he makes his bed, and here he lies up
during the hot days of summer; and not very far away
will be found the wallows where he has rolled in the mud

224 The Grizzly Bear

to escape the flies. But a grizzly, when forced to, will
travel far for the food he craves. He will go many miles to
feed on berries during their season, if none grow near his
own especial haunts; and in the Bitter Roots he makes
considerable journeys to reach the salmon streams. The
farthest that I have ever actually known an individual
grizzly to go is twenty miles, but I am inclined to believe
that they will go much farther than this if need be. I have
repeatedly seen a particular bear in one locality year after
year, and then found him, fifteen or twenty miles away,
across a divide or on another plateau, to which, doubtless,
he had moved for better feeding. I believe, however, that
they invariably return to their old haunts for the winter.

It is perhaps necessary, in this connection, to call
attention to the fact that there is as much individuality in
bears as in dogs or horses or people. To the unfamiliar
observer all Chinamen look alike, and so do all bears.
But to me, as to any one long accustomed to go among
them and study them, a bear previously seen and watched
is as easily remembered and recognized as a man.

In the regions where the grizzly feeds upon the car-
casses of game winter killed or left by hunters, he nearly
always drags their remains, after his first meal, to some
sheltered spot, and buries it, to keep the birds and other
beasts from feeding upon it. He is so powerful that he
will drag loads that seem incredible over the most diffi-
cult ground and for long distances. Over logs and
through thick underbrush he drags and lifts his burden
until he finds a spot that exactly suits him. Then he
digs up the earth, places his booty in the hole, and piles
logs and anything movable upon it until he has completely

Food and Feeding 225

covered it. Where the bears have been little hunted it
is a comparatively easy matter to secrete one's self near
one of these caches and shoot the animal when he returns
to feed. This is usually either late in the evening or in
the early morning, say up to two hours after daylight.

I have already described how a grizzly bear dragged
a bull elk carcass up an incline so steep that it was next to
impossible for a man to climb up or down without hang-
ing to the bushes for support. The elk's body could not
have weighed less than five or six hundred pounds, yet
the bear seemed to have transported it with ease, and,
after placing it behind a large tree and in under the low-
hanging branches, he dug out a hole in the side of the
hill and, dragging up logs and brush, covered the carcass
completely. The reader is also reminded of the game we
played with the grizzly on Wilson's Creek, when every
night he stole the body of our dead horse, and every day,
with infinite labor, and only by bringing elementary me-
chanics to our aid, we brought it back to its original
position.

It is often affirmed that the grizzly carries such a bur-
den by either grasping it in his arms and walking off on his
hind legs, or by "throwing it over his shoulder" (Heaven
only knows how this operation would be performed),
and so making off with it. The notion is of one piece
with that that the grizzly embraces his enemies and hugs
them to death. As a matter of fact, he carries anything that
he can so carry in his jaws, and burdens that are too great
for that, he either grasps with his teeth and, turning his
head sideways, drags along with him or, turning squarely
toward his find, backs away and drags it after him.

226 . The Grizzly Bear

When he comes to a log or other obstruction he pulls,
pushes, and boosts until he surmounts it.

Grizzlies have jaws like iron. In and about old Indian
camps, where the old leg and thigh bones of elk and
moose have been left, I have seen these crushed into
fragments, and even ground into particles, by the vice-
like jaws of these bears; this, of course, for the marrow
that was to be found in them. Many think that the
grizzly is a habitual hunter and killer of wild game; and
in certain localities, and in times past, this may possibly
have been true. This we will discuss farther on. I
have never, however, in all my experience, found a single
wild animal of any kind whatsoever, except the little fel-
lows before mentioned, that I had any reason to think
had been killed by a grizzly.

That the grizzly can, and that easily, kill an elk or a
moose, there is no sort of doubt. Nor do I deny that
such killings have taken place. But I am firmly per-
suaded that he never attempts it unless it be in cases of
emergency or where some exceptional circumstances
lead up to it. Should a grizzly happen, for example, to
be near a water lick where these animals come to drink,
he might, in one of his impatient rushes, strike down one
of them, but the animals that might be destroyed in this
way are a negligible quantity.

Strangely enough, however, individual grizzlies do,
now and again, turn "bad" and take to killing the cattle
of the ranchmen. How they acquire the habit it would
be hard to say. Probably through some accident, or
by a more than usual gift of putting two and two together
and arguing from a stolen quarter of beef, to a walking

Food and Feeding 227

four-quarters of the same. At any rate, it is not a race
habit. One grizzly in the neighboring hills will suddenly
turn cattle eater, and come by stealth to satisfy his crav-
ing, just as one tiger near a jungle village will turn "man-
eater" and come by night to seek for victims. When
the guilty grizzly is slain the incident is closed.

James Capen Adams gives a most interesting descrip-
tion of ridding a California ranch of one of these depre-
dating bears, and I have myself known of several in-
stances where such losses were only stopped by killing
the thief. One of these argues well the tremendous
muscular power of these animals. I know one of the
men who watched for and killed the bear, and he told
me that when, after waiting several nights, the grizzly
finally appeared, they let it have its way before shooting,
in order to learn its method of attack. It stole up close
to a nearly full-grown heifer and then, in a sudden spring,
threw one fore paw across her neck, placed the other on
her muzzle, and drawing up one hind leg with a single
backward shove of its great claws, not only disembowelled
her, but tore out all her ribs on that side.

Nevertheless, the grizzly does not, as far as my obser-
vations go, hunt for wild game. In certain parts of the
country, where there are plenty of elk and deer, he, as
I have already mentioned, depends on them to a large
extent for his food supply; but — they must first be killed
by the hunter or meet death in some other way, such as
being winter killed. The grizzly declines to do his own
butchering.

Often, in British Columbia, I have sat and watched a
grizzly bear and a little porcupine feeding side by side

228 The Grizzly Bear

on the grass near the snow banks, neither one paying the
slightest attention to the other. I have also, in this same
locality, frequently seen Rocky Mountain goats feeding
in the same slide with the grizzlies, and have never seen
the least evidence of a desire on the bear's part to molest
the goats, or of a tendency on the goat's part to fear the
bear. Again, years ago in the Clearwater country, in
Idaho, I have, with others, sat for hours watching the
elk and deer as they came down to the licks; and while
there were many grizzlies always to be seen and their tracks
were always plentiful, we never found that a single animal
had been killed by them. Had they cared, or been ac-
customed to prey on the elk, it would have been an easy
matter for them to hide behind a huge cedar and strike
one down. In those days there were hundreds of elk
around the licks at a time.

XXI

HIS FIERCENESS

WE are now arrived at a division of our subject
where we are to meet what, at first sight, appears
to be a tangle of contradictory evidence, and it behooves
us to walk slowly, to preserve an open mind, and to keep
our eyes carefully attentive to the signs of the trail. On
the one hand, we shall find the sincere convictions and
repeated statements of early writers, and a century of
unquestioning belief on the part of the public. On the
other, we shall find the calmer judgments of trained ob-
servers, and the overwhelming weight of contempora-
neous experience. Were our fathers wrong about the
nature of the grizzly ? Or has the animal radically
changed in a hundred years ?

Personally, I believe that we have to answer "Yes"
to both questions; but I am convinced that the amount
of alteration in the nature of the grizzly is insignificant
compared to the extent to which preconceptions of early
hunters colored their judgment.

Let me say, to begin with, that twenty-five years of
intercourse with these beasts has taught me to regard them
with the most profound respect. I would no more pro-
voke one, unarmed, or rashly venture upon any action
that my experience has taught me they regard as calling

229

230 The Grizzly Bear

for self-defence, than I would commit suicide. That
they will not fight when they think they have to, no sane
man would maintain. That, when they do fight, they
are not the most formidable and doughty of antagonists,
I have never heard hinted. But that they habitually seek
trouble when they can avoid it, or that they ever did, I
do not believe. Nor, in the authentic records upon which
this popular belief is largely founded, and in which it
was first put into words, can we find any facts calculated
to uphold it.

