I have not heard of an authentic instance of a grizzly’s eating human flesh. Numbers of hunters have been killed by grizzlies, but their bodies were not eaten; they were not killed for food. Many persons have lost their lives from storms, accidents, and starvation; yet their bodies have lain for days and weeks in territory frequented by grizzlies without being eaten by them. A prospector, his horse, and his burro were killed by a falling tree. Grizzlies devoured the bodies of the animals, but that of the prospector was not disturbed. Human flesh appears to be the only thing a grizzly does not eat.
The Long Winter Sleep
When the food of the grizzly bear becomes scarce, he goes to bed and sleeps until a reasonable supply is available, even though he waits five months for it. He feasts on the fullness of the land during the summer and wraps himself in a thick blanket of fat. When winter comes on, he digs a hole and crawls in. This layer of fat is a non-conductor of cold and in due time is drawn on for food.
One autumn day I visited the Hallett Glacier with a professor from the University of Chicago. After exploring one of the upper crevasses, we stood looking down the steep slope of the glacier. New snow had fallen a few days before, and a soft, slushy coating still overlaid the ice. The professor challenged me to coast down the steep, snow-lubricated ice-slope. We seated ourselves on this soft, slippery snow, and he gave the word “Go.” Just as we slid away, we saw at the bottom of the slope, where we were soon to be, a huge grizzly bear. I wish you might have seen our efforts as we tried to change our minds on that steep slope! The grizzly was busily eating grasshoppers, but he heard us coming and fled at a racing gallop, giving an excellent exhibition of his clumsy hind legs reaching out flat-footed.
Each autumn numbers of insects and sometimes bushels of grasshoppers either are blown upon the ice and snow or else approach it too closely and fall from having their wings chilled. Evidently the grizzlies long ago learned of this food-supply, for the ice-fields are regularly visited by them during the autumn. Along the timber-line the grizzly feeds freely upon the last of autumn’s berries and the last green plants. Many a grizzly goes to the heights to put on fat for his long winter’s sleep.
Bear food becomes scarce as winter approaches. Fruit, berries, grass, and weeds are out of season; most birds and insects are gone. The bear feeds on what remains—small animals which he digs out, a stray stranded fish, now and then a dead bird or animal carcass, the red fruit of the rose, and the nuts, bark, and roots of trees and plants. I do not believe the grizzly eats a special or a purgative food during the few days preceding his denning up, although he may do so.
On the few occasions when I have been able to keep track of a bear during the four or five days immediately preceding his retirement, he did not eat a single thing. I have examined a number of grizzlies that were killed while hibernating, and in every instance the stomach and intestines were empty. These facts lead me to conclude that bears rest and fast for a few days before going permanently to the winter den.