Part 13

He stood still at the foot of the dune for several seconds and looked off into the distance. He was debating what he should do next. Off he started slowly toward the horizon. Into the edge of the mysterious landscape of a mirage he walked and vanished. I thought him lost and rose to move on, when a purple shadowy landscape pushed up into the sky and in this strange, dim scene a giant shadowy grizzly raced and played.

Play is a common habit of animals. Darwin, Wallace, and others have emphasized its importance as a progressive evolutionary factor in the survival of the fittest. Play is rest and relaxation; it gives power and proficiency; it stimulates the brain to the highest pitch of keenness and arouses all the faculties to be eager and at their best; it develops the individual. Play not only is a profound advantage to the player, but is necessary to the requirements of an efficient life.

All alert animals freshen themselves with play. The human race is beginning to do intelligently what it once did instinctively; it is relearning the lost art, the triumphant habit, of play.

Matching Wits with the Grizzly

In April, 1904, "Old Mose," an outlaw grizzly, was killed on Black Mountain, Colorado. For thirty-five years he had kept up his cattle-killing depredations. During this time he was often seen and constantly hunted, and numerous attempts were made to trap him. His home territory was about seventy-five miles in diameter and lay across the Continental Divide. He regularly killed cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs in this territory, and, so far as known, did not leave this region even briefly. Two missing toes on his left hind foot were the means of identifying his track.

Old Mose killed at least five men and eight hundred cattle, together with dozens of colts and other live stock. His damage must have exceeded thirty thousand dollars. Often he smashed the fences that were in his way. He had a fiendish habit of slipping up on campers or prospectors, then rushing into their camp with a roar, and he evidently enjoyed the stampedes thus caused. On these occasions he made no attempt to attack. Although he slaughtered stock to excess, he never went out and attacked people. The five men whom he killed were men who had cornered him and were attempting to kill him.

Rarely do grizzlies kill cattle or big game. Old Mose was an exception. None of the other grizzlies in the surrounding mountains killed live stock. During his last years Old Mose was followed at a distance by a "cinnamon" bear of large size. This grizzly had nothing to do with the killing, never associated with Old Mose, but simply fed on the abundance which he left behind.

A heavy price on his head led the most skillful hunters and trappers to try for Old Mose. Three of the best hunters were killed by him. All trapping schemes failed; so, too, did attempts to poison. Finally he was cornered by a pack of dogs, and the hunter ended his career with the eighth shot.

Though Old Mose was forty or more years of age when killed, his teeth were sound, his fur was in good condition, and he had every appearance of being in excellent health. He was apparently good for several years more of vigorous life.

Trapping the grizzly has become a non-essential occupation. It is a waste of energy, because rarely successful. Now and then a bear is trapped, but it is usually a young bear of but little experience, a mother who is trying to protect her cubs, or a bear whose momentary curiosity caused him to forget his customary caution.

Formerly it was not difficult to trap a grizzly. But he quickly learned to avoid the menace of traps. The bear sees through all the camouflage of the trapper. Deodorized and concealed traps, traps near the bait and far from it, traps placed singly and in clusters--these, and even the slender concealed string of a spring gun, he usually detects and avoids.

I spent a number of days with a trapper who felt certain that he would secure the thousand-dollar reward for the capture of an outlaw cattle-killing grizzly. Earlier than usual the cattlemen drove the cattle from the summer range. The trapper took an old cow to a selected spot near the end of a gulch, picketed her, and surrounded her with spring guns and traps. The outer line of defense consisted of three spring guns which guarded three avenues of approach to the cow. The strings to these guns were of silk line stretched over bushes and tall grass so as to be inconspicuous. As the bear would be likely to seize the cow's head or neck, a trap was set between her head and a large bowlder near by. There was a trap on each side of the cow and one behind her.

The first night there was a light fall of snow, but no bear. But the second night he came. Tracks showed that he scented or heard the cow from afar--more than a mile away--and came straight for her. He stopped within two feet of the silk line and walked cautiously round it until he completed the circuit. But there was no opening. He then leaped the line--something I had never before heard of a bear doing. He approached the cow, then walked round her; he went close to the traps and detected just where each one was concealed. Then, between the trap in front and the one on the left, he seized and killed the cow. After feeding on her he dragged the carcass across two traps and left it. Leaping the line again, he went off down stream in the gulch.

The trapper reset the traps the following day and placed an additional one just inside the line, at the point where the grizzly had leaped over it. Then, some distance down stream, he strung a line across the gulch and attached a spring gun to one end of the line.

The grizzly returned that night, coming down the gulch. After walking the lines around the carcass, and apparently having detected the new trap inside, he leaped the line at another point. He avoided the traps and ate about half the remainder of the carcass. Then he piled a few dead logs on what was left, leaped the line again, and went down the gulch. He stopped within ten or twelve feet of the line here and followed it along to where it connected with the rifle on the side of the gulch. Walking round the rifle, he went back into the gulch and followed his trail of the preceding night.

The trapper, amazed, vowed vengeance. He made haste and built a log pen around the remains of the carcass. He then set two traps in the entrance of the pen, one in front of the entrance and one inside the pen.

