Wounded or cornered, the grizzly will attack with a headlong, reckless fury that renders him one of the most dangerous of wild beasts.
As the restless frontiersmen pressed out over the Western plains, they encountered in the grizzly a beast of far greater bulk and more savage temper than any of those found in the Eastern woods, and their small-bore rifles were utterly inadequate weapons with which to cope with him. It is small wonder that he was considered by them to be almost invulnerable, and extraordinarily tenacious of life.
A rifle, to be of use in this sport, should carry a ball weighing from half-an-ounce to an ounce. With the old pea-rifles, the shot had to be in the eye or heart, and accidents to the hunter were very common. But the introduction of heavy, breech-loading repeaters has greatly lessened the danger, even in the very few and far-off places where the grizzlies are as ferocious as formerly. For nowadays, these great bears are undoubtedly much better aware of the death-dealing power of men, and as a consequence, much less fierce than was the case with their forefathers, who so unhesitatingly attacked the early Western travelers and explorers.
A grizzly will only fight if wounded or cornered, or at least, if he thinks himself cornered. If a man by accident stumbles onto one close up, he is almost certain to be attacked, really more from fear than from any other motive; exactly the same reason that makes a rattlesnake strike at a passer-by.
I have personally known of but one instance of a grizzly turning on a hunter before being wounded. This happened to a friend of mine, a Californian ranchman, who with two or three of his men, was following a bear that had carried off one of his sheep. They got the bear into a cleft in the mountain from which there was no escape, and he suddenly charged back through the line of his pursuers, struck down one of the horsemen, seized the arm of the man in his jaws and broke it as if it had been a pipe stem, and was only killed after a most lively fight, in which, by repeated charges, he at one time drove every one of his assailants off the field.
But two instances have come to my personal knowledge where a man has been killed by a grizzly. One was that of a hunter at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains who had chased a large bear and finally wounded him. The animal turned at once and came straight at the man, whose second shot missed. The bear then closed and passed on, after striking only a single blow; yet that one blow, given with all the power of its thick, immensely muscular forearm, armed with nails as strong as so many hooked steel spikes, tore out the man’s collarbone and snapped through three or four ribs. He never recovered from the shock and died that night.
The other instance occurred to a neighbor of mine – who has a small ranch on the Little Missouri – two or three years ago. He was out on a mining trip and was prospecting with two other men near the headwaters of the Little Missouri in the Black Hills country. They were walking down along the river, and came to a point of land, thrust out into it, which was densely covered with brush and fallen timber. Two of the party walked round by the edge of the stream, but the third, a German, and a very powerful fellow, followed a well-beaten game trail leading through the bushy point.
When they were some 40 yards apart, the two men heard an agonized shout from the German, and at the same time the loud coughing growl, or roar, of a bear. They turned just in time to see their companion struck a terrible blow on the head by a grizzly, which must have been roused from its lair by his almost stepping on it; so close was it that he had no time to fire his rifle, but merely held it up over his head as a guard. Of course, it was struck down, the claws of the great brute at the same time shattering his skull like an eggshell. Yet the man staggered on some ten feet before he fell; but when he did, he never spoke or moved again. The two others killed the bear after a short, brisk struggle, as he was in the midst of a most determined charge.
In 1872, near Fort Wingate, New Mexico, two soldiers of a cavalry regiment came to their death at the claws of a grizzly. The army surgeon who attended them told me the particulars, as far as they were known. The men were mail carriers, and one day did not come in at the appointed time. Next day, a relief party was sent out to look for them, and after some searching, found the bodies of both, as well as that of one of the horses.
One of the men still showed signs of life; he came to his senses before dying and told the story. They had seen a grizzly and pursued it on horseback with their Spencer rifles. On coming close, one had fired into its side, when it turned with marvelous quickness for so large and unwieldy an animal, and struck down the horse, at the same time inflicting a ghastly wound on the rider. The other man dismounted and came up to the rescue of his companion.
The bear then left the latter and attacked the other. Although hit by the bullet, it charged home and threw the man down, and then lay on him and deliberately bit him to death, while his groans and cries were frightful to hear. Afterward it walked off into the bushes.
At certain times, a grizzly can work a good deal of havoc among the herds of the stockmen. A friend of mine, a ranchman in Montana, told me that one fall bears became very plentiful around his ranches, and caused him severe loss, killing with ease even full-grown steers. But one of them once found his intended quarry too much for him.