On the contrary we see, plainly enough, that the white
pioneers, even before they had seen a grizzly, were pre-
pared to meet a dragon, and that, when they had peppered
a tough old bear or two with their pea-gun ammunition,
they found their expectations realized. That the Indians
regarded the grizzly as the king of brutes; that the tale
of his terribleness had passed into their folk-lore; that
"they never hunted them except in parties of six or more";
that they gave greater honor to one of their young men
who had killed one unaided, than to him who took the
scalp of an enemy,— all this we can well believe and
understand. And that the early explorers accepted the
Indian verdict and thought it upheld by their own ex-
periences is no less credible. For the grizzly bear, pur-
sued into his fastnesses and attacked with bows and ar-
rows, would be terrible indeed. And hostilely faced by
men armed with the muzzle-loading smooth-bores of
small calibre and still smaller penetration, he would be
an antagonist but slightly less formidable. These things
being so, it is scarcely to be wondered at that our prede-
cessors overlooked two salient features of their expert

His Fierceness 231

ences: first, that they were themselves invariably the
attacking party; and second, that, even so, for every
bear that stayed to fight them, there were one or more
that ran away.

Let us pass in rapid review the testimony of Lewis
and Clark. On April 29, 1805, Captain Lewis, with one
hunter, met "two white bears" — their first. "Of the
strength and ferocity of this animal," the journal pro-
ceeds, "the Indians had given us terrible accounts."
(They had told them, among other things, that "they
rather attack than avoid a man.") Yet "hitherto,"
says the journal, "those bears we had seen did not appear
anxious to encounter us," and, when Captain Lewis
and the hunter fired at these two and wounded both,
"one of them made his escape; the other turned upon
Captain Lewis and pursued him seventy or eighty yards."

The next record is that of May 5th, when "Captain
Clark and one of the hunters met the largest brown bear
we have seen. As they fired it did not attempt to attack,
but fled with the most tremendous roar." On May
nth Bratton (the man who had boils), wounded his bear
and was pursued by it for half a mile. On May I4th
the rear guard of the party saw a large grizzly asleep
some three hundred yards from the bank of the river, and
six of them crept up within forty yards or more and all fired
at once. The furious animal charged them and was killed
with difficulty. On June I2th they killed two large griz-
zlies, each at the first shot. On June I4th Captain Lewis
had his experience with the grizzly that came upon him
when his gun was not loaded, and, after pursuing him so
long as he ran away, fled itself as soon as he faced round

232 The Grizzly Bear

upon it. This incident (so puzzling to the writer of the
journal and so interesting to us with our more intimate
knowledge of the species) we will discuss later on. On
June 2yth we find the account of the hunters who climbed
a large tree and raised a shout, whereupon a grizzly
"rushed toward them" and was killed. Also the account
of a grizzly having come within thirty yards of camp in
the night and stolen some buffalo meat. On June 28th
"the white bears have become exceedingly troublesome."
They "infest the camp at night." "They have not at-
tacked us, as our dog, which patrols all night, gives us
notice." Yet the party is "obliged to sleep with our
arms by our sides for fear of accident." Then, further,
we have instances where men, carrying meat to camp,
have been either frightened or confronted by bears, but no
actual mention of attack. And the further accounts deal
with the grizzly in the mountains and on the Pacific
slope of the Rockies, and speak of them as much less
fierce than those first encountered.

Now there is little in these recorded facts that differs
materially from what I should expect to find among
grizzlies, attacked under similar circumstances with simi-
lar weapons to-day. It is true that I should expect even
fewer of them to show fight, and it is in this regard
that I should feel inclined to answer "Yes" to the question
as to whether the nature of the grizzly has changed in the
past century. I have seen elaborate arguments uphold-
ing the theory that contact with man has changed this
bear from a savage and aggressive brute to a wary and
cautious animal, but my own opinion is that contact with
man has merely added to his native caution.

His Fierceness 233

I have met the grizzly under many circumstances
and in many places. I have hunted him where he had
been but little disturbed, and had seldom come into con-
tact with man, and I have seen him change his habits
as his range was encroached upon and his existence
threatened. But I have never found him the ferocious
and ill-natured brute that he has the reputation of being.
On the contrary, I have always found him wary and
alert, ready to give one the slip if possible and able to
tax one's ingenuity in matching his cunning. He adopts
new wiles as new necessities are forced upon him and
becomes more cautious as greater caution is required;
but even in the wildest and most untrodden portions of
his range he is no more on the lookout for a scrap than
any other wild animal. I think the fact that now and
then an ugly, pugnacious brute is encountered is merely
the exception which, if it does not prove, certainly does
not invalidate the rule.

I am very far from wishing to assert that the grizzly
will not fight. That would not only be untrue but would
be a most dangerous assumption to act upon when deal-
ing with him. When it becomes necessary, or when he
thinks it is necessary, there is no animal of his size that
can put up a fight to equal him. Nothing but instant
death on his part or, occasionally, a quick, powerful
and effective counter attack, will arrest one of his mad
charges. When brought to bay by dogs it is very danger-
ous to go near him, as he will then charge everything
that moves and every bush that shakes. And a she
grizzly with cubs is at all times an uncertain customer.

But there are not half a dozen instances on record

234 The Grizzly Bear

where men have been attacked by the grizzly bear in
which the offender, if arraigned before a jury of his peers,
could not have successfully maintained a plea of self-
defence. Of course, in judging the bears, one must take
into consideration the view-point of the bear. A mother
with cubs who charges an intruder approaching too close
to her; a sleeping bear over whom a man stumbles in a
wood and who strikes him down, — these must be given
the benefit of their own doubts.

I do not think that this aspect of the grizzly's nature
can be better summed up than by Dr. Hornaday's ex-
cellent dictum: "The grizzly's temper is defensive, not
aggressive; and, unless the animal is cornered, or thinks
he is cornered, he always flees from man."

In short, the notion that the grizzly roams about
seeking for whomsoever he may devour, is pure nonsense,
and that, ordinarily, he will attack on sight, I believe to
be equally a myth. Nevertheless, as far as we can judge,
those animals that lived a century ago along the banks
of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in Montana,
seem to have been, as Lewis and Clark declare them,
more courageous and less wary than others of their species
found elsewhere, either then or since.

These writers ascribe this to their inhabiting a game
country and having become used to slaughter. But we
are wholly unable to judge how far their evident belief
that these bears preyed habitually on the buffalo and other
game is of a piece with their other misconceptions of
them. They met them in the neighborhood of buffalo,
just as I have met them in the neighborhood of elk; and
that they were flesh eaters is proved by their stealing

His Fierceness 235

meat as, many a time, their descendants have proved
the same fact to my inconvenience. But beyond this the
evidence is pure hearsay. However, six hunters having
approached unnoticed to within forty paces of a sleeping
grizzly is pretty good evidence of that animal's sense of
security, and another grizzly's having rushed out to in-
vestigate the shouts of men in a tree proves the same thing,
if nothing more.

Whether they killed buffalo or not, however, they
were believed guilty of other acts of which we know
them to have been innocent. We can see from several
entries in the journal, the wholly natural but wholly mis-
taken trend of the writer's convictions. The bears, they
tell us, "infested their camp at night" — and many a time
have I been able to say the same — but the writer evidently
regarded the camp's immunity from "attack" as due to
the watchfulness of the camp dog; whereas, if the bears
had really been bent on slaughter, and had not been
merely the prowling thieves and curious investigators
they were, the dog would have been but an appetizer for
their feast.

