Survival Skills of Bears

[brotherbear]

The Grizzly by Enos A. Mills.

Round the foot of Long's Peak I followed a bear through a shallow snow, hoping to overtake and photograph him. Most of the snow had melted off the logs and boulders. After trailing him four or five miles I came to a boulder where he had climbed up and looked around. Possibly he wished to see how close I was to him; possibly he was deciding just where he would carry out a plan for outwitting me. At any rate, he jumped from the boulder, walked round it, traveled a short distance slowly, then set off on a run, going east. After I had followed his trail for more than a mile, his tracks ceased in a rocky, snowless area where his footprints did not show.

I thought I should find his tracks in the snow on the farther edge of the rocky space; but they were not there. Then, in the snow, I went entirely round the edge of the rocky space without seeing a track. Thinking that possibly the grizzly was hiding in this small rocky area, I at once cautiously circled every place behind which he might be concealed, but without finding him.

Out in the snow I made a larger circle and at last discovered his tracks. Entering the rocky space, he had turned abruptly to the left and traveled about one hundred feet. Then, from the rocks, he had made a long leap into a clump of bushes, from this leaped into another clump of bushes, and finally into the snow. He thus left the rocky place without leaving any telltale tracks within thirty feet of it.

He started westward - back toward the boulder - alongside his first trail, and traveled for about a mile parallel to it and less than one hundred feet from it. Near the boulder he waited in concealment at a point where he could watch his former trail, and evidently stayed there until I passed.

Then he traveled on a short distance to another small rocky area. Doubling in his tracks, he came back for one hundred feet or so in the trail he had thus made. Working toward his first trail, he hid his tracks by leaping among fallen timbers and bushes, and at last made a leap into his first trail by the boulder, where he made many tracks in the snow. Along his old trail he traveled east again a short distance, stepping precisely in his former footprints.

Out of this trail he leaped upon the top of a low, snowless boulder on the right, and from this upon another boulder. He walked along a bare fallen log. Here I must have searched more than two hours before detecting two or three broken sticks, which gave me a clue to the direction he had taken. From the log he walked upon a cross log and then plunged through fifty or sixty feet of thicket which showed no trail. From where he had emerged on the farther side of the thicket there was little by which to trace him for the next quarter of a mile. He zigzagged over fallen logs and leaped upon snowless boulders until he came to a tree leaning against a cliff. Up this tree he walked to a ledge, where, fortunately, there was a little snow which recorded his track. He followed the ledge to the top of the cliff and, leaving this, ran for four or five miles. It took me 24 hours to unravel the various tangles, and I finally gave up the idea of photographing him. Long before I arrived at the top of the cliff I had concluded that I was following a reasoning animal, one who might be more alert than I myself. Reply