My friend had a stocky, rather vicious range stallion, which had been grazing one day near a small thicket of bushes, and towards evening, came galloping in with three or four gashes in his haunch that looked as if they had been cut with a dull axe. The cowboys knew at once that he had been assailed by a bear and rode off to the thicket where he had been feeding.
Sure enough, a bear, evidently in a very bad temper, sallied out as soon as the thicket was surrounded, and after a spirited fight and a succession of charges, was killed. On examination, it was found that his under jaw was broken, and part of his face smashed in, evidently by the stallion’s hoofs. The horse had been feeding when the bear leaped out at him but failed to kill at the first stroke. Then, the horse lashed out behind and not only freed himself, but also severely damaged his opponent.
Doubtless, the grizzly could be hunted to advantage with dogs, which would not, of course, be expected to seize him, but simply to find and bay him, and distract his attention by barking and nipping.
Occasionally, a bear can be caught in the open and killed with the aid of horses. But nine times out of ten, the only way to get one is to put on moccasins and still-hunt in its own haunts, shooting it at close quarters. Either its tracks should be followed until the bed wherein it lies during the day is found, or a given locality in which it is known to exist should be carefully beaten through, or else a bait should be left out and a watch kept on it to catch the bear when he comes to visit it.
For some days after our arrival on the Bighorn range, we did not come across any grizzly. Although it was still early in September, the weather was cool and pleasant, the nights being frosty, and every two or three days there was a flurry of light snow, which rendered the labor of tracking much more easily. Indeed, throughout our stay on the mountains, the peaks were snow-capped almost all the time.
Our fare was excellent, consisting of elk venison, mountain grouse and small trout; the last caught in one of the beautiful little lakes that lay almost up by timber line. To us, who had for weeks been accustomed to making small fires from dried brush or from sagebrush roots that we dug out of the ground, it was a treat to sit at night before the roaring and crackling pine logs. As the old teamster quaintly put it, we had at last come to a land “where the wood grew on trees.”
There were plenty of black-tail deer in the woods, and we came across a number of elk, but after several days’ hunting, we were still without any head worth taking home and had seen no sign of grizzly, which was the game we were especially anxious to kill, for neither Merrifield nor I had ever seen a wild bear alive.
Sometimes we hunted in company; sometimes each of us went out alone, the teamster, of course, remaining in to guard camp and cook. One day, we had separated and I reached camp early in the afternoon and waited a couple of hours before Merrifield put in an appearance.
I heard a shout – the familiar long-drawn ei-koh-h-h of the cattlemen – and he came in sight, galloping at speed down an open glade and waving his hat, evidently having had good luck. When he reined in his small, wiry, cow-pony, we saw that he had packed behind his saddle the fine, glossy pelt of a black bear. Better still, he announced that he had been off about ten miles to a perfect tangle of ravines and valleys where bear sign was very thick, and not of black bear either, but of grizzly.
He had run across the black bear while riding up a valley in which there was a patch of dead timber grown up with berry bushes. He noticed a black object, which he first took to be a stump; for during the past few days we had each of us made one or two clever stalks up to charred logs, which our imagination converted into bears.
On coming near, however, the object suddenly took to its heels. He followed over frightful ground at the pony’s best pace, until it stumbled and fell down. By this time, he was close on the bear, which had just reached the edge of the wood. Picking himself up, he rushed after it, hearing it growling ahead of him. After running some 50 yards the sounds stopped, and he stood still, listening.
He saw and heard nothing until he happened to cast his eyes upwards, and there was the bear, almost overhead, and about 25 feet up a tree. In as many seconds afterwards, it came down to the ground with a bounce, stone dead. It was a young bear, in its second year, and had probably never before seen a man, which accounted for the ease with which it was treed and taken.
One minor result of the encounter was to convince Merrifield – the list of whose faults did not include lack of self-confidence – that he could run down any bear; in consequence of which idea we, on more than one subsequent occasion, went through a good deal of violent exertion.
Merrifield’s tale made me decide to shift camp at once and go over to the spot where the bear tracks were so abundant. Next morning, we were off and by noon pitched camp by a clear brook, in a valley with steep, wooded sides, but with good feed for the horses in the open bottom. We rigged the canvas wagon sheet into a small tent, sheltered by the trees from the wind, and piled great pine logs nearby where we wished to place the fire, for a night camp in the sharp fall weather is cold and dreary unless there is a roaring blaze of flame in front of the tent.
