Bears as Predators ~

[brotherbear]

The Grizzly by Enos Mills.

Grizzlies often show courage and strategy by hiding and lying in ambush for a pursuing hunter. On one occasion I had been following a grizzly for a number of days, trying to get his photograph at short range. He knew I was in pursuit. Finally, he doubled back on his trail a short distance and crouched behind a log. His tracks as I followed them passed along the other side of this log, and continued plainly ahead of me across the top of a snow-covered moraine ( Webster - moraine - a mass of rocks, sand, etc. left by a glacier ). But as I approached the log, the wind stirred the bear's fur and gave me warning.

A grizzly appears to understand that his tracks reveal his movements. I was once following one that had been wounded by a hunter to see where he went and what he did. He circled from his trail and came back to it over logs and rocks, which left no markings, and hid in a clump of fir trees. On seeing this possible place of ambush by the trail, I turned aside and climbed a pine to reconnoiter. When the bear realized that I had discovered him, he made off in anger. Reply