The Grizzly Part 3

Going one autumn from Estes Park to North Park, Colorado, I came upon a grizzly's track in the upper end of Forest Canon. For several miles it had followed an old wild-life trail. It crossed the Continental Divide, then the No-Summer Mountains. From its trail I judged that it, too, knew where it was going.

Had these bears gone to explore, to see the opportunities of a new region? Or had they returned to old territory which they knew, perhaps to obtain some particular kind of food, or just to have an outing? If seeking new domains, it is possible that they would explore a number of localities before selecting one.

In a few localities bears migrate in the spring and return home in the fall. In these migrations the grizzly breaks his solitary custom and travels in company. Most likely the bears happen to be on the same route at the same time, and, like Pullman pa.s.sengers, travel together without speaking.

I saw eight grizzly bears one November traveling single file northward from Middle Park. Back-tracking, I found that they had come from the mountainous empire around the southern end of this park. They crossed over into North Park in almost a straight line. Were they, I wondered, heading for a new home, or was this an annual foraging affair? The topography of the country traveled had some bearing on the common route taken, but why were they traveling together? I heard of a number of bears traveling together in northern New Mexico.

On one occasion a hunter on No-Wood Creek in the Big Horns saw seven old grizzlies and two cubs together in the autumn. They were back-tracked to the Yellowstone Park. The garbage-dumps in the Park are frequented by neighboring bears and by numbers from outside the bounds of the Park.

As bears age, their teeth become broken and badly worn away. With difficulty they manage to live. They are often handicapped through loss of toes and by other injuries received in accidents and fights, and through a weakening of faculties due to age. Their normal life appears to be from thirty-five to fifty years.

In the mountains of the north of Yellowstone Park I came upon an extremely old, hard-looking bear. I sat for some time within forty feet of him, watching him rip an old log to pieces to get the ants and white grubs. I was so close that I could see his tongue as it busily licked to right and left. His red-looking eyes stared strangely. I think that he must have been nearly blind, and also that he had nearly lost his ability to scent. When I moved a little closer, he stopped eating, rose up, sniffed the air queerly as though endeavoring to catch scent of me, then listened and looked. He was not at all sure of my presence, though looking in my direction. Two or three days later this old bear was killed. Many of his teeth were gone, and others were badly worn away.

His claws were extremely blunt. His head and hide showed many scars--marks of fights and marks from numerous bullets.

One February, when I was spending a few days with a prospector, he brought home the interesting news that he had found a dead grizzly bear.

The bear evidently had died while hibernating. He was found curled up in his den and frozen solid. He was old, in poor condition, and his insides were swarming with vermin. I once found a fat young grizzly, apparently healthy, who had the appearance of having frozen to death while hibernating. The time was about the middle of January. The winter to date had been extremely cold, and but little snow had fallen.

I have known of other grizzlies who met strange deaths, but, considering the fairly numerous grizzly population at the time when I was wandering the wilds, the number of bodies found is surprisingly small. One of these grizzlies had perished in a forest fire, another in a desert flood, one was killed at the foot of a cliff by a falling stone, and another was crushed in a snow-slide. Just how or where most old grizzlies come to an end, or what becomes of their bones, I have never been able to learn. It may be that many of them die in the winter dens, which cave in and bury the remains. In closing his adventurous career the grizzly appears to conceal the trail to his last resting-place.

Making a Bear Living

Glancing across a beaver pond one day, I saw a big, grayish grizzly bear walk out into the gra.s.sy opening. My presence was not suspected, and I at once focused my field-gla.s.ses upon him. Here and there he went. As a gra.s.shopper leaped into the air, the bear--big, fat, awkward, lumbering fellow that he was--leaped into the air after it. Striking the gra.s.shopper with a fore paw, he would knock it to the ground and then pick it up with his teeth. Occasionally he advanced on all fours and slapped his paw upon the gra.s.shopper before it leaped into the air. Once two gra.s.shoppers flew up at the same instant. The bear stood still, located the spot where each had alighted, and then paid his respects to them in turn.

