As to the claws again, the typical Californian grizzly should have extremely long flat claws of a bony whiteness—claws obviously meant for digging and not for climbing; while the genuine black bear should have claws to climb and fish with, sharply curved, small and dark coloured.
But here again the characteristics are not constant. The Alaskan grizzly (if it is a true grizzly) has claws far too arched or curved to be typical; whilst in colour, all those which I have seen were a light brown or slate colour growing white towards the tips. A bear shot by me in the Hope Mountains is a good illustration of the strange varieties which sometimes arise from crosses between black bear and grizzly. This little fellow would have weighed about 350 lbs. live weight, and was a full-grown bear when killed. His head was a typical black bear’s as far as shape went, and he had not a distinctly marked ‘lift’ or hump at the shoulder; his claws were very light coloured (almost white); his face and shoulders were a rich straw colour, fading into a very light grey towards the rump, whilst his arms, belly, cheeks and ears were a deep rich brown, almost black in places.
The Indians said he was a grizzly; the trapper who was with me called him a cinnamon; a friend who wished to belittle my bear said he was only ‘a rum-coloured black and a little one at that.’ I only venture to suggest that he was ‘very much mixed.’
But perhaps I have already said too much upon this point, and I will therefore only pause to add this significant fact. No cinnamon or other similar variety seems to be found where both black and grizzly do not exist together. For example, upon Vancouver Island, no grizzly has ever been heard of, no cinnamon has ever been reported, but black bears swarm. The same, I believe, may be said of the island of Anticosti, and elsewhere. In habits bears differ, of course, considerably, and yet even here the points in which they resemble one another are more numerous than those in which they differ.
All bears appear to be omnivorous, but the grizzly is said to be more of a flesh-eater than Ursus americanus. Perhaps he is. No doubt he dearly loves to gorge himself upon a carcase, and he does occasionally kill a weak beast or a young one for himself; but like his cousin he is a great vegetarian, grubbing up roots and devouring berries by the gallon. But a black bear is not by any means a total abstainer from meat diet, more especially if that meat be pork; indeed, if the pig needs killing, and the farmer neglects to play the butcher, the mild-mannered gentleman in black will not be slow to do the killing and help himself.
To furnish an exhaustive or even adequate list of the things upon which bears feed is by no means an easy task, but it is so essential to success that a man should know where to look for his game (game always being where its food is) that this must be attempted.
Let me begin at the beginning of the bear’s year. As most men know, all bears on this continent (except, perhaps, the Polar) lie dormant during the winter. The den, as a rule, is at the head of one of the hundred gulches which seem to radiate from a common source amongst the snow peaks, the grizzly and the cinnamon choosing their lairs at a higher altitude than the black bear.
The road to a grizzly’s den, as I remember it, is generally up a snow-slide, through a dense belt of noisy brush, which the weight of the winter’s snow has laid as a thunderstorm lays ripe wheat; and above this belt, under a sheer bluff, sheltered from the wind and hidden by the snow, lies the den itself.
Up here, mist and snow, a few stunted pines, and the sleeping bear have the world to themselves from November to April, the exact date of the bear’s retirement to winter quarters, as well as of his reappearance above ground, depending somewhat upon the seasons. This much, at any rate, seems to be generally admitted amongst mountain men—that, some time in November bears begin to ‘hole up,’ the black bears being first and the grizzlies following a week or two later; whilst in spring the grizzlies are up and out before their ‘softer’ cousins.