On one of my first hunts for grizzlies we were camped
beside a little stream which ran down the mountain to
quite a large tract of flat land in a kind of a canon. This
creek was lined along both its banks with the black haw,
wild cherry, and Sarvis berry, and we had hunted through
these thickets in the hope of getting a shot at the bears,
whose numbers could be readily inferred from the way
the bushes were bent, broken, and twisted, and from the
great number of tracks to be seen along the creek. After
spending two days at this kind of hunting and not having

236 The Grizzly Bear

any success, we decided to move up near the head of the
creek in the mountains, as we knew that the bears lived
up there and came down at night to feed on the fruit.
We accordingly took our camp outfit, which consisted
of a frying-pan and our blankets, together with a little
"grub" and the saddle horses, and, going as far up the
mountains as we could with the horses, bivouacked near
the headwaters of the stream. We hunted the mountain
all day and, while we did not get a shot, we saw eleven
bears, and at night we returned to where we had left the
horses, built a small fire close to the creek, ate such food
as we had brought along, and then rolled ourselves in
our blankets and were soon asleep.

Some time in the night I was awakened by the plung-
ing and snorting of the horses, and, as I listened, I could
hear the breaking of small twigs beneath the low bank
of the creek, which was not more than twenty feet away
from where we were lying. Then I heard the horses
break their picket ropes and lope away into the night, and
I lay there, wondering if any of the other fellows were
awake. There were four of us in the party, all sleeping
against a fallen tree, but no two of us under 'the same
blanket. The first sound passed away down the stream,
and soon, far up the creek, I heard more snapping of
limbs, then an interval of silence, then the scuff-scuff of
some heavy animal as it came along down the trail.
And the shuffling feet among the pine needles came nearer
and nearer until it passed not more than ten feet from me.
I drew a long breath of relief and started listening again,
and soon I heard another. And there I lay while four
bears passed, and as I was on my first hunt for grizzlies,

His Fierceness 237

and, of course, thought of all the bear stories I had ever
heard or read, I fully expected, as each bear passed me
by, that the next would be looking for just such an in-
nocent, unsuspecting idiot as I felt myself to be. But,
strange as it appeared to us next morning, none of us
had been molested; and, although one of the party de-
clared that a bear had stepped over the log near his head
(he had shrunk into his blanket awaiting in terror the at-
tack that never came), and the huge tracks were all
about us, the bears had simply, in passing down the creek
to their feeding grounds, run into and through our camp,
which we had foolishly pitched right in their path.

But the bears did not return that way. And, although
we camped in this same place for two more nights, they
never used this trail again while we were there. The
horses, which were evidently alarmed by the smell of the
bears as they passed along, had broken their ropes, fled
out of harm's way, and then stopped and gone to grazing.
We found them only a short distance away and the bears
had paid no attention to them.

Since then, in sleeping in the open near their feeding
grounds, I have often heard grizzlies in the night; and
have often had them "infest" more formal camps, coming
to steal and hunt for meat or other food. Indeed, as al-
ready told, I have had hard work at times to protect my
supplies from them. But although it has been mighty
seldom that I had a dog around, I have always enjoyed
the same immunity from attack as did my earliest prede-
cessors in grizzly-bear study.

It is also quite evident from the journal of Lewis and
Clark that they unquestionably assumed, whenever a

238 The Grizzly Bear

grizzly approached or followed a man, that he did so
with sinister purpose, and they "dared not send one
man alone to any distance, particularly if he had to pass
through brushwood." But we know now that the grizzly
is chock-full of curiosity, and that one of his habits is to
follow up any trail that puzzles or interests him, be it of
man or beast. This trait has been noted and miscon-
strued by many of the early commentators, and even
Adams, in speaking of the Rocky Mountain grizzly, says:
"He is more disposed to attack man than the same species
in other regions, and has often been known to follow on
the human track for several hours."

So often have I seen this curiosity and proved it to be
innocent, that I have no fear whatever of these animals
when indulging this weakness of theirs. Time and again
I have allowed one to approach within a few yards of me,
and no calm observer who had watched a bear defying
his own caution to satisfy his own inquisitiveness, could
mistake the nature of his approach. But a man, filled
with a belief in the grizzly as a ravening and savage
monster, could, on the other hand, hardly fail to mistake
his intentions. The accompanying photograph shows a
young bear that had got scent of my camera, and had
turned out of his way to see what the scent might mean.
One can see his companion in the background following
the trail. That he looks savage I think you will agree.
In short, you would "hate to meet that on a dark night."
And yet, as a matter of fact, half scared and wholly curi-
ous, he was ready to bolt at a moment's notice, and did
bolt the moment the flash terminated his stalk.

Under such circumstances as these my own rule of

His Fierceness 239

conduct is a simple one. If a grizzly approaches me
knowing that I am there — or that something is there that
he wants to identify — I have no fear of him; but I have
a very wholesome fear of allowing one to approach me
unwittingly, so that a sudden discovery of me might
startle him or appear to him like an attack. If one re-
treats before a curious grizzly the chances are that he
will follow, and then, to a misinformed observer, his in-
tention of foul play seems proved beyond a reasonable
doubt.

These facts being understood, it is most interesting to
recall the experiences of Captain Meriwether Lewis on
June 14, 1805. Certainly a braver man than Captain
Lewis never faced a bear, and this fact (knowing what
we know) adds an element of humor to the scene. On
that day, it will be recalled, Captain Lewis had shot a
young buffalo, and, without having recharged his muzzle-
loader, was waiting for the animal to bleed to death.

Suddenly "he beheld a large brown bear which was
stealing on him unperceived and was already within
twenty paces." Remember, please, what the captain
had been told about this animal; remember how long it
took to reload the gun he carried; look again at the photo-
graph of a curious grizzly "stealing up unperceived/' and
imagine his state of mind! He was on an "open, level
plain — not a bush or a tree within three hundred yards."
The river bank was low and offered no concealment.
There was hope only in flight, and not much hope in that.
In this dilemma the captain " thought of retreating at a quick
walk as fast as the bear advanced, but as soon as he turned
the bear ran open mouthed and at full speed upon him."

240 The Grizzly Bear

Now Captain Lewis was a brave man and likewise
a truthful one. We do not, for an instant, question
his complete sincerity. But, in view of the sequel, we
may, perhaps, query the "open mouthed " and question
the "full speed." For, starting with a lead of twenty
paces, Captain Lewis was still twenty feet ahead at the
end of the race, and an "open-mouthed bear at full speed"
would have had him in six jumps. Be that as it may,
however, the captain, when he had run eighty yards,
finding that the bear was gaining, bethought him that
he might stand a better show if the bear had to attack
him swimming.

"He therefore turned short, plunged into the water,
and facing about, presented the point of his espontoon.
The bear arrived at the water's edge within twenty feet
of him, but as soon as he put himself in this posture of
defence the bear seemed frightened and, wheeling about,
retreated with as much precipitation as he had pursued.
Captain Lewis returned to the shore and observed him
run with great speed, sometimes looking back as if he
expected to be pursued till he reached the woods."

Now it may be thought that even a ferocious bear might
be terrified by the "presented point of an espontoon";
but having myself never owned one of these mysterious
weapons, and having, nevertheless, seen scores of grizzlies
act for all the world as this one did in its retreat, I do not
believe that this terrible engine of destruction (not men-
tioned, by the way, in the Standard Dictionary) had
anything to do with it. Indeed, I have no manner of
doubt that if the captain had thought of his espontoon
in the first instance, or if he had so much as waved a

His Fierceness 241

hand above his head, the encounter would have ended
then and there.

The description given by Drummond, the botanist,
of his experiences with grizzlies in the Rockies in 1826
coincides exactly with my own observations of these ani-
mals fifty years later. He noted their curiosity — often
came upon them standing up to look at him — but found
that if he made a noise with his specimen-box "or even
waved his hand" they ran away.

