The stories of the ferocity of U. horribilis owe something to the vivid imaginations of hunters and the sombre surroundings in which they meet their prey; but there can be no doubt that on occasion this bear will face a man (or men), and fight with intense ferocity. As a rule, like all bears, the grizzly will run rather than fight, and very rarely attacks without provocation, but when surprised near a carcase, when cornered, when wounded, or with cubs, U. horribilis is apt to be dangerous. I know of a good many deaths due to bears under such circumstances, and only last year (1891) a very well-known meat-hunter in Colorado was attacked in green timber by a silver-tip and regularly worried by him, although the man had a companion with him, and had not even seen the bear until he was charged. I have myself seen the marks of this bear’s teeth in the leg and forearm of my old guide, who explained the unprovoked attack by saying that the bear had supped on a carcase poisoned for coyotes, and was ‘feelin’ pretty mean from belly-ache’ when found. The Alaskan grizzly has a peculiarly bad reputation among the Indians in that country, who upon dry land can hardly be induced to face ‘Hoots’ or ‘Noon,’ as they call the grizzly and cinnamon. Most of the skins sent to Wrangel are those of bears strangled in nooses, like big rabbit-snares, which are set in their paths, or else of bears shot down by men on snow-shoes in the deep snow of early spring, or shot on the river banks from a canoe. Here it is as well to say that I know of two instances in which grizzly bitches have, when hunted, deserted their cubs, and left them up a tree at the mercy of the hunters; but this is, of course, unusual. As a rule, grizzlies are distinctly ‘ugly’ when they have young with them, and will defend them to the last. However, with cubs or without, a man with a good rifle and a steady nerve need never let a bear go in the open. In thick brush there are times when caution is better than courage. As I write, a picture comes before my eyes of a willow swamp, high up on the head-waters of a mountain stream in the States. An old guide of mine is on the edge of the timber watching, whilst the brush swings and rattles, and an unseen form shakes down the yellow leaves and fills the gulch with her growls. It is only a bitch silver-tip, who has got the man’s wind and is trying to collect her cubs; but, although it is exasperating to stand while the old lady makes her escape up the gully, there is nothing else to be done. If she does not mean to face the open, none but a greenhorn would attempt to go to her when she was ‘fighting mad,’ in bush too thick to walk through, and in places over six feet high. All the old authorities talk of grizzlies rising to an upright position on closing with a man, but I have never met a man who had seen anything of this habit, although I have known more than one man who has been struck down by a bear. I have myself come suddenly upon a grizzly, and seen him rise and face me in the position I refer to, but he did not stop in that position long enough for me to dismount and fire, and I am convinced that his only object in rising upon his hind legs was to get a better view of the intruder, not to attack him.
There is no doubt that a bear’s sight is his weak point. In bright moonlight I have had one walk past myself and another man in the open at forty yards without seeing us; but if his sight is indifferent, he has the ears of a hare and the nose of a caribou, and this is especially the case with the black bear, whose timidity has possibly somewhat sharpened his senses.
That grizzlies do not climb, except as cubs, appears to be true; not that it matters much to the hunter, as anyone will allow who gets his friend to give him 100 or 150 yards’ start and then tries to ‘tree’ in time to escape him. The right tree never grows in the right place, and climbing in a hurry sounds easier than it is. It will be found that most men can run 100 yards in less time than they can choose their tree and climb it to such a height that their feet are ten feet above the ground. A bear, too, travels faster even than a frightened man on the flat. If you are charged, the best thing you can do is to stand fast and go on shooting; and if there are two of you, and both of one mind, and not standing too close together, there should not be much danger; but better than that is to take pains about your first shot: or go close to your bear and shoot him in the head or neck, as the natives do. If you hit him in either of these places, you can kill him at once with an ordinary Winchester (45·90); whilst if you are using a Paradox or a big English Express, a shot ranging forward from behind the shoulder or (with a solid bullet) through the shoulder is good enough.