About this time another bear came into the opening within a hundred feet of the scene of activity. He was dark-gray, almost black, in color, but he too was a grizzly. After smelling here and there, the second bear dug out something; I think it must have been a nestful of mice. A minute later in the edge of the tall gra.s.s he found a b.u.mblebee's nest. This he ate in its entirety. Apparently two or three of the bees escaped, to judge from the bear's rapid defense of his nose. Occasionally, as he walked about, he ate a huge mouthful of gra.s.s, taking three or four bites at a time.

Neither of these bears paid the slightest attention to the other. Though each must have known, from both scent and sight, that the other was near, they very successfully appeared to be oblivious of the fact. A beaver pond is often a neutral feeding and swimming place.

"As hungry as a bear" is an expression of variable meaning. About one third of the year a bear has an omnivorous appet.i.te; for another four months he lives on short rations; and during the remainder of the year he goes on a food strike and hibernates.

A bear spends most of his waking hours making a living. He has simply a devastating appet.i.te, and as his taste runs to small stuff and dainties, he is kept on the move.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEXICAN GRIZZLIES _Group in the Field Columbian Museum_]

If he denned high up the mountain-side his surroundings are likely to be mostly snow-covered when he comes forth in the spring. Under such conditions he travels miles down the mountains to feed on the early plants already started on the low-lands. He may then slowly follow spring and summer in their steady advance up the far-reaching slopes. To a certain extent his movements are determined by the calendar. He feeds upon the best the season affords. He knows when each article of diet is in season and where in his home territory, or out of it, this abounds.

In berry time look for a bear in a berry-patch. Like an enthusiastic fisherman he impatiently waits for the open season--sp.a.w.ning-time--and is on hand early to start fishing.

Perhaps it would be well if we could think of the grizzly as being largely vegetarian. He digs up roots; feeds on weeds, tender shoots of shrubbery, fungi, mushrooms, berries, seeds, rose-hips, pine-nuts, and acorns; and also eats bark like a rabbit and gra.s.s like a gra.s.s-eater.

The aspens were in bloom, laden with swollen buds and juicy catkins.

Many birds were feasting on the catkins; and, looking over into a near-by aspen thicket, I saw a grizzly on a ledge also feeding eagerly.

Reaching for a limb, first with one fore paw and then the other, he bit off a few inches and ate twigs, bark, and bloom. Occasionally he seized the top of an aspen with both paws, bent it down, and bit it off. It was similar to the fashion followed in eating wild plums and choke-cherries.

A bear will reach up and pull down the top of a plum tree, and, biting it off, eat the small limbs, the bark, the leaves, and the fruit. A grizzly browsing in a wild raspberry-patch will bite off the tops of the vines together with the berries, the leaves, and the thorns. Sometimes the twigs and terminal buds of the pine, the fir, and the spruce are eaten.

One day I saw a grizzly approaching in a manner which indicated that he knew exactly where he was going. On arriving at an alder clump by the brook he at once began tearing off the bark and eating it. On another occasion I watched a bear strip nearly all the bark within reach from a young balsam fir. I have often seen places where bears had bitten and torn chunks of bark from aspens and cottonwoods. Though they also tear the bark from pine and spruce trees, I do not believe that this is eaten as frequently as the bark of the broad-leaved trees.

During the first few weeks after coming out of the winter den much of the grizzly's food is likely to be of the salad order--juicy young plant stalks, watery shoots, tender bark, young gra.s.ses, buds, and leaves. In late autumn, just before hibernating, his last courses are mostly roots and nuts.

However, the normal grizzly is an omnivorous feeder, refusing only human flesh. He will eat anything that is edible--meat (fresh, stale, or carrion), wasps, yellow-jackets, gra.s.shoppers, ants and their eggs, bugs, and grubs. Of course he eats honey and the bees. He also captures snakes, and many a rat and rabbit. He is a destroyer of many pests that afflict man, and in the realm of economic biology he should be rated high. I doubt if a dozen cats, hawks, or owls annually catch as many mice as the average grizzly.

The food of a grizzly is largely determined by locality. Along the streams of the northern Pacific Coast he lives chiefly upon fish, while the grizzlies in the Bitter Root Mountains and British Columbia generally feed upon roots and plants. Those in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the Southwest have a mixed diet.