One glimpse, too, we get of the actual descendants
of the Missouri River bottom grizzlies of Lewis and Clark;
and this, as far as it goes, tends to suggest that fifty years
had left them much as they were when first encountered.
The story is told over the signature "Montana," in the
issue of Forest and Stream, of December 12, 1903. It
seems that on May 21, 1860, a party from the Ameri-
can Fur Company's post at Fort Benton camped on the
site of the Lewis and Clark camp of May 14, 1805. This
party included Malcolm Clark, trader, a big giant of a
fellow; John Newbert, tailor, and one Carson, cordelier;
and Clark, having followed a grizzly into the woods, came
upon him standing up to look back at him, and shot him
high up through the lungs. Clark was armed with a
Hawkins muzzle-loading rifle, shooting a ball thirty to
the pound. The wounded bear charged instantly, knocked
the clubbed rifle from Clark's hands, and, felling him with
a blow of his armored paw, rushed on. Clark, whose
skull was fractured, fell in his tracks; but his compan-
ions, waiting at the edge of the timber, killed the bear
as it came out, and then, bearing Clark to the canoe, car-
ried him two hundred and fifty miles down the river to

242 The Grizzly Bear

Fort Union, where a surgeon trepanned his skull and he
recovered.

In 1878 an English sportsman, named Andrew Wil-
liamson, visited Colorado in search of big game, and, in
an account of his experiences, afterward published,
shows himself to have been a keen observer. In his
chapter on the grizzly he says: "Though at least one-
half of the stories current in America as to the ferocity
of the grizzly bear do not deserve credit, yet ... he
must be regarded as by far the most formidable of the
wild animals in America, . . . one the sportsman who
has not thorough confidence in his aim and his ability to
keep cool had better, when encountered, let go in peace.
He will, however, if left alone, unless suddenly stumbled
on at close quarters (when he will get on his hind legs
with a 'Hough! hough!' calculated to try the strongest
nerves) or if it be a female with cubs, rarely if ever attack
man, but will, on the contrary, beat a retreat with all the
haste he can."

Mr. Williamson's method of hunting, developed through
his observing that the grizzly in that region "seemed to
prefer, when he could get it, the carcass of any dead ani-
mal, no matter how putrid," was to put a bait near a trail
and watch from a place of concealment. But the grizzlies
were altogether too cunning to fall into this sort of am-
bush, and he repeatedly mentions finding, by the tracks
in the snow, where they had waited for his departure, fol-
lowed on his trail till k left the woods, and then returned
to eat his bait.

Mr. Williamson finally took a leaf out of their own
book, tracked one of them through the snow, and killed

His Fierceness 243

it by a single shot between the eyes. Moreover (he was
a man after my own heart), he had an 8 X 10 camera
with him. and, although this was in the days of wet-plate
photography, when he had got his bear, he packed his
apparatus to the spot, set up a tent, and built a fire to pre-
pare his emulsion, and took an excellent picture of the
dead animal that he reproduces in his book.

The belief seems to be firmly established in the popu-
lar mind that the grizzly is markedly more pugnacious
and aggressive during the mating season than at other
times. However, not only has the personal experience of
many years led me to believe this idea to be unfounded,
but I know of only a single recorded instance that can,
even remotely, be said to uphold the claim.

This is the experience of Drummond the botanist,
who, in the latter part of June, 1826, in the Rockies, saw
a male grizzly caressing a female. Soon after he noticed
that they came toward him, but whether by accident or
to attack he did not wait to see, but climbed a tree. He
then shot the female, "whereupon the enraged male rushed
up to his tree and reared against it, but did not try to
climb." The bear then returned to his fallen mate and
Drummond shot him also.

Now here, as usual, the witness was the attacking
party, and the bear's pugnacity only developed after the
overt act; so that, although it is possible that the same
grizzly, if disturbed and fired upon while feeding instead
of love-making, would have run away, the evidence is
somewhat slight to uphold a sweeping statement in re-
gard to the species.

On the other hand, we have James Capen Adams's

244 The Grizzly Bear

description, already quoted in full, of the peaceful and
repeated visits to his camp by Lady Washington's lover.
This also is an isolated incident and no general deductions
should be made from it. But as the two occurrences
stand face to face and, so far as I am aware, make up the
whole of the direct testimony in the case, we are scarcely
warranted in finding a verdict against the grizzly.

As for myself, I have been in the wilds during the
mating season of these animals in many different years, and
in many different parts of their range, and I have not only
invariably found them as hard to locate and as difficult
to approach at this time as at any other, but in the few
instances when I have seen anything bearing on the point
under discussion, the evidence has borne against the as-
sumption of any added fierceness on their part.

Adams speaks of the grizzly as terrible if wounded
or cornered, and, using as he did the ineffectual weapons
of the fifties, he had many hand-to-hand encounters with
them. Yet he tells of many that ran away, and of one
that even ran away from her cubs to get out of the way
of danger. I have myself known two that ran away
and left cubs to their fate, but this is the rare exception,
and most of them will fight for their young to the last
spark of life. As for the others, I have always found about
as much individuality among grizzlies as among people.
One, if wounded, will fight to the last gasp, and the next
will try with its last breath to crawl away.

But I have never known of a single instance where
one of these bears turned out of his way, unprovoked, to
attack a human being. I have known several cases where
men have been wounded, and one instance where a man

His Fierceness 245

was killed by a Rocky Mountain grizzly, but no one of
these cases would I call an unprovoked attack.

The man who was killed was out prospecting and car-
ried no weapons whatever. He had a miner's gold pan
in his hand, and he and his companion were saunter-
ing along through some down timber. In stepping over
a windfall of logs he almost stumbled on an old she
grizzly with cubs who was lying beneath the jam, and as
he turned to run the old bear rose, dealt him a blow
with her powerful paw that smashed his skull, and im-
mediately hustled her cubs out of the logs and made off
at a fast pace, paying no attention whatever to the other
miner, who was standing a few feet away, bewildered at
the misfortune of his companion. I would certainly not
regard this as an unprovoked attack, and should expect
the same thing to happen to me should I, by accident,
commit the same indiscretion. Fortunately the grizzly
is so alert that it is not once in a man's lifetime that he
would be able to approach thus near to one without the
latter's knowing it. And, whether they have young or
not, if they are aware of any one's approach, they will
scurry away long before the intruder has any chance of
seeing them.

In the other case, the injured men were hunters who
had followed bears into the thicket after wounding them,
and almost any wounded animal will attack one who is
foolish enough to trail it into thick brush and down
timber. The worst thumping I ever got (it was among
my earliest experiences) was from a mule deer that I
approached when lying wounded in the brush. I was
hurled through the air for twenty feet or more, and then

246 The Grizzly Bear

and there learned the wisdom of keeping away from
wounded animals.

If, at the present time, the grizzly was prone to at-
tack people at sight, it seems evident that more hunters
would see them when seeking them in their chosen terri-
tory. There are scores of sportsmen who would give
almost any amount to get a shot at one of these " ferocious
and awful monarchs of the woods"; and they hunt year
after year in countries where bear tracks are more plenti-
ful than those of deer. But the wary brutes remain out
of sight and, for the most part, manage to keep a whole
skin. I once had a man out with me who said, when
speaking of the bear tracks to be seen, that if he were in
a country where there was one deer track to the fifty
grizzly tracks that he saw, he would guarantee to kill six
deer a day.

To sum up, then, it seems to be beyond doubt that a
century's contact with men armed with rifles has rendered
the grizzly bear a more wary and cautious animal. It
would, indeed, be strange if this were not so, for the griz-
zly is quick to learn and has had innumerable oppor-
tunities of learning; and there have been thirty or forty
generations during which his individual lessons have been
moulding the instinct of the race. But that, during this
time, the grizzly has changed from a bloodthirsty and
ferocious tyrant to an inoffensive minder of his own busi-
ness, "defensive, not aggressive," I can find nothing in
the records to show, nor do I for a moment believe.

XXII
HIS VITALITY

ANOTHER long-asserted and long-allowed claim
made for the grizzly relates to his marvellous vi-
tality. The literature of the subject bristles with state-
ments in regard to his tenacity of life, his ability to disre-
gard awful wounds, and the amount of lead with which
he will get away.

