True Bear Stories

by Joaquin Miller

The trap was finished the next day, but a somewhat ludicrous accident destroyed its possibilities of usefulness, and made it quite certain that bruin would never be caught in it. Not expecting a visit from the bear, for at least two days, the correspondent went up to the ridge just before dark, made a rope fast to the remains of a steer, and dragged him down to the trap. Bowers had gone back to Ventura on business, and the correspondent was alone on the mountain; when he went into the trap to fix a can of honey upon the trigger, he placed a stick under the door, in such a way that if the door should fall he could use the stick as a lever to pry it up, and so avoid an experience like Dad Coffman’s.

The precaution was well taken. While he was arranging the bait he heard snuffling and the movement of some animal outside. Supposing that some cow or perhaps the burro was wandering about, he paid no particular attention to the noise, but when the bait was arranged and he turned to go out he saw the muzzle of old bruin poked into the door and his eyes blinking curiously at the dark interior of the trap. Bruin had come down for a feast and had followed the trail of the steer’s remains with unexpected promptness. He had scented the honey, which was more alluring than stale beef, and evidently was considering the propriety of entering the trap to get his supper, which might consist of honeycomb au naturel, with Examiner man on the side.

The man in the trap deemed it highly improper for the bear to intrude at that time, and quickly decided the etiquette of the case by kicking the trigger and letting the door fall with a dull thud plump upon the old grizzly’s nose. A hundred and sixty pounds falling four feet is no laughing affair when it hits one on the nose, and bruin did not make light of it. He was pained and surprised, and he went away more in sorrow than in anger, judging from the tone of his expostulating grunts and snorts.

When the snorts of the bear died away in the distance, the correspondent pried up the door, crawled out and cautiously made his way through the dark woods to his lonely camp.

At this time there were six traps scattered through the mountains within a radius of sixty miles, all of them set and baited, and the more distant ones watched by men employed for that purpose. One of the traps was on a mountain that was not pastured by cattle, or sheep, and as there were no acorns in that part of the country, the bears had to rustle for a living and were unable to withstand the temptation offered by quarters of beef judiciously exposed to their raids.

The bait scattered around this trap was discovered by four bears, but for some time they regarded it with suspicion, and were afraid to touch it, possibly because they detected the scent of man near it. Gradually they became accustomed to it and the signs of man’s presence, and then they began to quarrel over the meat, as was plainly indicated by the disturbance of the ground where their tracks met. Two of the tracks were of medium size, one was quite large and evidently made by a grizzly, and the fourth was enormous, being fourteen inches long and nine inches wide.

The last-named track was not made by a grizzly however. There were six toes on the forefoot, and this peculiar deformity was the distinguishing mark of a gigantic cinnamon bear known to hunters as “Six-Toed Pete.”

It was almost invariably found, during the long campaign in the wilderness, that tracks over eleven inches in length were made by cinnamon bears, and not by genuine grizzlies, although some hunters declare that the cinnamon is only a variety of grizzly, and that the color is not the mark of a different species. However that may be, the difference between the two varieties is very distinct, and as the object of the expedition was the capture of an indubitable California grizzly, no special effort was made to trap any of the big cinnamons.

The smaller bears soon gave up the contest for the beef and left the field to Pete and the grizzly, who quarreled and fought around it for several nights. At last the grizzly gave Pete a thorough licking and established his own right to the title of monarch of the mountain. The decisive battle occurred one moonlight night and was witnessed from a safe perch in a fork of a tree near the trap.

It was nearly 9 o’clock when the snapping of dry sticks indicated the approach of a heavy animal through the brush, and in a few moments the big grizzly came into sight, walking slowly and sniffing suspiciously. A smart breeze was drawing down the canyon, and the bear, being to the windward, could not smell the man up the tree, but he approached the meat cautiously and seemed in no hurry for his supper. While he was reconnoitering another animal was heard smashing through the thicket, and presently the huge bulk of Six-Toed Pete loomed up in the moonlight at the edge of the opening.