Part 3

He started westward--back toward the bowlder--alongside his first trail, and traveled for about a mile parallel to it and less than one hundred feet from it. Near the bowlder he waited in concealment at a point where he could watch his former trail, and evidently stayed there until I passed.

Then he traveled on a short distance to another small rocky area. Doubling in his tracks, he came back for one hundred feet or so in the trail he had thus made. Working toward his first trail, he hid his tracks by leaping among fallen timbers and bushes, and at last made a leap into his first trail by the bowlder, where he made many tracks in the snow. Along this old trail he traveled east again a short distance, stepping precisely in his former footprints.

Out of this trail he leaped upon the top of a low, snowless bowlder on the right, and from this upon another bowlder. He walked along a bare fallen log. Here I must have searched more than two hours before detecting two or three broken sticks, which gave me a clew to the direction he had taken. From the log he walked upon a cross log and then plunged through fifty or sixty feet of thicket which showed no trail. From where he had emerged on the farther side of the thicket there was little by which to trace him for the next quarter of a mile. He zigzagged over fallen logs and leaped upon snowless bowlders until he came to a tree leaning against a cliff. Up this tree he walked to a ledge, where, fortunately, there was a little snow which recorded his track. He followed the ledge to the top of the cliff and, leaving this, ran for four or five miles. It took me twenty-four hours to unravel the various tangles, and I finally gave up the idea of photographing him. Long before I arrived at the top of the cliff I had concluded that I was following a reasoning animal, one who might be more alert than I myself.

Though a grizzly has both speed and strength, he generally uses his wits and thus obtains the desired end in the easiest way. Three or four persons have told me that they have seen instances of a grizzly bear's taking the part of an acrobat. The bear, by this means, endeavored to attract the attention of cattle, with the idea of drawing them close and seizing one of them. Among his pranks he turned an occasional somersault, rolled over and over, and chased his tail.

A Utah grizzly killed about one thousand head of cattle in fifteen years. During this time there was a large reward offered for his death. Numerous attempts were made to capture him. Old hunters and trappers tried with rifles and traps; expeditions of men, horses, and dogs pursued him. All these years he lived on as usual in his home territory, made a kill every few days, and was seen only two or three times.

Another grizzly, eluding pursuers, slaughtered live stock freely, and managed to survive thirty-five years of concerted efforts to kill or capture him. There was a rich reward on his head.

There are similar accounts of Clubfoot, Three-Toes, and other outlaw grizzlies. All of these bears slaughtered cattle by the hundreds in their home territory, lived with heavy prices on their heads, and for years outwitted skillful hunters and trappers, escaping the well-organized posse again and again. Knowing many of the hunters and their skillful methods, and the repeated triumphs of other grizzlies over combinations and new contrivances, I am convinced that the grizzly bear is an animal who reasons.

When in a trap or cornered, a wounded grizzly sometimes feigns death. Apparently he considers his situation desperate and sees in this method the possibility of throwing his assailant off guard. Considering that need of feigning death is recent,--since the arrival of the white man with high-power rifle and insidious steel trap,--this strategy appears like a clear case of reasoning.

The grizzly is difficult to anticipate. His strategy usually defeats the hunter. One wounded bear may at once charge the hunter; the next may run from him; and the third may hold the ground defiantly. The grizzly meets what to us seem identical situations in unlike manner, and makes sudden changes in his habits without our seeing the cause for such changes. Quickly he makes the acquaintance of the new and promptly adjusts himself to it. If it is dangerous he avoids it, if advantageous he uses it.

Often in traveling to a distant place the grizzly goes on the run, but just as often he goes at slower speed. If plodding slowly, he conveys the impression of deliberating. He often appears to be thinking, and probably is. Though shuffling along, he is bound for a definite place with the intention of doing a definite thing. Suddenly he changes his mind and goes off in the opposite direction.

I have seen a bear hustling along, with his mind apparently made up; he is in a hurry to carry out some plan, to reach a given place, or see some particular thing. All at once he notices where he is and stops. He remembers that he intended to look at such and such a thing on the way but has neglected to do so. He hesitates a few moments, then goes back.

On rare occasions the grizzly walks along, perhaps in bountiful summer, thinking of nothing in particular, with head swinging slowly from side to side. Something arouses him; he may promptly retreat or he may investigate. You never know what a grizzly will do next or how he will do it, but everything he does is with fresh interest and delightful individuality.

An old grizzly pursued by wolves once gave me a fearful exhibition of nature. He came running across an opening in the southern end of North Park with several wolves close in pursuit. He acted as though away from home--hard pressed, bewildered, and in a strange territory. The wolves were crowding him closely as he reached the edge of the woods. With a sudden move he wheeled and struck at the one in the lead. Instantly the others were around him, snarling and snapping. The grizzly wheeled and struck quickly to right and left, striking outward and downward somewhat after the fashion of a cat striking at a near-by object. Then he turned and ran on.

