True Bear Stories

by Joaquin Miller

“A bear will do this,” said one. “He will do so and so,” said another, and “you just do that and he’ll go right into the trap,” said a dozen more. Everybody seemed to be loaded to the guards with an assorted cargo of general ignorance about bears, which they were anxious to discharge upon the Examiner expedition, but not one man in the whole lot ever caught a grizzly, and very few ever saw one.

As a matter of fact, determined by experience and observation, a grizzly will do none of the things laid down as rules of conduct for him by the wise men of the mountains, but will do pretty much as he pleases, and act as his individual whim or desire moves him. It is a mistake to generalize about bears from the actions of one of the species. One bear will be bold and inquisitive, and will walk right into a camp to gratify his curiosity, while another will carefully avoid man and all his works.

The predictions of an ursine invasion of Mount Pinos were not fulfilled and when it became clear that the few grizzlies in the neighborhood were too timid and wary to be caught, the expedition struck camp and moved on, leaving the traps set for luck.

Considerable annoyance was caused by a discharged mule-packer, who carried away tools required in trap building, and embezzled quite a sum of money. The fellow had attempted to impose upon the correspondent by whittling out pine-bark models of bear’s feet, with which to make tracks around the trap; and had proposed various swindling jobs to others of the party, explaining that the “Examiner was rich and they might as well get a hack at the money.” He had opened and read letters intrusted to him for mailing, and had proved himself generally a faithless scamp and an unconscionable liar. A written demand upon him, for restitution of his plunder, elicited only a coarse and abusive letter, but there was no time to waste in prosecuting the fellow and he was left in the enjoyment of his booty and in such satisfaction as the rascal mind of him could derive from the fact that he had succeeded in robbing his employer.

The big bear on the Mutaw never came near the trap built for his special accommodation, notwithstanding the confident assurances of the bear experts on the ranch that he was sure to show up within forty-eight hours. For two months after the poisoning of his campanero no signs of the large grizzly were seen anywhere near the Mutaw, and the hogs roamed about the hills unmolested.

After leaving Mount Pinos the expedition built several traps in the mountains near trails frequented by bears. An old grizzly that lived among the unsurveyed and unnamed peaks between Castac Lake and the Liebra Mountain absorbed the attention of the hunters for some time. He was an audacious marauder and killed his beef almost within sight of the camp-fire. Often at night a cow or steer could be heard bellowing in terror, and in the morning a freshly killed animal would be found in some hollow not far away, bearing marks of bear’s claws. Whitened bones scattered all over the hills showed that the bear had been the boss butcher of General Beal’s ranch for a long time. His average allowance of beef appeared to be about two steers a week, but he usually ate only half a carcass, leaving the rest to the coyotes and vultures.

One morning Bowers returned from a hunt for the horses, two of which had been struck and slightly wounded by the bear a few nights before, and had run away, and reported the discovery of a dead steer within 150 yards of an unfinished trap, about a quarter of a mile from camp. The animal appeared to have been killed two nights before, and the bear had made but one meal off the carcass. As he might be expected to return that night, all haste was made to finish the trap. Bowers rode out to Gorman’s Station to get some nails and honey, while the correspondent paid a visit to one of General Beal’s old corrals and stole some planks to make a door. He packed the planks up the mountain, and was using the hammer and saw with great diligence and a tremendous amount of noise, when bruin sauntered down the ridge, looked curiously at him and calmly began eating an early supper, wholly indifferent to the noise of the hammer and the presence of the man.

It was nearly dark when Bowers rode up to the trap, his horse in a lather composed of equal parts of perspiration and honey, the latter having leaked profusely from the cans tied to the saddle. Tossing the nails to the correspondent, Bowers hastily dismounted and went afoot up the ridge toward the dead steer, intending to place a can of honey near it. In about a minute Bowers was seen running from the ridge in fifteen-foot jumps, and as he approached the trap he shouted: “The bear is there now!”

“Is that so?” said the correspondent. “I thought he had finished his supper and had gone away by this time.”

Bowers had approached to within forty yards of the bear before seeing him, and the bear had merely raised his head, taken a look at the intruder and resumed his eating. As it had become too dark to drive nails, and there was no longer any reason for finishing the door that night, Bowers fetched the rifles from camp and the two men went up the ridge to take a better look at the bear. Had there been light enough to make the rifle sights visible, it would have been hard to resist the temptation of turning loose at the old fellow from behind a convenient log; but it was impossible to draw a bead on him, and it would have been sheer foolhardiness to shoot and take the chances of a fight in the dark with a wounded grizzly. Besides, if shot at and missed, the bear would probably not return, and all the chances of getting him into the trap would be lost. So the two sat on a log and watched the grizzly till the night came on thick and dark, when they returned to camp.