Don’t shoot at a bear above you unless you are sure of killing him; a wounded beast will almost always come down hill and may take you on the way; and don’t shoot at a bear in the brush as if you were ‘browning’ a covey of partridges; nor follow a wounded bear into thick covert unless you are well insured, about to be married, or at the end of your ordinary resources for supporting your family.
Opinions vary as to the comparative ferocity and vitality of the different species, but perhaps individuals vary at least as much as species. I have known a black bear take a bullet from an English rifle fired by me point blank into her chest at ten paces, and then turn and gallop uphill for 200 yards before dying; and I have known a two-year-old black bear take three bullets, scattered indiscriminately over his back by my friend’s Paradox (12-bore), and then turn and charge like a hero. He charged the wrong man, though, and got shot in the head for his impudence.
To finish these remarks, and convey, if possible, some idea of hunting the grizzly, let me take a leaf from my note-book, kept in Alaska in the autumn of 1891, whilst hunting with my friend Mr. Arnold Pike.
Nature has a way of always suiting her creatures to their environments, but none of her creatures are more exactly suited to their surroundings than U. horribilis. Savage and silent and grey as the grizzly is, the forests and waters amongst which he chooses to dwell are more grim, more savage, and more forbidding than himself. The part of Alaska in which we were hunting in 1891 appears to have escaped from that process described in Genesis by which the waters which were above the firmament were divided from the waters which were under the firmament. On the Stickeen river there is no firmament. As a rule, a damp darkness broods upon the face of the deep, and the waters which should be above touch and mingle with the waters which should be below. There is no dry belt between the bottom of the sea and the roof of heaven, at least in that district which lies between Wrangel and Telegraph Creek, in the month of October. We were out for forty days and forty nights, and I cannot swear to more than three and a half moderately fine days in that time: a fine day in Alaska being one in which you wear oilskins and gum boots, and go to bed in a dry shirt; whilst on a wet one you wear gum boots and oilskins, and go to bed to dry your shirt. The river Stickeen runs its rapid course between dank forests, grey at the top with mildew, and hung with dark mosses, in which the devil’s club forms an impenetrable undergrowth, and even the pines are thorny. The pace of the river is such that you make as much in one day, drifting down it, as you made in five pulling and poling up it; and your camping-grounds are of necessity upon barren sandspits, for nothing but a bear could force its way into this timber. In this land no gentle things live: there are no deer, no small birds, no squirrels, no sunlight—nothing but a few wolves, a stray seal, which comes whistling up on the tide in the grey of the morning, great flights of Canada geese, and dying salmon. All along the course of the main river are the mouths of its ice-fed tributaries, little streams of greenish-blue water, rising in a glacier and fringed with narrow strips of glacial mud, upon which a rank growth of Equisetum (horse-tail) flourishes. These banks are the hunting grounds, and the number of huge tracks upon them, as well as the débris of half-eaten salmon, proclaim that there is no scarcity of game; but if the hunter would get a shot he must haunt them at all unseasonable hours, when winds are most chill, and nature is at her gloomiest: for ‘Hoots’ only creeps out upon the creek’s edges with the first shadows of the night, and vanishes from them with the earliest rising mists of morning.
In this land it was that one evening we pitched our tents upon a sandspit, cut wet brush in the rain to make our bedding for the night, and then, tired with a hard day and dispirited by weeks of failure, stepped once more into the canoe and paddled for all we were worth up and across the stream to the mouth of a salmon creek.
Once in the green water, pipes were put out, conversation ceased, Pike and I laid down our paddles and took up our rifles, and only the Indian worked, the canoe gliding up the still waters without a sound.
At the mouth of the stream, a few flashing shadows beneath the water attracted our Indian’s attention, and a few quick thrusts with his spear provided us with enough fresh salmon to last us for a day or two. A blow or two with the axe silenced them, and again the canoe stole up stream, the men in it noting fresh tracks upon the banks, and peering into the shadowy woods, which grew darker and more impenetrable every minute.