The Grizzly, Our Greatest Wild Animal

by Enos A. Mills

The spring-beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the shooting-star, both tops and roots, supply the grizzlies of some localities with much of their food, while in other regions they rarely, and possibly never, touch them, though they grow abundantly. The bears in the Bitter Root Mountains eat the shooting-star freely, while the violet and the spring-beauty are favored by the bears of the Selkirks. Yet, strange though it is, the bears of both localities pay but little attention to carcasses which they find. One of the plant roots which the bears of British Columbia dig out in autumn until the ground is frozen, is a wild pea, the hedysarum.

I frequently followed a grizzly whose home territory was close to my cabin in the Rocky Mountains. Apparently he liked everything. One day he spent hours digging out mice. On another he caught a rabbit. He ate a bumblebee’s nest, and, with the nest, the grass, the bees, their young, their honey, and their stings. In a homesteader’s garden he dug out and ate nearly one hundred pounds of potatoes and turnips. The homesteader thought that a hog had been in his garden. In places I too have thought that hogs had been rooting where bears had simply been digging for roots—places with dug and upturned earth often many square yards in extent. They dig out the roots of the wild parsnip, the shooting-star, and grass, the bulbs of lilies, and sometimes the roots of willow and alder.

I endeavored to find out the kind of food preferred by two young bears that I raised. A number of times I approached them with a plate upon which were cake, meat, and honey. In my pockets I generally had also either turnips or apples. When I appeared the bears usually stood on hind legs to see what I had. If they caught the scent of apples or turnips, they thrust paws or noses into my pockets, ignoring the dainties on the plate. Otherwise they grabbed whatever happened to be nearest them on the plate.

All grizzlies appear to be fond of fish. In many places they are most successful fishermen. I watched a grizzly standing in the riffles of an Idaho stream, partly concealed by a willow clump. In half an hour he knocked five large salmon ashore. With a single lightning-like stroke of a fore paw, the fish was flung out of the water and sent flying fifteen or twenty feet. Rarely did he miss. Each of the salmon weighed several pounds.

A grizzly in the Sawtooth region, trying to catch some fish, sprawled out on a low bank by the edge of a stream. Holding himself with one fore paw, he reached over with the other and felt along the bank beneath the water. He did this very much as a fat man might. More frequently the bear makes a stand in driftwood on the bank, or on a log that has fallen into the stream, or behind a willow clump. Sometimes he captures fish by wading up a brook and seizing with claws or teeth those that conceal themselves beneath banks and projecting roots.

A huge brown grizzly mother catching trout for her two fat cubs held my attention one day. The cubs waited on the grassy bank of a brook while the mother brought them trout after trout. She sometimes caught the fish by thrusting her nose into the water beneath the bank or by reaching in with her paws. Occasionally she knocked them out of the water as they endeavored to dash past her in the riffles. The cubs watched her every move; but they were not allowed to enter the water.

Sometimes the grizzly will collect and cover over an excess of carcasses or fish. By a little mountain lake at the headwaters of the Columbia I found a pile of stale salmon beneath a number of large logs and stones. The fish had been caught during spawning-time and stored for future consumption. A day or two later I returned, and tracks showed that the bear had come back and consumed the salmon.

The grizzly eagerly earns his own living; he is not a loafer. Much work is done in digging out a cony, a woodchuck, or some other small animal from a rock-slide. In two hours’ time I have known him to move a mass of earth that must have weighed tons, leaving an excavation large enough for a private cellar. I have come upon numbers of holes from which a grizzly had removed literally tons of stone. In places these holes were five or six feet deep. Around the edges the stones were piled as though for a barricade. In some of them several soldiers could have found room and excellent shelter for ordinary defense.

When a large stone is encountered in his digging the grizzly grabs it with both fore paws, shakes and tears it loose from the earth, and hurls it aside. I have seen him toss huge stones over his shoulder and throw larger ones forward with one paw. Grizzlies show both skill and thought in nearly everything they do. They have strength, alert wits, and clever paws, and commonly work at high speed. Yet they appear deliberate in their actions and work in a painstaking, careful manner.

A grizzly I followed one day paused in a grassy space to dig out mice. In reaching them he discov ered a chipmunk’s burrow. By the time he had secured all the mice and chipmunks he had torn up several square yards of sod. The place had the appearance of having been rooted up by hogs. In this fresh earth the surrounding trees sowed triumphant seeds, and here a cluster of spruces grew where grass had long held sway.