In the region where first I followed a bear, or where it followed me, there ranged two of these animals, each recording a different track and displaying individual traits which I came to recognize. The smaller track had short claws that left their prints in the sand or soft places. In following this track I found that the maker was inclined to be indolent; that if the digging after a chipmunk was hard he left the job unfinished and sought easier sources of food. Thus the black bear that frequented the "bad lands" loafed across his range, living by the easiest means possible and rarely exerting himself. Twice when Blackie's trail crossed that of other black bears, the tracks showed that all stopped to play, romping much as children romp and showing a sociable disposition. It was usually late in November before the black bear denned up for the winter, commonly adapting the shelter beneath some windfall to make a winter home by enlarging and improving it and perhaps by raking in some dead pine needles.
At the approach of fall Blackie left off distant wanderings, conserved energy by little exertion, and thus waxed fat. In the thickest of the rough jumble I found two of his deserted winter dens to which he never returned, and once in midwinter I found him out, asleep beneath some brush over which the snow had drifted. It was the thread of rising steam from a tiny hole above the den that first attracted my attention to it, but my nose gave me additional information.
Blackie's tracks showed he had unusually large feet for his pounds, so I called him "Bigfoot." There was a marked difference between Blackie's and the other tracks I found in the "bad-lands." The other tracks were those of a grizzly, a fact I determined after collecting evidence for several years, and by sight of the animals themselves. There was a wide difference, too, in the actions of these animals whenever anything unusual happened. Blackie, commonly, ran away without waiting to learn what had caused the alarm. The grizzly displayed extreme caution, usually standing erect on his hind feet, remaining motionless, watching for silent signals of other animals and the birds, swinging his head slowly from side to side, training his high-power nose in all directions, cocking his ears alertly as a coyote. When he located the enemy he slipped away noiselessly, followed a trail with which he was familiar and left the vicinity, perhaps traveling ten or twenty miles before stopping.
Unlike Blackie, too, the grizzly was a prodigious worker. No job was too big for him. Often he spent an hour or more in digging out a tiny titbit such as a chipmunk, and several times in his pursuit of a marmot he excavated in rockslides holes large enough for small basements. Daily he traveled many miles, foraging for food as he moved, sometimes eating swarms of grasshoppers, or stowing away bushels of grass or other greenery, or uprooting the ground for dogtooth violets of which he was very fond. Such spots, when he had finished his rooting, resembled a field which the hogs had plowed up.
In one respect the black bear and the grizzly were alike: they never seemed to have enough to eat, but had the insatiable appetites of growing boys; never showing any signs of being finicky, but devouring everything edible. Ants, hoppers, chipmunks, marmots and rabbits, comprised their fresh meat; while roots, shoots, bulbs, grass, berries and practically everything growing served for vegetables. They both were inordinately fond of honey. Early one fall the grizzly left his home range and headed for the foothills. More than twenty miles away he found a bee tree, an old hollow cedar which he tore open. He devoured both bees and honey, then went lumbering home. Mountain lions made frequent kills about the region, leaving the carcasses of deer, cattle, horses and burros, which the bears located with their noses or by the flight of birds, and gorged themselves; afterward lying down in some retreat and sleeping long, peaceful hours.
It was because of their scavenger habits that they came to be blamed for killing the animals upon which they fed. But not once did I find evidence that they had killed anything larger than a marmot. The grizzly was always working industriously, from dawn to dark, or at night; while Blackie dallied, even though making a "bear living." He preferred to go empty rather than to work for food.
Three winters in succession the grizzly climbed to a den in an exposed spot on the northern slope of Mount Meeker. It was a low opening beneath a rock, the entrance to which was partially stopped with loose rubble, raked from inside the cave, and every fall he renovated it by chinking the larger cracks and by pawing together loose bits of rock for a bed. As fall approached, his tracks led to it; apparently he napped inside occasionally to try it out. His ultimate retirement for winter hibernation depended upon the weather and the food supply; if the fall were late, with plenty of food, he would still be about the woods as late as December, while one fall when snow came early and deep, and so made food unavailable, he disappeared at the end of October.
The grizzly had many individual traits. Not once in the years I followed him, did he show any desire for others of his kind. He preferred being alone. His play consisted chiefly of elaborate stalkings of easily captured animals. If his hunger was appeased for a time he would turn to hunting grasshoppers. Marking the spot where one had alighted he would steal forward and pounce upon it as though it were an animal of size and fighting ability. Again he would take great pains to waylay a chipmunk, lying motionless while the unwary little spermophile ventured closer and closer, then, with a lightning-like slap of a huge paw, he would reduce his victim to the general shape and thinness of a pancake.
Though the grizzly was somewhat awkward in appearance he could move with amazing speed, and his strength was incredible. From glimpses I had of him I estimated his weight at six hundred pounds, but he could move the carcass of a cow or horse twice that heavy. Once on Cabin Creek, not many miles from his accustomed haunts, a lion killed a horse. As he approached the kill, the grizzly circled warily around it, stood erect to sniff and listen, and growled warningly, informing all would-be intruders that it was his. When he had eaten his fill, he dragged the carcass nearly a hundred yards uphill over fallen timber, into a thicket, where he covered it against the prying eyes of birds, thinking, I presume, that they would signal other animals of its location.
The date of his emergence from his den in the spring, like his holing up in the fall, depended upon the weather. Commonly though, he hibernated about one-third of the year. When he came out after his long sleep he was very thin, the great layers of fat he had taken care to put on before denning up were gone. One year I followed his tracks the day he came out to learn what he first ate, and was surprised to find that he scarcely ate at all. Instead of being ravenous, as I had supposed he would be, he seemed to have no appetite, and barely tasted a green shoot or two, and a little grass. His claws had grown out over winter and the tough soles of his feet soon shed off so that, though born to the wilds, he became a tenderfoot.