The grizzly is now comparatively scarce, the condi-
tions in regard to weapons have greatly altered, and alto-
gether a discussion of the subject is not free from diffi-
culties; but I think that a careful examination of the
statements of the most reliable of old-time hunters, a con-
sideration of the conditions, both of mind and of weapons,
under which they operated, and a comparison of these
with conditions as we find them to-day, will enable us to
arrive at a very fair conclusion.

We may, to begin with, throw out of court entirely
the writings of the romancers. They naturally seized upon
this alleged attribute of the grizzly as one that lent itself
admirably to their purposes; and looked upon it as a waste
of good material to kill a bear with anything less than a
dozen shots and a few knife wounds, and to have the rid-
dled animal pursue the hero for a mile or so, and kill at

247

248 The Grizzly Bear

least one of his companions before itself giving up the
ghost. The grizzly was their opportunity and they used
him nobly.

But there is abundant testimony remaining, and that
of a more impressive kind. Lewis and Clark hardly
ever mentioned killing one of these animals without dwell-
ing on the ability of the species to take punishment; and
it is made clearly evident that this, as much as any other
fact, contributed to the awe with which they regarded
them. "The wonderful power of life which these ani-
mals possess," says the journal, "renders them dread-
ful, their very track in the mud or sand ... is alarming,
and we had rather encounter two Indians than meet a
single brown bear."

Now, before discussing the weapons used by these
early hunters and estimating the effect of their very real
dangers upon their judgment, I wish to call attention to
one or two facts, and to one or two inferences that seem
to me to flow from them.

To begin with, I have never seen it claimed that the
grizzly has degenerated in this matter of vitality. Every
writer whose works I have read, while appearing to admit
the accuracy of early observations, takes it for granted
that the perfecting of the modern rifle accounts for any
discrepancies that may appear between those observations
and our own.

Next, I want to note that if the grizzly really had, in
the early days, exceeded all the other animals of his habi-
tat in his resistance to wounds and in his ability to with-
stand the shock of them, this difference between him and
them should have become more marked, not less so, as

His Vitality 249

these shocks became greater and these wounds more
grievous. Yet I have killed well over a hundred grizzlies
without finding them any more tenacious of life than
many other wild animals. They cannot stand any more
punishment than the deer or the elk, and they cannot be-
gin to stand up under the rain of bullets that an old
Rocky Mountain goat will survive.

Finally, I would suggest that it is only human nature
(especially when badly armed) to be more impressed
with the vitality of an animal which, when wounded, takes
the offensive, than with the vitality of one that, when
similarly wounded, invariably runs away.

Of course, the question of armament is not one to be
lost sight of in reviewing the testimony of the early hunt-
ers. Their rifles were mostly smooth-bores of small
calibre, not larger than the present .32, carrying bullets
in many cases seventy to the pound, and all of them
were muzzle-loaders with no definite charges of powder.
Their penetration, variable under such circumstances,
was always slight as compared with the present perfected
weapons, and it was impossible for them to drive a ball
through the shoulders of a tough old grizzly or even of a
young one.

Armed with such a weapon it was necessary to ap-
proach very near to one's quarry, the chances of killing
a large animal with one shot were small, and it took time
to reload. And the wounded grizzly was a fighter.

Now it is really not at all distinctive of the grizzly
that one attacked with weapons of small range and pene-
tration should, even though "having five balls in the
lungs and other wounds," swim half-way across a river

250 The Grizzly Bear

and survive twenty minutes; or that one shot once through
the lungs should go a mile, lie up in the woods, and be
found " still perfectly alive," an hour later. Every hunter
of elks or goats could match these instances with others
at least equally remarkable. But these animals run away.

If one thinks to lose one's life by an ineffectual shot,
the refusal of the animal to drop at the first fire is far more
impressive than if one only thinks to lose a deer. The
difference is psychological, and lies not in the comparative
vitalities of the wounded animals, but in the varying ef-
fects of this vitality on the man behind the gun.

After giving due weight, however, to these considera-
tions, I am still of the opinion that many old hunters were
inclined to draw the long bow when it came to recount-
ing their experiences with grizzlies. Take any old hunt-
ers, in either America or the Dark Continent, and some
stories they tell beget serious and even amused reflection.
In some of Gerard's tales of lion hunting in Africa, for
instance, the grizzly bear is put completely out of coun-
tenance. In one case this writer tells of a lion hunt in
which from two to three hundred persons took part. In
half a day's shooting five hundred shots were fired, one
man was carried away dead, six were crippled, and the
lion was still doing business at the old stand. This
either means that the hunters were incredibly poor shots,
that their ammunition was worthless, or that the pen is
mightier than the rifle.

As already stated, most of my grizzly-bear shooting
has been done with a .45 single-shot rifle. I loaded
the shells myself and used a hundred grains of powder
with swaged lead bullets weighing six hundred grains.

His Vitality 251

I did not shoot from distances much exceeding fifty yards,
and when it was possible to get that close to the game,
I could place the slugs just where I wished them, and this
was in the centre of the shoulder. The ball rarely passed
out on the opposite side, but, unless it was a very large
bear, both shoulders were broken and, of course, under
such conditions, the animal could not run half a mile and
then maul the hunter to death. I could, without doubt,
have killed many more grizzlies, but I was averse to
wounding game and have it get away and suffer torture,
and for this reason I seldom took any chances at long-
distance shots. And, again, I took great pride in disprov-
ing the theory that a grizzly could not be killed at one
shot.

Later, for a time, I took up the .30-30 and found that,
while it did good execution, it was hardly the arm for
good, clean killing. I have never lost but two wounded
grizzlies, and these were both shot with the .30-30. If I
were to hunt grizzlies again I would take the .35, which I
consider the best rifle for large game at the present time.
It has an ideal bullet that mushrooms nicely, and the ve-
locity is great enough to produce a tremendous shock.

Compare such weapons as these with those that
Adams used in the early fifties. His rifles were two;
one, an old Kentucky arm, carried thirty balls to the pound,
which would make the weight of the bullets two hundred
and fifty-six grains. The other was a Tennessee rifle
that shot bullets sixty to the pound, the bullets weighing
one hundred and twenty-eight grains. The amount of
powder used we can only guess at as, most likely, Adams
did. These were not very heavy weapons, one would

252 The Grizzly Bear

think, to kill an animal popularly supposed to pack away
anywhere from three to thirty slugs from our modern
guns, and then perhaps to climb a tree, wait for the unsus-
pecting hunter, pounce down on him, and mangle him
to death.

Adams writes of crawling up within a few yards of
several grizzlies and shooting them and then having them
run off. In one instance he tells of wounding an old fe-
male with two cubs, whereupon the mother left the cubs
and ran away. In one or two cases he refers to the vitality
of the bears he had shot but he seldom emphasizes it.
He does, however, on several occasions, comment upon
the general attitude of hunters toward these animals,
saying, for instance, of his companion on one trip, "He
was a good hunter, but, like most of them, not over fond
of a grizzly bear"; and of another (named Wright, I re-
gret to say), "He was a good-enough hunter of deer, but,
like all other men who have had little experience with
them, terribly afraid of a grizzly bear." He does, how-
ever, mention one bear as having been shot through the
head, the heart, and the bowels, while several balls had
taken effect in the sides, but had not gone through the fat.
The bear ran seven or eight hundred yards after this
much shooting. The ball through the head could not,
of course, have hit the brain, and the one through the
bowels would not necessarily have stopped her under
the distance mentioned, while those sticking in the sides,
passing through the hide only, counted for nothing. The
only shot that could really have proved effective was the
one in the heart, and as Adams does not state that he
examined this organ to find just where the ball lodged,

His Vitality 253

or what part of it was penetrated, we must assume that
it was not the upper part of it, where all the large blood-
vessels are. These could not have been severed, or the
bear could not have run so far.

