But though the black bear affords an excellent excuse for bolting out of town in spring-time, it cannot be said that he is a very sporting beast. He hasn’t got an ounce of ‘fight’ in him, and stalking is of course impossible in such districts as those which he frequents. Even ‘still hunting’ is very nearly useless in such timber as exists on this coast; so that unless you use hounds to hunt him with, your best chance of meeting Ursus americanus is to take a canoe and paddle quietly up untravelled streams, where fish are plentiful, or where in autumn the berry bushes grow thickly. In spring you may get a shot by watching woodland swamps where the skunk cabbage grows, or hill-sides when the Indian potato is ripe, but you are nearly as likely to have your chance if you are out early upon the best trail in the country, which runs near such feeding places, for the black bear appreciates a good road as much as a man does, and always uses one when he can.
In Eastern America the black bear is principally hunted with hounds, and even here a good dog which will tree a bear is useful; but my own experience of such sport has been, that in nine cases out of ten the hounds’ music ceased just as I had done the hardest mile on record up hill and over fallen timber, and the hounds themselves turned up ten minutes later, meek and dejected, their muzzles full of porcupine quills, which they evidently expected me to pull out for them.
Most of the skins sent in to Victoria from Alaska are taken by trapping (by noose, gin, or deadfall), or by hunting with dogs, between the time the bears leave their dens and the time the snow leaves the river bottoms. It is a short season and an uncertain one, but I am assured by those who have tried it, that for a man who is a good goer upon snow-shoes, it is excellent fun whilst it lasts. The dogs used for bears are of every breed and combination of breeds, but perhaps the best are collies. It does not require a big dog or a powerful dog for the work, for no dog is big enough to close with, whilst any dog is big enough to frighten, a black bear. I remember upon one occasion seeing three dogs, two small Pomeranians and a cross-bred setter, run a two-year-old black bear to bay on the ford of a river. The dogs had to swim, but by standing up the bear could rest upon firm ground, and keep his arms and jaws free for fighting above water.
The bear had already received a shot in the stomach before the dogs tackled him, but when they ran him to bay he seemed strong and well. Neither dogs nor bear took any notice of me, though I was standing up to my knees in the water of the ford within a few paces of them; and in five minutes the fight was over without interference on my part. At first the bear cuffed the dogs as they swam up to him, as a man might cuff who knew nothing of hitting out from the shoulder, and once he took the big dog in his jaws and went right under with him. However, the setter came up smiling, and shortly afterwards poor old Bruin was floating down stream, his head under water, and the dogs tugging with impunity at his flanks. I suppose that this bear weighed less than 200 lbs.
Captain Baldwin in his excellent book on the game of Bengal describes two kinds of bears: U. labiatus and U. tibetanus; and almost everything that he says of the Indian black bear would apply equally well to U. americanus (even to his weakness for yellow raspberries), except that U. labiatus appears to fight upon occasion, whereas U. americanus is hardly ever known to fight even in self-defence, and has never, as far as I know, been accused of making an unprovoked assault upon a human being.
Baldwin seems to have been somewhat surprised when he discovered that the Indian black bear fed upon carrion. No one in America would be surprised at anything which U. americanus considered good for him. I have seen a cub take rotten melon, a piece of meat, a cake of chocolate, a plug of T. & B. tobacco, and the end of a half-smoked cigar for breakfast. Being a true American, the cub naturally showed a preference for the plug of T. & B., but none of the other things came amiss to him. In a wild state a black bear will eat any garbage, putrid fish, dead animals, or anything else which comes in his way. In fact, the poor black bear is in all his tastes and habits a thorough hog: a pig without a pig’s pugnacity.
As a rule he is a lowland beast, living in swamps and river-bottoms, but I have seen him once or twice even in a mountain sheep country, probably crossing over the divide from one river-bed to another. It is well for him that he generally eschews the open, for once out of the timber everything which has eyes must see him. A man may mistake a burnt log for a bear, but no man could mistake a bear for a burnt log. The intense blackness and gloss of a bear’s coat is not thoroughly appreciated until you see it contrasted with other objects which you are accustomed to call black.
Where the sportsman runs any chance of seeing tracks of both black and grizzly in one and the same piece of country, it is as well to be able to distinguish the one from the other.
It is not easy to do this, but, as a general rule, if the ground on which the track is made is soft, you should be able to see the long cuts made by the grizzly’s claws, as contrasted with the little holes made by the points of the black bears. I am talking now of the forepaws, and it will be remembered that the claws of the black are much arched, and therefore only touch at the tip, whereas the grizzly’s claw is flat and should touch almost along its whole length.
Again, there is no doubt that the heel of the grizzly is much broader and squarer than that of the black bear, which makes a very narrow impression, even upon soft clay.