A few miles farther on he again crossed an opening. Fresh wolves were now in pursuit. I saw several of the pack lying down, panting and resting. The grizzly had no rest, he was hard pressed. At one place, closely crowded, he backed up in the corner of a cliff and here put up such a fight that he drove the wolves off for the time being. He killed one and badly injured two of them. Towards evening he took refuge in a denlike place for which he evidently had been heading. The following morning a number of the wolves were gone, but the others were waiting for the grizzly in front of the den.

A grizzly with three feet managed to maintain himself in a territory near my home, and I twice heard of his outwitting hunters and their hounds. The territory was occasionally invaded by trappers but he avoided their snares. Hunters with dogs finally drove him off his domain. Where he went, what struggles he had, what masterly retreats he made, what troubles he had in making a living, and what his final tragic end, I do not know. That he survived so long with one foot gone indicates that he was a bear of powers, a bear with a career, whose biography or autobiography would be full of action and adventure.

It cannot be stated too strongly that the grizzly is not a coward. Every drop of blood in his body is courageous. He has no fear. He is intelligent enough to know that man is a dangerous enemy--that it is almost suicidal for a bear to expose himself to man. There is no animal of the wilds whom he avoids. Man, with field-glasses, dogs, and a rifle that will kill at the distance of a mile, are odds too great for him. He wisely endeavors to avoid man, but if he cannot do so, when the fight comes he exhibits one hundred per cent of courage and efficiency.

Only a few generations ago the grizzly was instinctively courageous, never avoiding a foe; with courage he met every issue, almost invariably coming out triumphant. But when man is the issue, the grizzly, seeing more than one move ahead, has the wisdom and the greater courage to suppress the old instinctive trait, for its use would be ineffective.

For years I have watched, studied, and enjoyed the grizzly, have seen his actions under a variety of influences--fighting and playing, sleeping and food-getting. I have watched him when he was under normal influences and abnormal ones; when pursuer and when pursued; have kept him within the focus of my field-glasses for hours at a time, and have trailed for days with a camera this master animal.

The grizzly is so dignified and so strangely human-like that I have felt degraded every time I have seen him pursued with dogs. A few times I have outwitted him; more often he has outwitted me. We have occasionally met unexpectedly; sometimes each stared without alarm, and at other times each fled in an opposite direction. Sometimes the grizzly is guided by instinct, but more often his actions are triumphantly directed by reason.

Cubs and Mother

The life-story of every bear is a story of adventure. A hunter with whom I was camping in the No-Summer Mountains of Colorado came in one June evening with the report that he had killed a mother grizzly. He had searched for her cubs, which he thought must be near by, but had failed to discover them. The hunter said he had come upon her unexpectedly in a thicket and she had at once charged, probably thinking herself cornered. One well-aimed shot in the head had dropped her.

The following morning I went with the hunter to bring in the grizzly. She was a beautiful silver-tip of about four hundred pounds. We made another thorough search for the cubs without finding them. Just as the hunter was about to start skinning the bear I caught sight of a cub peeping from beneath large slide rocks not thirty feet away. Then another frightened cub face appeared.

After hesitating for a moment both cubs came out and stood looking intently toward us and their dead mother. After a stare, as we did not move, they took a few steps toward us. Hesitating again, they stopped, rose up and looked around, and then hastily retreated to the rocks. Evidently their mother had trained them to stay wherever she left them until she returned.

But they had waited long. For a while they stood and whimpered very much like hungry, forsaken children. They could scent their mother, and see her, too, and were too hungry and lonesome to endure without her longer. Again they started slowly toward us, walking closely side by side. When very near they paused, rose on hind legs, and looked intently at us and in wonder and longing at their lifeless mother. Then they went to her. One little cub sniffed in a bewildered, puzzled way over her cold, still body. He gently stroked her fur with his paw and then sat down and began to whimper and cry.

The other little cub stood looking with awe into his mother's moveless face, but at last shook off his fright and smelled her bloody head. Then, all forlorn, he turned to look eagerly into the face of the hunter, who had been watching the little cub all this while with big tears upon his cheeks. After a moment he took a step toward him, rose up, and trustingly put fore paws upon his knee, looking seriously, confidingly into his face. We carried these little orphans to camp, and the hunter raised them. Their mother was the last animal that he ever shot.

The cubs are born in the hibernating cave in January, February, or March, probably the majority in February. The number at birth commonly is two, but sometimes there are three and occasionally even four. Each is about the size of a chipmunk, weighing from ten to twenty ounces.

Generally the mother does not come forth for either food or drink for some weeks after the cubs are born. She stays in the den a month longer than bears without cubs. Curled around the little bears in the den, she nourishes them from her store of fat. The cubs grow slowly, and on leaving the den are often only a trifle larger than a cotton-tail rabbit, weighing from ten to fifteen pounds. The grizzly appears to give birth to cubs only every second year. Though yearlings have been seen with a mother and cubs, it is likely that they did not belong to her.

In proportion to the size of the mother, the grizzly is one of the smallest of animals at birth, weighing about one fifth of one per cent of her weight. A baby kangaroo at birth is even smaller proportionally, however, and is said to weigh less than one tenth of one per cent of the mother's weight. A baby blue whale is about four per cent of the weight of the mother and sometimes weighs three tons and has a length of twenty-five feet.