This brings up another important and very interesting
question, namely, how far can an animal travel after having
been actually shot through the heart ? The answer is,
that it depends altogether upon which part of the heart the
ball hits. Some time since, while talking with Dr. Alex-
ander Lambert of New York, who has had a wide experi-
ence in hunting large game, I asked him if he had ever
known an animal to travel any distance after it had re-
ceived a shot through the top of the heart, severing all the
large blood-vessels. He replied that I was the first hunter
he had ever known that made any distinction in heart
shots, and that he had never seen an animal survive such
a shot as I described more than momentarily. Once he
so shot a caribou that was standing still when the shot
was fired, and the animal made a couple of spasmodic
leaps and covered some fifty feet after being hit. But
even this was exceptional. As a rule, an animal so hit
drops in its tracks.

On the other hand, the doctor brought out a work on
the surgery of the heart and lungs, and showed me that
shots in the heart other than the one mentioned were
not even necessarily fatal. The following are some
notes taken from this book:

"Pare (1552) tells of a duellist who ran two hundred
paces after receiving a sword thrust through the heart
making a hole large enough to admit the finger, and who
fought in a vicious manner all the way.

254 The Grizzly Bear

"Balch(i77i) had a patient with a rifle ball in the heart
who fully recovered in six weeks and lived eighteen years.

"Hally (1878) had a case of a rifle ball in the heart
where the man lived fifty-five days; then death was caused
by working in the field.

"Dudley (1882) had a patient with a pistol ball in
the heart who lived four days.

"Ferris (1882) reports a case of a man living twenty
days with a skewer completely traversing the heart."

So we might go on and show more cases where heart
shots have failed to kill at once. But a shot through the
upper portion of the heart, severing all the large blood-
vessels, produces instant collapse in most cases, and death
within a few seconds always. The doctor explained these
facts by saying that if an animal collapses at once from a
shot in the ventricle or lower portion of the heart it is
from the shock. Otherwise death only results from the
comparatively gradual filling of the pericardial cavity,
and the consequent smothering of the heart's beating in
its own blood. The shattering of the auricle or upper
portion of the heart, on the other hand, not only severs
the large blood-vessels and almost instantly floods the
pericardium, but paralyzes the heart's action at its source,
since the impulse of this action starts in the auricle.

Of course no statement made in regard to a wound
has any scientific value unless the wound was carefully
dissected out after death. And no statement has any
value whatever when it relates to wounds inflicted on an
animal that escaped. I have already drawn attention
to the liability to mistake inherent in this kind of a report
in the case of Jack and the charging grizzly.

His Vitality 255

The truth is, that the grizzly is just as easily killed
with the modern rifle as is the duck or snipe with the
modern shot-gun. The main thing in the whole business
is to keep cool and put the bullets in the right place. If
the hunter will land well in the centre of the shoulder or
just back of it or at the butt of the ear, he will kill at once
in every case.

XXIII
FACT FERSUS FICTION

WHEN I first began actually to hunt the grizzly I
found that much of what I had read about him
and most of what I had heard was fiction.

From childhood I had read every book that I could
lay hands on that treated of these bears, and later I had
listened (I dare say with open mouth and eyes) to those
I met who claimed to have had experience. I had come
to look upon the old-time hunters as heroes and demi-
gods, and was inclined to accept their successors, when
I ran across them, as teachers at whose feet I was glad to
sit and learn. When, therefore, my early experience
began to tumble my supposed knowledge about my ears,
I hastily said in my heart, like the Psalmist, that all men
were liars.

But since then I have seen more both of men and of
bears, and have come to realize that if the men who have
written nonsense about grizzlies were technically liars,
most of them were quite unconscious of the fact; and
that if grizzlies are not altogether as they have been repre-
sented, they are sufficiently variable and individual in
their actions and habits to have, in most cases, supplied

some nucleus of fact for the fictions to form on.

256

Fact versus Fiction 257

I have come, for instance, to see how inevitable it was
that, with the exception of here and there a really scien-
tific naturalist, hardly any of those who have written
about the grizzly have written from personal experience.
And I have come to understand how naturally, under
these circumstances, more romance than truth has found
its way into print, and why it is that so very little of what
is set down actually touches the real character of the ani-
mal. And I have thought in this chapter to speak of a
few of the more widely current of these misconceptions,
and to cite -a few amusing instances of their method of
growth.

And first let us quite candidly face the simple truth
that, as a rule, the old hunters and trappers, however
well meaning they may be, are not to be relied upon for
information that is worth much from a scientific stand-
point. I well remember the first one I ever saw. He
was an old, grizzled fellow, all covered with scars, which
he claimed were the results of his encounters with grizzly
bears, mountain lions, and Indian arrows. This old
chap had heard that there was a man in town that was
going bear hunting, and he took occasion to seek me out
and have a talk with me about the trip.

He said that as sure as I went hunting grizzlies with
the gun I then had (it was my old .44 Winchester) I
would be killed, as it was not powerful enough to kill a
bear. He declared emphatically that no bear could be
killed with one shot, and that the animals would attack
a person at sight. He maintained that he had shot griz-
zlies that had gone a mile or more after receiving several
mortal wounds, and that, when finally overtaken, they

258 The Grizzly Bear

were found to have plugged up the bullet holes with moss
to stop the flow of blood.

When I returned I hunted the old fellow up, and told
him that the bears were too wild to hunt with any show
of success; but he merely looked me up and down, remark-
ing that this was my first hunt, and intimated that if I kept
on hunting and remained of the same opinion, people
would not be bothered long with my presence above
ground.

And I dare say that up to a certain point he was honest
with me. These old fellows are as full of superstition as an
egg is of meat. There are a hundred bits of wood-lore and
animal legend that they have taken on faith, and that,
not being at all vital to the conduct of their own affairs,
they have never even questioned and would never think
to question. They are quite devoid of what might be
called scientific curiosity. The one thing about a bear
that interests them is his hide. The only facts they ever
learn about him are how to lure him into traps. If this
old man had ever really shot a grizzly, had ever come into
closer quarters with one than to set a deadfall for him, I
have no doubt that he looked back upon the adventure
much as St. George may have looked upon his set-to
with the dragon; and the tale of his prowess had grown
in the telling until he believed in the revised version him-
self. I have heard many of these old fellows declare
that the mountain lion of California has a mane like the
African lion, and that they had killed these animals that
would measure from twelve to thirteen feet from tip to
tip.

And, of course, we must not mix up the entirely dis-

Fact versus Fiction 259

tinct acts of lying and "stuffing the tenderfoot." When
a man can neither read nor write, and lives most of his life
alone on fresh venison and flapjacks, he is entitled to
some amusement.

One of the most widely disseminated legends about
the grizzly is the alleged fact that they bite and scratch
trees as a sort of challenge to would-be rivals. It has
even been asserted that these marks are purposely made
and duly heeded as a sort of "warning against trespassers,"
and mark the limits of the range claimed by the bear that
makes them. The laws that govern the matter have al-
most been codified. We are told that the grizzly that
posts one of these notices holds a good title to the posted
territory until another bear comes along that can put his
own mark above it. That the bear with the longest reach
is "boss" of that ward. We are told how an ambitious
young grizzly on the lookout for a location will wander
from one part of the hills to another, measuring up the
various marks, until he finds one that he can overtop by
.an inch or so, when he puts his sign-manual above it and
enters then and there into possession while the old owner
slinks off to look for a new job.

One writer has even told of an especially clever but
dishonest young bear that rolled a stump up to the notice
tree, and by standing on it placed his mark so far out of
reach of ordinary property owners that it struck terror
to a whole neighborhood.

Now there is just one grain of truth in this entire mass
of imagination — grizzlies do, occasionally, bite chunks
out of trees. Why they do it the Lord that made them
may know, but I am certain that no one else does; and,

260 The Grizzly Bear

so far from ever having seen it claimed that the writers
of these phantasies ever saw a grizzly examine one of
these "challenges" and heed it, I have never seen an
eye- witness's account of the making of these marks; and
only three times in all the years that I have watched these
animals have I stumbled on a sight of the operation.

