Bears as Predators ~

[brotherbear]

Grizzly Years by Doug peacock.

The Bitter Creek Grizzly was the only bear I knew of in Yellowstone that regularly killed moose and bison. He attacked younger animals - ambushed them from nearby timber, then dragged them back into the trees, sometimes covering the carcasses with dirt and sticks. I had seen this too many times to believe that these animals had all conveniently died during the winter. His was not the usual pattern of predation for grizzlies. In 1977, when I first crossed paths with the Bitter Creek Griz, a biologist had found another grizzly who had passed up many carcasses for live elk: The bear liked to kill what he ate. A few bears learn to kill healthy adult elk during all seasons, and cow-struck bulls during the rut were especially stupid and approachable. Yellowstone grizzlies also prey on elk calves, as they do caribou calves in Alaska, and moose calves in both places. Adult moose were generally a match for a grizzly except when snows were deep and lightly crusted: grizzlies can walk lightly over a thin crust, distributing their weight evenly on their plantigrade feet, and they glide over the top of deep drifts in which moose wallow.

I thought that grizzly predation was not as common here as it had been a decade or more ago. The predatory segment of the population had probably been killed off selectively, and continues to be culled as they were born into it, because predatory bears are bolder and more visible. The Bitter Creek Griz was a holdover from the days when bears could afford to be bold and aggressive. Which served, as it always had, an important ecological function vital to survival of the species. Reply