Bear Strength

[brotherbear]

The grizzly Book by Jack Samson - Hunting the Grizzly by Ned W. Frost.

Incidentally, I had an interesting experience with "Old Four-Toes" myself which showed the tremendous strength of the animal. An eastern sportsman I was guiding had wounded a big bull elk and two days later when we finally found the body, the meat was spoiled so we removed only the scalp and antlers. After two or three days' time, when hunting in the same locality, we stopped to see if any animal had been working on the carcass. Much to our surprise, the carcass was gone but there were no tracks or blood signs in the tall grass of the meadow where it had lain. After considerable scouting about, I found some signs on a log several hundred yards up the hill. Beyond that point, through some timber, I found what remained of the elk, and there also I found a four-toed track. How that old grizzly had carried that full-grown elk carcass without leaving some sort of a trail in the tall grass has always remained a mystery to me.

I will give you another example of grizzly strength. My father, brother, and I cut a heavy pine log to be used as a drag for a bear-trap. It was all we could do to drag it a few yards and slip the rung of a forty-two pound, number six, bear-trap over the little end. We set the trap near a raging stream in full spring flood. The trap was sprung the first night and the drag mark of the trap and log led into the swift water, down whose flood creast were drifting uprooted trees nearly one hundred feet long in almost endless numbers. Father bade his trap and bear goodbye, for it seemed that no living animal, handicapped with such weight, could survive that torrent. A cold spell came along and the water fell several feet, so that father, by picking a place where there were several channels, could ford the stream on a large horse. The trap and long-trail were picked up on the other side almost straight across, and the bear was soon located. Reply