Part 4

SCIENTIFIC naturalists, like other learned gentlemen in large spectacles, have a way (or it sometimes seems as though they had) of using very big words about very small matters. For instance, what they might describe as “an aquatic larva of _Rana catesbiana_ or other Batrachian,” we would call a tadpole. And so on through the list. But we are obliged to assume that they have excellent reasons for their choice of language, and there is no getting around the fact that if we wish to profit by their wisdom we have to learn at least the simple rules of their speech.

We ought, for example, to understand that when a new animal, or a new variety of an old one, is discovered, or rather when it is officially described and listed by a naturalist, it is given a special Latin name which, added to the Latin name of the family to which it belongs, thenceforth serves to identify it among all students of natural history. Moreover, as a compliment to the man who thus stood god-parent for it in the scientific world, his name is added, in parentheses, to these Latin designations. Thus the Rocky Mountain grizzly bear is known to technical fame as _Ursus horribilis_ (Ord), which, being interpreted, means that this much-misrepresented member of the bear tribe was first described officially by George Ord and was named by him “The Terrible.”

There have been many attempts to classify the North American bears; and from time to time, as new facts come to light, or new students advance new theories as to the relationships of the different species, these lists are altered. But before proceeding to give my own observations upon the actual habits and characteristics of the common Black Bear, the _Ursus americanus_ (Pallas) of the text-books, I reproduce (without recourse) a list of what appear to be the most generally recognized varieties of bears inhabiting the North American continent.

The Polar Bear. _Ursus maritimus_ (Desm.). Polar regions generally.

THE ALASKAN BROWN BEARS

The Kodiak Bear. _Ursus middendorffi_ (Merriam). Kodiak Island, Alaska. The largest of all living bears.

The Yakutat Bear. _Ursus dalli_ (Merriam). Yakutat Bay and seaward slopes of the St. Elias range.

The Admiralty Bear. _Ursus eulophus_ (Merriam). Admiralty Islands, Alaska.

The Peninsula Bear. _Ursus merriami_ (Allen). Portage Bay, Alaska Peninsula.

THE GRIZZLY BEARS

The Rocky Mountain Grizzly. _Ursus horribilis_ (Ord). Rocky Mountains from Mexico to Alaska.

The Sonora Grizzly. _Ursus horribilis horriæus_ (Baird). South-western New Mexico.

The Barren Ground Grizzly. _Ursus richardsoni_ (Mayne Reid). Great Slave Lake regions and Barren Grounds.

THE BLACK BEARS

The American Black Bear. _Ursus americanus_ (Pallas).

Scornborger’s Black Bear. _Ursus americanus scornborgeri_ (Bangs). Labrador.

Queen Charlotte Islands Black Bear. _Ursus americanus carlottæ_ (Osgood).

Desert Black Bear. _Ursus americanus eremicus_ (Merriam). Coahuila, Mexico.

Florida Black Bear. _Ursus floridanus_ (Merriam).

Louisiana Black Bear. _Ursus luteolus_ (Griffith).

North-western Black Bear. _Ursus altifrontalis_ (Elliot). Clallam County, Washington.

Alberta Black Bear. _Ursus hylodromus_ (Elliot).

The Fighting Bear. _Ursus machetes_ (Elliot). Chihuahua, Mexico.

OTHER MEMBERS OF THE BLACK-BEAR GROUP

Emmons’s Glacier Bear. _Ursus emmonsi_ (Dall). Mt. St. Elias region, Alaska.

The Inland White Bear. _Ursus kermodii_ (Hornaday). South-western British Columbia.

DESCRIPTION AND DISTRIBUTION

THE American Black Bear, or, as our friends with the big spectacles have named him, _Ursus americanus_ (Pallas), has by very long odds the widest distribution of any North American bear.

The polar bear stays well inside the Arctic Circle. The big brown Alaskan bears are only found in certain localities on or near the north-west coast of the continent. The grizzlies inhabit, or inhabited, the mountain regions of the extreme west from Mexico to Alaska. But the Black Bear is found in the central and northern parts of the United States and in the central and southern parts of Canada from the Atlantic coast to the shore of the Pacific Ocean; and his half brothers, or first cousins, or whatever they are, in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Old Mexico, are so much like him that it takes a specialist and sometimes a post-mortem examination to tell them apart.

I have watched and studied these animals in the open for nearly thirty years, and have played eavesdropper and Peeping Tom times out of number when they were unconscious of my presence; and yet I have had dealings with Black Bears in Texas and Old Mexico whom I would never for a moment have suspected of differing in blood or descent from their northern relatives. However, as we may see from the list already given, the Black Bears of Florida, Louisiana, Mexico, and certain restricted districts in the North, have been technically recognized as entitled to separate classification. And it is just as well to state clearly that in these pages all statements (unless otherwise indicated) refer to the common American Black Bear, and the term Black Bear, when unqualified, refers always to _Ursus americanus_ (Pallas).

