HOME LIFE OF A GRIZZLY.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 152, 24 December 1903, Page 12

HOME LIFE OF A GRIZZLY.

> There is a deal of discussion among* - hunters after big game in the mountains, » concerning the sort of fathers and hus- - bands grizzly bears make. Tho con- - sensus of opinion seems to be that bruin is an unfaithful, heartless spouse,' and m > contemptible father. He will help Mad- > ame Bruin seek a cave or an opening in ■ the rocks or mountain side, where their cubs may be born, and he will carry a i dainty morsel, euch as a sheep, a calf, or a part of a cow's carcase there for hi* i mate's food. However, a few days after - the cubs are born in the family circle, h« > will leave the home, probably never hay- ; ing any further acquaintance with hi* i spouse nnd her offspring. Thereafter, Madame Bruin must make her own way * and provide for her cubs. Unlike the > black bear, which is a jolly, fun-loving - father that rolls and frolics with his baby * chidren, tho mala grizzly will have noT thing to do with the cube. Mad*m« Grizzly and her children are companion* » for two summers and they hibernate roll- ' ed together in_a. ball of far for about one I hundred days, 'during the coldest days of winter. The mother bear and her young i travel far and wide — moving principally at night. Kit Carson said that th* wide > range of a family of healthy griulies in 1 a summer season is almost incalculable. > Ho had reason to know of a mother 1 grizzly and her two cubs that once left their hibernating cave among the southern spurs of the Rocky Mountains in t New Mexico one epring in th© forties, - crossed Colorado ar.J« Wyoming, were - seen in th© mountains in Montana, and * were buck in New Mexico again for an- - other winter before the following Octo* ber. a Th© maternal instinct, however, ia a* f strong in the she grizzly as in any other i animal. There are numberless instances t of mother bears giving up their lives 3 to save their cubs from danger. Only recently the writer heard a hunter tell how r a grizzly cub got in one of his steel bear ? traps, and how tho mother cam© and - clawed and bit and scratched 'at the vicelike jaws of th© trap in 'a vain hop© oi > freeing her young. When daylight cams t and th© iiunter, rifle in hand, approached, the mother grizzly, in her rage mid 1 her love for her cub, charged straight at c the hunter, and was shot down, t The cuteness— sagacity, some observer* t call it — oi grizzly bears is shown in hundreds of different ways. Tho bear lor© f that is always retailed about a camp-fire , of hunters and trappers in the mountains t is filled with stories and observations of I, this sense, which seems to belong to , grizzly bears alone among tho great W a ily of bruins. All hunters have had ex* i perienees in which they have been led 6 many miles from camp, across moun* f tains, over wide areas of boulders/ and i through rocky canyons by some smart old grizzly that seemed to have a human r mind in teasing tho hunter along and at 3 th© same time adroitly keeping out of (j rang© of rifle when there was an opportunity for 'the pursuer to shoot. Tha ' bear that knows it is hunted and sees a chance to escape will do so every time. 1 It will climb hastily into 6pots most 'in3 accessible to a man, and when it' has 7 surveyed the field from Behind a titatuo 7 boulder or in a dense chapparnl, where B the hunter cannot shoot, it will decade s upon a course of escspe. If there i* a '. ehe bear in the band and her cubs) nr© 1 along, she t trill drive the little fellows on ' ahead a few feet and defend them in th© rear. When bruin knows there ia a , chance for a bullet from a hunter's gun to come that way be will hasten aa Fast * as possible, not stopping to rest until v some protection ia afforded from bullet* ' by rocks or timber. Many she bears, in their anxiety to save their cubs, hay« 1 been eeen to pick them up' in thei» s forepavrs and trudge clumsily along. ; — Benry G. Tinsley, in the Outing.