The first time was many years ago while sitting one
evening on the side of a mountain watching five grizzlies
that were out feeding. It was August, and their hides were
worthless, and I was studying them with no idea of shoot-
ing. The bears all came out of a thickly timbered canon
through which ran an old game trail made by deer and
elk. I had often travelled this trail, and noticed that
here and there large pieces had been ripped out of the
trees, apparently by some animal with long, sharp teeth.
Inspection indicated that two teeth had been sunk into the
wood an inch or more, and then, by a sharp twist, a slab of
wood had been torn off, and I had supposed the animal
that did it was a bear, for I could plainly see the mark
of a bear's claws in the bark.

The evening in question, while watching the mouth
of this canon, I saw, first, an old she bear and her two
yearling cubs appear and start feeding on the ripe berries.
Later an old male came out and also started feasting;
and these four bears were making great inroads on the
berries when a fifth appeared. He was smaller than
the older male, but he came out of the canon slowly
and sedately, and seemed to be very lazy and not more
than half awake. He came to the edge of the timber and,
looking indifferently around, as these animals will under
such circumstances, sat down and scratched his ear with

Fact versus Fiction 261

his hind foot. He then got up lazily, sniffed up and
down the trunk of a small fir-tree, stretched his paws
upward arid, raising himself on his hind feet to his ex-
treme height, set his teeth into the small trunk and yanked
off a chunk similar to those I had seen scattered along
the trail. This was all done in the most unconcerned
and bored manner imaginable, without any show of ug-
liness or temper. There was nothing to indicate in the
least that the brute intended the act as a defiance or a
challenge to any other bear. He acted as if he had noth-
ing to do and was hard pressed to pass away the time.
Afterward he walked out to where the other bears were
and joined them at berry picking. The other male bear
paid no attention whatever to the action.

On another occasion I saw two three-year-old griz-
zlies peacefully ambling along a side hill. They were
tranquilly inclined and were apparently out for a prom-
enade, with nothing of special importance on their minds.
They would walk along for a short distance, stop and
sniff at stumps, scratch a little, and then move on again.
After a time they came to some trees, and one of them
stood up with his paws against a trunk, smelled quite
around it, turned his head sideways, drove his teeth
through an inch or more of wood, and with a twist of his
head ripped off a slab. He then sniffed at the open place,
lapped it a little with his tongue, dropped down on all-
fours, and followed the other bear that had meanwhile
moved on. In this instance it was the larger of the two
bears that did the "challenging."

On the third occasion I saw a lone bear stop beside
a trail and go through practically this same performance.

262 The Grizzly Bear

In each instance it was a grizzly that did the biting. I
have never seen a black bear make these marks on trees.

I would like, myself, to know why the bears do this,
but I never expect to. And, after all, the action is so
casual, so animal-like, so similar to a cat's stretching
itself against a tree, that it is probably quite without hid-
den meaning. It seems to me that we are much given
to overworking our imaginations.

Another notion commonly current is that a grizzly will
throw his fore legs around an antagonist and "hug" him
to death. There is no truth whatever in this idea, beyond
the fact that a grizzly, in attacking a large animal like a
steer, will sometimes hold it with one paw while he strikes
it or rips it open with the other. Indeed, I imagine that
this supposed habit has been attributed to the grizzly
merely because it has long been credited to bears in
general.

Again, contrary to the usual belief, I have never yet
seen a charging grizzly stand on his hind legs and thus
walk up to his antagonist. I do not believe that this is
their mode of attack. All that I have seen fight went at
things with a rush on all- fours; sometimes with a bawl
and a snort and with champing of the jaws, but never
with open mouth. They will, however, bite and rend
with their teeth, sometimes holding down the object of
their wrath with their fore paws while they tear and bite.
I have seen them rear up on their hind feet to deliver a
blow, but have never known them to do this until they
were near enough to strike. The idea that a grizzly de-
liberately stands up and walks up to his antagonist, like
one of the principals in a prize-ring, is a mistaken one.

Fact versus Fiction 263

A grizzly will, upon any pretext whatever, stand up and
look about him. Whenever he sees, or thinks he is going
to see, anything, up he goes to his full height on his hind
feet; but I have never seen one start to make a charge
from this position.

Again, it is often supposed that some of the oddly
colored bears of the Rocky Mountain region are crosses
between the black and the grizzly bears. Any one who
has seen the agility with which a black bear will take to
a tree if a grizzly happens along, or has marvelled at the
refinement of scent or hearing that enables one to detect
the approach of a grizzly (and beat a silent retreat in con-
sequence) long minutes before a human watcher becomes
aware of a grizzly's presence in the neighborhood, would
not need the denial of science to help him discredit this
bit of genealogical speculation.

But it would be an endless task to run down all these
flourishing misconceptions. Just to give an idea of how
they spread, I quote a few extracts from various articles
that have, from time to time, been solemnly put forth as
authoritative and even scientific.

One writer blandly remarks that "all grizzlies inter-
breed, and this obliterates some characteristic marks of the
several species. On the southern Pacific coast the two gray
species — the light and the mud grays — are closely allied."
And, again, that "the original silver-tips sprang from
grizzly and brown bears, and they combine all the feroc-
ty and prowess of the former, with the agility and stub-
bornness of the latter."

In summing up the food habits of the animal the
same writer says: 'He has a fondness for horse and

264 The Grizzly Bear

mule meat, and he will climb trees, rob bird's nests, and
eat the eggs there." Also that "he will climb a fruit-
tree, strip whole branches of ripe fruit with his huge paws
and claws, and then on the way home will finish off the
meal with a toad or a lizard." This gentleman also says
that "a grizzly loves to feed on ants." But then, perhaps
startled over finding himself so well within the bounds of
fact, adds that "he knocks the top off an ant hill, buries
his nose in the interior, and by a few inward breaths like
a suction pump, draws every vestige of life from the great-
est hill."

Another writer, a State Senator by the way, tells of
shooting a grizzly four times through the heart and hav-
ing it still chase him over down timber and bad going, and
only fall dead as it was about to fell him. And he goes
on to tell of a grizzly bear in the San Bernardino Moun-
tains that used to come once a week, climb a live-oak tree,
walk out along a horizontal branch over a high-fenced
pigpen, drop in, steal a little pig, push the gate open (it
opened out), and go home.

One frequently, in the mountains, sees a great fir-
tree growing among the rocks with only a thimbleful of
earth within reach. If one follows up the published liter-
ature on the grizzly bear, one is likely to see that misin-
formation has the knack of flourishing upon an equally
small store of fact.

XXIV
CONCLUSION

1DO not profess to know everything about the grizzly.
I do not believe that any one person can, of his own
knowledge, know all that is to be known about any animal.
Unless, indeed, he has followed and watched and studied
that animal in all the different localities and under all the
differing conditions where it exists, he is liable to find him-
self generalizing even in regard to its more obvious habits
and characteristics from insufficient data.

Some years ago, while hunting in the Bitter Roots, one
of the party who had hunted elk in other parts of the coun-
try, and especially in the Olympic Mountains in Washing-
ton, asked me if there were any elderberry bushes in the
Bitter Roots. I told him that there were many of them.
He replied that he would not, in that case, need any one to
show him where to hunt elk, as they would be found
wherever these bushes grew. So, after much explora-
tion, he selected a large side hill covered with this growth,
and there he put in most of his time for a week watching
for elk that never came. The other members of the party
had killed their game long before this man could be made
to believe that the Bitter Root elk were not Olympic elk

and did not live on these bushes.

265

266 The Grizzly Bear

It had always been his custom to cut open the stomachs
of the game he killed and to examine their contents in
order to see just what food the animal preferred and to
know where to hunt it; and he claimed that he had never
killed an elk in the Olympics that did not have the leaves
of the elder in its stomach. He, therefore, cut open
every elk that was killed on the trip to prove that this
was characteristic of the species, but never an elder-bush
leaf could be found in the stomach of an elk of the Bitter
Root range. In fact, these elks seemed to actually avoid
the places where this bush grew.