The spring-beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the shooting-star, both tops and roots, supply the grizzlies of some localities with much of their food, while in other regions they rarely, and possibly never, touch them, though they grow abundantly. The bears in the Bitter Root Mountains eat the shooting-star freely, while the violet and the spring-beauty are favored by the bears of the Selkirks. Yet, strange though it is, the bears of both localities pay but little attention to carca.s.ses which they find. One of the plant roots which the bears of British Columbia dig out in autumn until the ground is frozen, is a wild pea, the hedysarum.

I frequently followed a grizzly whose home territory was close to my cabin in the Rocky Mountains. Apparently he liked everything. One day he spent hours digging out mice. On another he caught a rabbit. He ate a b.u.mblebee's nest, and, with the nest, the gra.s.s, the bees, their young, their honey, and their stings. In a homesteader's garden he dug out and ate nearly one hundred pounds of potatoes and turnips. The homesteader thought that a hog had been in his garden. In places I too have thought that hogs had been rooting where bears had simply been digging for roots--places with dug and upturned earth often many square yards in extent. They dig out the roots of the wild parsnip, the shooting-star, and gra.s.s, the bulbs of lilies, and sometimes the roots of willow and alder.

I endeavored to find out the kind of food preferred by two young bears that I raised. A number of times I approached them with a plate upon which were cake, meat, and honey. In my pockets I generally had also either turnips or apples. When I appeared the bears usually stood on hind legs to see what I had. If they caught the scent of apples or turnips, they thrust paws or noses into my pockets, ignoring the dainties on the plate. Otherwise they grabbed whatever happened to be nearest them on the plate.

All grizzlies appear to be fond of fish. In many places they are most successful fishermen. I watched a grizzly standing in the riffles of an Idaho stream, partly concealed by a willow clump. In half an hour he knocked five large salmon ash.o.r.e. With a single lightning-like stroke of a fore paw, the fish was flung out of the water and sent flying fifteen or twenty feet. Rarely did he miss. Each of the salmon weighed several pounds.

A grizzly in the Sawtooth region, trying to catch some fish, sprawled out on a low bank by the edge of a stream. Holding himself with one fore paw, he reached over with the other and felt along the bank beneath the water. He did this very much as a fat man might. More frequently the bear makes a stand in driftwood on the bank, or on a log that has fallen into the stream, or behind a willow clump. Sometimes he captures fish by wading up a brook and seizing with claws or teeth those that conceal themselves beneath banks and projecting roots.

A huge brown grizzly mother catching trout for her two fat cubs held my attention one day. The cubs waited on the gra.s.sy bank of a brook while the mother brought them trout after trout. She sometimes caught the fish by thrusting her nose into the water beneath the bank or by reaching in with her paws. Occasionally she knocked them out of the water as they endeavored to dash past her in the riffles. The cubs watched her every move; but they were not allowed to enter the water.

Sometimes the grizzly will collect and cover over an excess of carca.s.ses or fish. By a little mountain lake at the headwaters of the Columbia I found a pile of stale salmon beneath a number of large logs and stones.

The fish had been caught during sp.a.w.ning-time and stored for future consumption. A day or two later I returned, and tracks showed that the bear had come back and consumed the salmon.

The grizzly eagerly earns his own living; he is not a loafer. Much work is done in digging out a cony, a woodchuck, or some other small animal from a rock-slide. In two hours' time I have known him to move a ma.s.s of earth that must have weighed tons, leaving an excavation large enough for a private cellar. I have come upon numbers of holes from which a grizzly had removed literally tons of stone. In places these holes were five or six feet deep. Around the edges the stones were piled as though for a barricade. In some of them several soldiers could have found room and excellent shelter for ordinary defense.

When a large stone is encountered in his digging the grizzly grabs it with both fore paws, shakes and tears it loose from the earth, and hurls it aside. I have seen him toss huge stones over his shoulder and throw larger ones forward with one paw. Grizzlies show both skill and thought in nearly everything they do. They have strength, alert wits, and clever paws, and commonly work at high speed. Yet they appear deliberate in their actions and work in a painstaking, careful manner.