It is also just as well to call attention in the beginning to a mistaken idea that is a very old one and is very generally entertained about these animals. I refer to the belief that there is a difference of species between the black and the brown or cinnamon-colored individuals of the tribe. This notion is so wide-spread that one often hears it stated that there are three varieties of bears in the United States: the Black Bear, the Cinnamon Bear, and the Grizzly. But this is a most misleading statement. There are many cinnamon-colored bears, but there is no such species as the Cinnamon Bear. Some Black Bears are brown, and so are some grizzlies. Some Black Bears are cinnamon-color, and so are some grizzlies. But the difference between the Black Bears that are black and the Black Bears that are cinnamon-color is the difference between blondes and brunettes; while the difference between a brown-colored grizzly and a brown-colored Black Bear is like the difference between a brown cocker spaniel and a brown setter—one of breed.

The Black Bear has a head broader between the ears in proportion to its length and a muzzle much shorter and sharper than the grizzly. This muzzle is also almost invariably of a grayish or buff color. The animal shows a rather noticeable hump over the small of its back, just in front of the hind legs, and these legs are less straight than those of the grizzly and more sloping at the haunches. Its ears are larger. Its eyes are small and pig-like. Its claws are short, much curved, very stocky at the base, and taper rapidly to a sharp point. They are far less formidable as weapons and far less serviceable as digging implements than the long, slightly curved, blunt claws of the grizzly; but they are perfectly adapted to the uses to which their owner puts them. And the chief of these uses is climbing.

The Black Bear climbs, literally, like a squirrel; and from cubhood to old age spends a considerable portion of his time in trees. He can climb as soon as he can walk and his mother takes clever advantage of the fact. She sends her cubs up a tree whenever she wants them off her hands for a time—uses trees, indeed, very much as human mothers who have no one to watch their children while they work use day nurseries. The first thing a Black Bear mother does when any danger threatens is to send her cubs up a tree. She will then frequently try to induce the enemy to follow her and, when she has eluded him, will return for the cubs. In parts of the country where there are grizzlies, or where there are wolves, she will generally thus dispose of her children before herself going off to feed on berries or other provender. In all my experience I have never known cubs, when thus ordered into retirement by their mother, to come down from the selected tree until she called them. They will climb to the extreme top; run out to the ends of all the branches in turn, chase each other up and down the trunk, and finally curl up in some convenient fork and go to sleep. But though it may be hours before the old bear comes back for them nothing will induce them to set foot on the ground until she comes.

Later in life the Black Bear continues to regard trees as its natural refuge from all dangers. They will invariably “tree” when pursued by dogs, chased by a man on horseback, or otherwise threatened. And a few years ago I witnessed an amusing incident which shows that these are not the only circumstances under which a Black Bear thinks to find safety in its favorite refuge. I was engaged at the time in trying to get some flash-light photographs of grizzlies, and one afternoon, soon after I had gotten my apparatus set up and was waiting for darkness and the appearance of my expected sitters, a violent thunderstorm came up. I had just covered my camera and flash-pan with bark peeled from a couple of small saplings and taken shelter myself under a thick, umbrella-like tree, when I saw a small Black Bear coming through the woods and headed straight for my hiding place. At every flash of lightning he paused and made a dash for the nearest tree, but by the time he got there the flash would be over and he would start on again. Finally, there came a blinding streak of jagged fire, accompanied by a splitting crash, and the small bear made one jump into the tree that happened to be nearest him, went hand over hand to the extreme top, rolled himself into a little ball with his nose between his paws, and never moved until the storm had gone by.

But the Black Bear also resorts to trees of his own accord, using them as a loafing place and even as a sleeping apartment. I have seen one lying prone on his back on a big limb, all four feet in the air, as utterly comfortable and care-free as a fat man in a hammock.

In regions where the grizzly and the Black Bear are both found, the Black Bear spends much of his leisure among the branches and often has special trees that he uses as sleeping quarters. Some of these, from constant use, become as deeply scarred and worn as an old wooden sidewalk in a lumbering town; and I have seen them that appeared to have been used for years.

One sometimes hears it claimed that a Black Bear can only climb a tree around which he can conveniently clasp his front legs, man-fashion. They can climb, and that with almost equal ease, any tree that will hold their weight; from a sapling so small that there is just room for them to sink one set of hind claws above the other in a straight line, to an old giant so big that they can only cling to its face, squirrel-fashion, and behind the trunk of which (also squirrel-fashion) they can hide, circling as you walk around it.