The second night following, the bear returned, leaped over the line, and cautiously approached the pen. The bowlder formed part of the rear end of this. Climbing on top of the bowlder, the bear tore off the upper part of the pen, which rested on the bowlder, and then, from the bowlder, without getting into the pen, reached down and dragged up the carcass. In doing this one of the poles which had been torn out of place and thrown to one side struck the top of a stump, turned over, and fell across the line attached to a spring gun. This fired its waiting shot. Then the grizzly did this astounding thing. He appears to have been on top of the bowlder when the shot was fired, but he descended, made his way to the smelly gun, and then examined it, the snow being tracked up in front of it. Returning to the carcass, he dragged it off the bowlder and ate the last mouthful. Leaving the bones where they lay, he walked across the line where the pole rested on it and went off up the gulch.

A grizzly is wary for the preservation of his life. It is generally a triumph of stalking to get within short range of him. His senses detect danger afar. He will sometimes hear the stealthy approach of a hunter at the distance of a quarter of a mile, and under favorable conditions he will scent a man at a distance of a mile or more. Being ever on guard, and generally in a place where he can scout with scent, sight, or hearing, he usually manages to keep out of range or under cover. It is not uncommon for two or three hunters in different parts of bear territory, searching with field-glasses, watching from high places, taking advantage of the wind, and moving silently, to spend a week without even seeing a bear, although bears were about. Many times, even when trailed with dogs, through his brains, his endurance, and his ability to move rapidly over rough territory, the grizzly escapes being cornered.

I have often been in bear territory for days without seeing one. Then again I have seen two or more in a few hours. Frequently I have been able to watch a grizzly at moderately short range for an hour or longer. I was chiefly concerned to get near enough to study his actions, and not to take a shot, as I trailed without a gun. But many a day I have failed to see a grizzly, though I searched carefully in a territory which I knew and where the habits of the individual bears were somewhat known to me.

A grizzly territory is covered with a web of dim trails over which he usually travels. If surprised, the grizzly turns and retreats over the trail on which he was advancing. A bear's trail, close behind him, is a dangerous place to be in if he does retreat. Many a hunter, a few feet off the trail, has had the alarmed bear rush by without noticing him, while others, who were directly on the trail, have been run over or assailed by the bear.

When in a trap or cornered, a wounded grizzly sometimes feigns death. Apparently, when he considers his situation desperate, he sees in this method the possibility of throwing his assailant off his guard. A trapper once invited me to go the rounds with him along his string of traps. In one of these was a young grizzly. At short range the hunter fired two shots and the bear fell in a heap.

We advanced within a few feet and saw that the bear was bleeding freely, but halted "to be sure he was dead." "I make it a point," said the hunter, "to wait until a bear dies before I start skinning him. Once I made the mistake of putting down my rifle and starting to skin the bear before he was dead."

We stepped forward, and the hunter prodded the bear with the end of the rifle-barrel. Like a jumping-jack the bear sprang at the hunter, knocked him over backwards, tore a hole through his clothing, and ripped a bad wound in his skin on the thigh. Fortunately the chain and clog on the trap held the bear from following up his assault.

On another occasion I was with a party of mounted hunters with dogs who chased a grizzly out of his territory and cornered him in a deep box cañon. He was at bay and the excited dogs were harrying him as we came up. He stood in the end of the cañon, facing out, evidently watching for an opportunity to escape. He discouraged all attacks by his swift and cool-headed defense. If a bush stirred behind he made a feint to strike. If a dog came close to his side he appeared to strike without looking. He did not allow any rear movements or attacks to divert his attention from the front, where the hunters stood at short range with rifles ready. They waited for a chance to shoot without hitting a dog. Suddenly the grizzly charged and all was confusion. With a stroke of fore paw he broke the jaw of one horse, with another stroke he caved in three ribs of another horse, he bit and broke a man's arm, disemboweled one dog and wrecked another, and made his safe get-away. Not a shot had been fired. There was no pursuit.

While with three hunters, I once came close upon a grizzly who was digging for mice. The hunters opened fire. For seconds the cañon walls crashed and echoed from the resounding rattling gunnery. Thirty or forty shots were fired. The bear escaped. A hunter took up the trail and the following day ran down the bear and killed him. He carried no wounds except the one from the shot fired by this hunter. He weighed perhaps five hundred pounds.

But the story of the shooting as told by one of the first three hunters was something like this: "We came upon the largest grizzly that I had ever seen. He must have weighed fifteen hundred pounds or more. He was busy digging in an opening and didn't see us until we opened on him at short range. As we had time, we aimed carefully, and each of us got in several shots before he reached the woods. He ran with as much strength as if nothing had happened; yet we simply filled him full of lead--made a regular lead mine of him."

The grizzly is not an exceedingly difficult animal to kill if shot in a vital spot--in the upper part of the heart, in the brain, or through the centre of the shoulder into the spine. Hunters too often fire aimlessly, or become so frightened that they do not even succeed in hitting the bear, though firing shot after shot in his general direction.

William H. Wright once killed five bears with five shots in rapid succession. I was with a hunter in a berry-patch when four grizzlies fell with four lightning-like shots. George McClelland in Wyoming killed nine bears inside of a minute. He probably fired sixteen shots. These were grizzlies, two of which were cubs.