A grizzly I followed one day paused in a gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce to dig out mice.

In reaching them he discovered a chipmunk's burrow. By the time he had secured all the mice and chipmunks he had torn up several square yards of sod. The place had the appearance of having been rooted up by hogs.

In this fresh earth the surrounding trees sowed triumphant seeds, and here a cl.u.s.ter of spruces grew where gra.s.s had long held sway.

A grizzly seems never too busy or too hungry to stop and look around.

"Safety First" appears to be more on his mind than eating. I have seen a grizzly pause from his earth-digging after roots to stop, look, and listen, and I have watched one stop his more than eager digging after marmots to scent the air in his scout for an enemy. And then again I have repeatedly seen him look up from his feast of smelly sirloin to make certain that he was not surprised by man.

While I was watching a flock of mountain sheep feeding down a slope just above the timber-line, a grizzly appeared on the scene. He came slowly upward from the woods. Unless the sheep or the bear changed course there must be a meeting. But the sheep continued to feed downward and the grizzly to walk up. Suddenly the bear stopped and began digging--digging evidently for a chipmunk. A stream of earth was sent flying behind him.

Occasionally, too, a huge stone was sent hurtling back. This activity roused the curiosity of the sheep, and they approached within perhaps ten or twelve feet. They were lined up and eagerly watching the grizzly when he became aware of their presence. Disliking their close approach, he leaped at them with a terrific "Woof!" The sheep scattered wildly but ran only a few yards. Again uniting, they fed quietly away, and the grizzly returned to his digging.

In only exceptional cases has the grizzly been a killer of big game. In his search for food he digs out small mammals and kills rabbits and beaver. He is not likely to attempt anything as large as wild sheep, but when a grizzly forms the habit of killing big animals he is likely to make this serve as his entire food-supply. Thus a cattle-killing grizzly is likely to give his chief attention to the killing of cattle, or incidentally to that of sheep, deer, or elk. In the days of the buffalo the great herds frequently were trailed by one or more grizzlies. These, however, probably obtained most of their meat from carca.s.ses left behind by storms, drowning, or other means of death.

The misfortunes of other animals often provide a feast for the grizzly.

In going over an area just swept by a forest fire I saw two grizzlies feasting, and there were feasts for numerous others. One was wading in an abandoned beaver pond and feasting on the dead trout that floated on the surface. Two black bears, despite terrible threats from the grizzly, claimed all the fish that came within reach of the sh.o.r.e, but discreetly kept out of the pond. During the second day's exploration of the burn a bear came upon me while I was eating from a fire-killed, roasted deer.

When I moved on, the waiting grizzly walked up to dine.

A grizzly knows the location of every beaver pond in his territory. It is one of his favorite loafing and feeding places. Often he rolls and swims about in the water, enjoying himself immensely. Here he sometimes finds a stale fish or a dead bird brought down by the stream. Sometimes he eats a huge salad of pond-lilies.

But when beaver are gathering the harvest, especially if it is gathered at some distance from the water, he lies in wait and overhauls them. He is ready, too, to seize upon any of these unfortunate fellows who is accidentally killed or injured in gnawing down a tree. Many a time I have seen the fresh tracks of a mother and her cubs on the muddy sh.o.r.e of a beaver pond, and sometimes the tracks of both black bears and grizzlies.

In the course of miles of daily wandering the grizzly may occasionally come upon a wounded animal or a carca.s.s. If his find be large, he may lie close until it is consumed; or he may make a cache of it, returning again and again until it is eaten. Grizzlies will bury an elk in the earth or cover the carca.s.s of a cow with numbers of logs. Nothing is more common than for them to cover a carca.s.s with refuse consisting of twigs, fallen leaves, gra.s.s, and trash. They will cover a quant.i.ty of fish with stones and logs.

A few grizzlies become cattle-killers; many grizzlies eat cattle they did not kill. On the live-stock ranges in the mountains of the West cattle die from many causes. They succ.u.mb to disease and to accidents.

Winds proclaim carca.s.s news and a feast to flesh-eaters near and far.

Bears have amazingly keen noses and often are the first to enjoy the feast.