The Black Bear

by William H. Wright

There has been much scientific discussion as to the nature of this long sleep, and also much popular misconception in regard to its outward manifestations. I do not aspire to a voice in the former, but can speak from considerable experience in regard to the latter. Many, perhaps most, people seem to think that a bear that has denned up for the winter is in some mysterious, and more or less complete state of coma; that its breathing is all but suspended, and that it would be difficult, even by violence, to rouse it. They are very far from the truth. Bears sleep, but are easily roused, quick to scent danger, and ready to abandon their retreat and look up a new one if they think it necessary.

Ben, at any time during the winter, would rouse if I called him, and would even come to the mouth of his lair for a moment to greet me. I could, moreover, hear him breathing, and sometimes hear him move and readjust himself to a more comfortable position. He was a very lazy, stupid, sleepy bear; but never too stupid or sleepy to answer my call.

One fall in Washington, near Colville in the Calispell Mountains, while after deer, I noticed a strange mass of dead leaves, small sticks, pine needles, and other forest refuse gathered under the tangled trunks of a windfall, where a number of trees had been blown down crisscross. My curiosity was piqued by the queer-looking affair and I climbed along one of the tree trunks to see what it was. Suddenly, as I got almost over it, the whole mass began to shake and quiver and out came an old Black Bear and two cubs. This was the only time that I ever actually knew of a Black Bear and her cubs having denned up together. And I have never seen more than a dozen cases where it seemed probable that they had. Later on on this same trip I saw seven other Black Bear sleeping places, all in similar situations under tree trunks or tangled down-timber.

Only a year ago, up at Priest Lake, in Idaho, some friends and myself came across the tracks of a cougar, and, having gone back for dogs, we returned and put them on its trail. We were in full chase along the side of a mountain when one of the dogs attracted my attention by the way he acted. He turned aside, rushed to a dead tree that lay along the ground, and began excitedly sniffing at one end of it. I knew that the cougar could not be there and went over to see what was attracting the dog’s attention, and saw instantly that a Black Bear had been denned up under the log, but, disturbed by the dog’s approach, had broken out and made off down the mountain in a foot and a half of snow.

These are merely examples of many such experiences, and I have more than once followed the trail of a bear and seen where it had made itself a new retreat.

We know, since they lay up no store of provisions, that the bear does not eat during its long retirement, and although, in the north, it would be possible for it to provide itself with water by eating the snow that shuts it in, we know that bears hibernating in captivity (a thing by the way that they do not often do) neither eat nor drink.

One odd fact about the whole proceeding is that all bears of the same class in the same locality go into winter quarters and emerge from them within a few days of each other. In the Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia, I have seen where six grizzlies had broken their way through several feet of snow out of six different caves on the side of a single mountain all in one night. In localities where both species are found, the Black Bear come out from one to two months earlier than the grizzlies, and in both species the males emerge two weeks or more before the females with new cubs. But all of each kind come out within a day or two of each other.

I incline to the belief that in the majority of cases the Black Bear, when in freedom, breeds every year. Most authorities on bears who base their opinions upon observations made on captive animals, claim that both the grizzly and the Black Bear breed annually. But a long series of observations and the closest possible attention given to this point has absolutely convinced me that it is the very rare exception when a free female grizzly breeds oftener than once in two years. I have seen many hundreds of grizzly mothers with cubs in the open, and fully as many of them were followed by yearling cubs as by spring cubs. But although (the Black Bear being much more numerous than the grizzly) I have seen many more Black Bears with cubs than grizzlies with cubs, I have never seen more than a dozen Black Bear mothers followed by yearling cubs.

I have therefore been forced to conclude that it is the habit of the Black Bear to wean its cubs and abandon them before denning up the first fall. In the case of the grizzly the mother and the cubs den up together the fall following the latter’s birth, and run together during the following summer, and it is not until late in the second season that the mother turns the cubs adrift to shift for themselves. This family of young grizzlies then usually den up together and continue to run together the third summer, at the close of which the litter disbands and the individuals belonging to it take up their separate lives. I have also seen a few litters of yearling Black Bears still running in company without their mother; but as this is by no means a common sight, I believe that ordinarily Black Bear cubs den up separately after they leave their mother at the close of their first summer.

Inasmuch, however, as I have seen a few Black Bear mothers followed by yearling cubs, I assume that in these cases the mother and cubs had denned up together in the same manner that the grizzlies habitually do. And I once actually found an old Black Bear and two cubs so settled for the winter. I have also tracked an old grizzly and her cubs to where they had gone into winter quarters together, and have seen where a grizzly mother and her year-old family had emerged from hibernation in company the second spring. I have also often seen where a litter of two-year-old grizzly cubs had wintered together in one cave after leaving their mother in their third fall, but I have never seen any actual evidence of young Black Bears wintering together in this manner.