Another curious fact about the Black Bear’s sharp claws is that these invariably match their owner’s hide in color. A black animal always has black claws. A brown one has brown claws. A cinnamon-colored one has cinnamon-colored claws. This is not true of the grizzly. And since, as we will see later, the color of an individual bear often changes with the weathering of its coat, one can approximate the normal, or new-coat, color of the animal from the color of its claws.

In order to show more clearly than mere words could do the character of the Black Bear’s claws and their differences from those of the grizzly, I have photographed a front and hind foot of each animal and also the corresponding tracks made on the ground, and these photographs are here reproduced for comparison and reference. The difference in the fore paws will be seen at a glance; the long, blunt, four-and-a-half to six-inch claws of the grizzly serving to distinguish them unmistakably from the short, sharp, one to one-and-a-half-inch claws of the Black Bear. The hind paws are more nearly alike; but one notices at once how markedly both differ from the front paws and how nearly they approximate to _feet_. This is true of all bears.

As, in the West, these two bears are often found in the same localities, and as one of the first things an observer of them should learn is to distinguish between their tracks, I shall point out some of the more salient differences between the two.

On the fore paw of the Black Bear the pad is noticeably rounded in front and somewhat hollowed out behind and is, in a general way, rather kidney-shaped. It does not show the dent that is so plainly seen on the outside of the grizzly’s front paw, and the front edge of it is much narrower. Also, when the track is perfect, the distance between the impress of the toes and the impress of the tips of the claws is much less.

On the hind paw of the Black Bear the front of the pad is also more rounded than that of the grizzly and the heel is blunt instead of pointed. Another difference in shape is shown by the fact that a straight line drawn through the middle toe and along the axis of the foot will, in the Black Bear’s track, exactly hit the heel, while in the grizzly’s track it will fall well to the outside of the heel. The Black Bear’s hind paw is also more deeply dented at the instep than that of the grizzly.

The feet of the Black Bear are stockier than those of the grizzly and more powerfully muscled—probably as a result of the animal’s climbing habits. On the other hand their fore legs do not show the wonderful muscular development that is one of the marked characteristics of _Ursus horribilis_.

The Black Bear received its name informally, as it were, from the early settlers of New England, where the overwhelming majority of the species happened to be black and where, by dint of saying, “I saw a black bear in the woods this afternoon,” people came to refer to the animal as the Black Bear. Later on the name was sanctioned by scientific baptism and the animal became officially known as the American Black Bear. The designation, however, as we have seen, is by no means universally descriptive. In the East, and in the Middle West, an occasional brown specimen is met with. But when the Rocky Mountain region is reached there is a bewildering variation in the coloring of the species. The majority of the breed are still black, but at least a quarter and perhaps a third of the specimens met with show a different coloration. Of these probably the seal-browns are the most numerous; but I have seen Black Bears of every conceivable shade, from a light cream color, through the yellow browns, to a jet and glossy black never seen in the East. One animal that I watched for some weeks in the mountains of Wyoming was of a curious olive yellow from tip to tail. In north-western Montana and north-eastern Idaho one used to see many mouse-colored, or steel-blue-colored, Black Bears; and around Flat Head Lake, in Montana, I have seen a number of albinos. Curiously enough, albino deer used to be found in this same locality. One sometimes hears it declared that the “true” Black Bear has a white horseshoe on its breast. This is simply a distortion of the fact that many Black Bears, especially black ones, have a “white vest,” varying from a few white hairs to a spot six inches square. Now and then one sees a star, or a shield, or some other oddly shaped mark, and sometimes instead of being white these are cream color or a dirty yellow.

Like the grizzly, the individual Black Bear may vary in color according to the season, the age of its coat, and the weathering that this has undergone. An animal that is a glossy black in the fall may, by the early summer of the following year, be a rusty black; or one that is a rich brown when it first emerges from its winter sleep, may be a faded yellow brown when it has shed its fur and only its hair remains in the beginning of the next summer. But, as far as my observation goes, these changes of color are wholly the result of sun bleach, weathering, and wear and tear.

All fur-bearing animals have both fur and hair—the long guard-hair completely covering and protecting the fine fur underneath. This is of course true of the Black Bear, and it is interesting to note how both hair and fur are changed each year, yet without ever leaving the animal uncovered. About a month after the bear comes out of its winter den the fur begins to drop out, first on the legs and belly, and then on the other parts of the body. During this time the animal takes great satisfaction in scratching itself on stumps and bushes—straddling them on its walks and returning again and again to repeat the operation. From then on the old coat gradually falls out—fur and hair, and at one stage the falling coat hangs in shreds and gives the bear a most wretched and moth-eaten appearance. Meanwhile the new hair is coming in, but not as yet the new fur, so that by early summer the bear has a new suit of clothes, but no underwear. As fall approaches the new fur begins to grow. And by the time the animal is ready to den up for the winter he has a full new coat. This continues to grow during hibernation and a bear’s coat is at its best when the animal first reappears in the spring.