So with the grizzly bear. A naturalist who had
studied him in the Bitter Root Mountains would say that
he was a skilful fisherman and a greedy eater of his
catch, that he fed voraciously on the leaves of the shoot-
ing star, and that he seldom touched flesh. And men who
had only known these animals in the Selkirks or in Wy-
oming would, in either case, declare that the author knew
nothing of what he was writing about.

But these local discrepancies are the most obvious
of our pitfalls. Let the student follow where he will and
watch with what devotion he may, the wild beasts guard
many of their actions from his eyes. And at the last,
when he perhaps thinks that he has surprised all but the
most hidden of their secrets, he will come up against that
impenetrable barrier that separates their minds from
his. Then, if he is wise, he will place a watch on his
imagination.

I have tried to the best of my ability to keep these
facts in mind. I have avoided where I could the easy
mistake of coloring the actions of the observed animal

Conclusion 267

with the psychology of the observer. I have put down
my experiences with candor, and I have advanced my
beliefs without meaning to dogmatize.

One word I would like to say about shooting. I am
the last one, although I myself have had my fill of it, to
decry the pursuit of the hunter, but if one wishes really to
study an animal let him go without a gun: he will learn
more about him in one season than he will in a lifetime
of hunting to kill. One reason for this is that when one is
shooting one will take the first opportunity that is offered
to shoot, and this, of course, ends the chances of observa-
tion so far as that animal goes. But there is another con-
sideration. It is only when an animal is wholly at ease,
unconscious of one's presence, that one sees him as he
really is. Then, and then only, do we catch those intimate
glimpses and chance views that admit us, as it were, to a
knowledge of his home life and to an understanding of the
character that underlies his company manners. And
my experience has left no doubt in my mind but what
there is some kind of telepathy between man and brute
as well as between man and man; and that an inter-
ested but sympathetic watcher can remain unnoticed
where the presence of a hostile one might breed uneasi-
ness, if not suspicion, in the mind of an animal.

Finally, I have dwelt so much upon the difference
between the grizzly of popular imagination and the real
grizzly of the wilds, that it may possibly appear that my
traffic with this magnificent animal has not left me one
of his admirers. As a matter of fact nothing could be
farther from the truth.

First and last I have hunted and killed all the big

268 The Grizzly Bear

game of this continent south of the Barren Grounds and
Alaska. Later, as the years passed and I became less
enamoured of killing, I have been interested in the study
of these animals, one and all. There is, indeed, no form
of life in the open that is not beautiful, and I am not
ashamed to own that I have spent many happy and silent
hours watching the humblest of them. But not only as a
sportsman did my interest in the grizzly survive the dis-
covery that all my early and romantic ideas about him
were ill-founded, but, as a student, I have steadily added
to my admiration for him.

He is the one wild animal of our wilderness that owns
no natural over-lord. With the exception of man he
deigns to recognize no enemy. And if he is not, as he
was once thought, the bloodthirsty and tyrranous auto-
crat of his vast domain, he is none the less its master.
If, in sober truth, he is less terrible than he was painted,
he only loses interest and dignity in the eyes of those
whom fear alone impresses.

In short, just as the grizzly was in the beginning the
lure that drew me to the wilderness, so now, to my mind,
he remains the grandest animal our country knows.

INDEX

INDEX

PAGE

Adams, James Capen 4, 37 et seq., 197, 200, 212, 227, 238, 243,

244, 251, 252

Adams, James H , 87

American Naturalist, The 44

Athabaska River 134

Audubon, John James 33, 34

Barnum, P. T.. 4, 45, 46, 215

Bear, Black 19, 24, 48, 49, 50, 189, 191, 195, 197, 198, 199,

203, 210, 211, 263

" Cinnamon 191

" Great Naked 26

" Grizzly, Barren Ground 49, 51, 185, 186

" Californian 40, 49

" Challenges 259, 260, 261

Charging 61, 93, 131, 132, 161, 162, 233, 262

" Color 22, 189-195

Cubs 41, 199-205

Domestication 42, 43, 44

Indian Classification 23

Kodiak 48, 50, 51

Life Span 213-216

Mating Season 207-210, 243, 244

Polar 48, 49, 50

Rocky Mountain 29, 39, 49, 50, 51, 185, 186

Sitka 48, 49, 50, 51

Size 186, 195-197, 204

271

(( II

(I u

(( (t

tl it

2J2

Index

PAGE

Bear, Grizzly, Sonora 49» l85

Teeth 189

Tracks 187, 188

"Ben Franklin" 41, 44, 45> 46, 212

Bitter Root Mountains 56, 79, 88, 95, 135, 138, 163, 207, 214,

218, 222, 265, 266

Boone, Daniel 47

Bratton (of Lewis and Clark Expedition) 17, 231

Bridges, Jim. 36

Carlin, W. E 135

Carson, Kit 36

Caton, John Dean 44

Chihuahua, Mexico 192

Clark, Malcolm 241

Clark, Captain William 16, 20, 231

Clearwater River 57, 69, 88, 138, 218, 228

Clinton, De Witt 26, 29

Coleman, T. C 105, 117

Columbia River 23

Columbian Ground Squirrel 79, 219

Crocket, David 47

Delaware and Mohican Indians 26

Dog-Tooth Violet 107, 222

Drummond, J. L 34, 35, 241, 243

El Paso, Texas 192

Godman's Natural History 31

Guthrie's Geography 28

Harlan, Richard 29, 3 j

Harmon, D. W 30

Heart Wounds 253, 254

Index 273

PAGE

Himmelwright, A. L. A 211

Hittell, Theodore H 38, 44-47, *97

Hornaday, Dr. William T 191, 193, 194, 196, 200, 210, 234

James, Edwin 30

Kerfoot, J. B 165, 173, 174, 177, 178, 180, 181

Kooskooskee River 21

Kootenai 219

"Lady Washington" 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 200

Lambert, Dr. Alexander 253, 254

Lamoche, Baptiste 34

Landseer, John 33

Lewis, Captain Meriwether 13, 15, 17. 19, 231, 239, 240

Lewis and Clark 13 et seq, 26, 28, 30, 35, 190, 193, 196, 231,

232, 234, 241, 248

Literary and Philosophical Society of New York 26, 27

Lolo Trail, The 95

Long, Major Stephen H 30

MacKenzie, Sir Alexander 14

McNeil (of Lewis and Clark Expedition) 24

Merriam, Dr. C. Hart 44, 48

Missoula, Montana 10

Missouri River 13, 19, 24, 26, 234

"Moccasin Joe" 187

Muscle Shell River 19

Newbert, John 241

O'Brien, John D 87

"Old Ephraim" 106, 187

Olympic Mountains 265

Ord, George 28, 29, 193

274 Index

PAGE

Peace River 14

Peale's Museum 31

Penfield, Dr. C. S 95, 105, 128

Pike, Lieutenant Zebulon M 32

Pope, M. W 133

Reid, Captain Mayne 36

Richardson, John 33, 34

Rifles 55, 66, 73, 134, 137, 249, 250, 251

Roosevelt, Theodore 33

Salmon 69, 70, 75, 218

Saskatchewan River 134

Say,T 30

Selkirk Mountains 79, 80, 201, 205, 212, 213, 219, 222, 266

Shields, G. 0 117

Shooting Star 222, 266

Smith, Hamilton 29

Spencer, Martin 87

Spokane, Washington 6, 7, 8, 10

Spring Beauty 107, 222

Umfreville, Edward 14

Warden, Dr. D. B 30

Whistling Marmot 79, 80, 219

White Horse, Yukon Territory 192

Williamson, Andrew 242

Wilson's Creek 106 et seq., 205, 220, 225

Yellowstone National Park 143 et seq., 199

Yellowstone River 13, 234

Yosemite Valley 39, 41