That afternoon, we again went out, and I shot a fine bull elk. I came home alone toward nightfall, walking through a reach of burnt forest, where there was nothing but charred tree-trunks and black mold. When nearly through it, I came across the huge, half-human footprints of a great grizzly, which must have passed by within a few minutes. It gave me rather an eerie feeling in the silent, lonely woods, to see for the first time the unmistakable proof that I was in the home of the mighty lord of the wilderness. I followed the tracks in the fading twilight until it became too dark to see them any longer, and then I shouldered my rifle and walked back to camp.
That evening, we almost had a visit from one of the animals we were after. Several times we had heard at night the musical calling of the bull elk – a sound to which no writer has as yet done justice. This particular night, when we were in bed and the fire was smoldering, we were roused by a ruder noise – a kind of grunting or roaring whine, answered by the frightened snorts of the ponies. It was a bear, which had evidently not seen the fire, as it came from behind the bank, and had probably been attracted by the smell of the horses.
After it made out what we were, it stayed round a short while, again uttered its peculiar roaring grunt, and went off. We had seized our rifles and had run out into the woods, but in the darkness could see nothing; indeed, it was rather lucky we did not stumble across the bear, as he could have made short work of us when we were at such a disadvantage.
Next day, we went off on a long tramp through the woods and along the sides of the canyons. There were plenty of berry bushes growing in clusters, and all around there were fresh tracks of bear. But the grizzly is also a flesh-eater, and has a great liking for carrion.
On visiting the place where Merrifield had killed the black bear, we found that the grizzlies had been there before us, and had utterly devoured the carcass, with cannibal relish. Hardly a scrap was left, and we turned our steps toward where lay the bull elk I had killed. It was quite late in the afternoon when we reached the place.
A grizzly had evidently been at the carcass during the preceding night, for his great footprints were in the ground all around it, and the carcass itself was gnawed and torn, and partially covered with earth and leaves – for the grizzly has a curious habit of burying all of his prey that he does not at the moment need. A great many ravens had been feeding on the body, and they wheeled about over the treetops above us, uttering their barking croaks.
The forest was composed mainly of what are called ridge-pole pines, which grow close together, and do not branch out until the stems are 30 or 40 feet from the ground. Beneath these trees, we walked over a carpet of pine needles, upon which our moccasined feet made no sound. The woods seemed vast and lonely, and their silence was broken now and then by the strange noises always to be heard in the great forests, and which seem to mark the sad and everlasting unrest of the wilderness.
We climbed up along the trunk of a dead tree, which had toppled over until its branches struck in the limb crotch of another. When above the ground far enough to prevent the bear’s smelling us, we sat still to wait for his approach; until, in the gathering gloom, we could no longer see the sights of our rifles and could but dimly make out the carcass of the elk.
It was useless to wait longer, and we clambered down and stole out to the edge of the woods. The forest here covered one side of a steep, almost canyon-like ravine, whose other side was bare except of rock and sagebrush. Once out from under the trees there was still plenty of light, although the sun had set, and we crossed over some 50 yards to the opposite hillside and crouched down under a bush to see if perchance some animal might not also leave the cover. To our right the ravine sloped downward toward the valley of the Bighorn River, and far on its other side we could catch a glimpse of the great main chain of the Rockies, their snowy peaks glinting crimson in the setting sun.
Again, we waited quietly in the growing dusk until the pine trees in our front blended into one dark, frowning mass. We saw nothing, but the wild creatures of the forest had begun to stir abroad. The owls hooted dismally from the tops of the tall trees, and two or three times a harsh wailing cry, probably the voice of some lynx or wolverine, arose from the depths of the woods.
At last, as we were rising to leave, we heard the sound of a breaking stick, from the spot where we knew the carcass lay. It was a sharp, sudden noise, perfectly distinct from the natural creaking and snapping of the branches; just such a sound as would be made by the tread of some heavy creature. Old Ephraim had come back to the carcass. A minute afterward, listening with strained ears, we heard him brush by some dry twigs. It was entirely too dark to go in after him, but we made up our minds that on the morrow he should be ours.
Note: “Old Ephraim” originally appeared as Chapter X in Theodore Roosevelt’s Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, published in 1885.