The full-grown Black Bear is, of course, very much smaller than the full-grown grizzly, but it is rather difficult to give any close figures for what might be called a normal specimen. The largest Black Bear that I ever actually weighed, myself, tipped the scales at four hundred and sixty-two pounds. There had been much discussion about this bear, and guesses, before weighing, ranged from three hundred to seven hundred pounds. This gives a good idea of the danger of putting much faith in the estimates of people who have merely seen an animal in the open, and have no actual data for comparison and upon which to base their opinion. I have, first and last, weighed a good many Black Bears, and should say that, when full grown, they range in weight from say two hundred and fifty to say five hundred pounds. In some instances they probably go over that. As a rule the largest specimens I have seen appeared to be in the prime of life and in the best of condition, but I have seen those that gave every evidence of being old and almost decrepit that would not have weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds.

Ben, when I caught him, was about three months old, and would have weighed about five or six pounds. When he was a year old he weighed about fifty pounds. The last time I actually put him on the scales he weighed three hundred and thirty-two pounds, and I believe that four months later, when I gave him away, he would have gone better than four hundred. This three hundred and thirty-two pounds was actual live weight.

What may be the life span of the Black Bear in their free state it is hard to say. They do not arrive at full maturity or growth until their sixth or seventh year, and they probably live well beyond the twenty-five year mark. Mr. William R. Lodge and his father of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, have a pair of Black Bears that they have had for twenty-two years, that were six months old when they got them, and that are still healthy and vigorous. There is no reason to suppose that a free animal would not live at least as long as one confined under unnatural conditions.

In the case of the grizzly I have known and watched for years an individual bear in his home mountains that must have been more than twenty years old and that was still in full vigor the last time I saw him. But I have never happened to keep similar track of any individual Black Bear in the open. I have, however, never seen any Black Bear that looked as old as some grizzlies I have seen.

It is a curious fact that in twenty-seven years of coming and going in the joint territory of the grizzly and the Black Bear I have never once come upon the bones or the carcass of a grizzly that had died a natural death. I have, on the other hand, in dens and elsewhere, seen many Black Bear carcasses and skeletons. Once, in the Selkirks, in British Columbia, for instance, we backtracked a Black Bear to the winter den that it had just left, and in this den we found the skeleton of another Black Bear. The one that had wintered there had raked the bones away and had made its bed alongside of them.

CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS

IN this chapter I purpose to bring together in some sort of order the characteristic habits of the Black Bear as I have personally observed them during many years of life in the open. Of course it is never possible to watch a single wild animal from the time it is born until it grows up, lives its natural life out, and dies; nor even to follow one through the activities of an ordinary year of its life. And even if one could do this, one would have to be very careful not to generalize too broadly from the actions of a single individual. But by the time one has seen thousands of Black Bear, let us say, in many parts of their range, in all stages of growth, at all seasons of the year, in undisturbed enjoyment of their liberty, and free to follow their own instincts of work and play, one is able, by putting two and two together, to piece out a pretty accurate knowledge of the species.

One gets, also, a good working understanding of what traits are characteristic of all the normal specimens of the race, of what habits are dependent upon local conditions and vary as these alter, and of what actions are attributable to the personal dispositions of individual animals. For all animals are like men in this, that in minor matters their habits vary with the conditions under which they live, and that in still less noticeable ways the bearing of different individuals under similar circumstances is determined by their personal characters.

What follows in the present chapter, then, is a summing up of the general habits and race characteristics of the Black Bear; and all statements that are not qualified are, in my experience, observable of these animals wherever found.

Of course we all know that the Black Bear is an hibernating animal. That is to say that in most, if not in all, parts of its widely distributed range, it passes a portion of the year asleep and without food or drink, in a den or some sort of make-shift shelter. We shall have much to say later on about this strange habit, and about some of the queer notions people have about it, but we only mention it here because, since little bears are born during the time their mother is in winter quarters, it is necessary to establish winter quarters for them to be born in.

Black Bear cubs, then, are born in the winter den of the mother some time from the latter half of January to the middle of March, according to the latitude and also according to the altitude of the den. The further north a bear happens to live, and the higher up in the hills it happens to live, the later the spring sets in and so the later the animal comes out of its retirement. And the cubs are born from six weeks to two months before the mother comes out.