Grizzly Bears

One of my favorite points about the Journals of Lewis and Clark is how excited they get about finding new animals, to include the grizz... within weeks, maybe days, however, there was an entry about how tired the men were becoming of running into Br'er Grizz, because it was so hard to kill them, requiring several shots from the men's guns.

My wife has wondered why I have NO desire to go camp in the Rockies, especially after our trip to Yellowstone a couple years ago... Grizzlies are why.
(Well, that, and I'm not really that fond of grey, rocky mountains... I like green rolling hills and mixed pines/hardwoods.)

Working in the bush of SE Alaska, not one day went by that we did not see bears. Every day, month after month. We worked around salmon streams some of the time. Plenty of huge coastal brown bears and black bears all the time. I had the safety off a couple of times, but never fired a warning shot.

Natives traditionally always have some dogs around when in the bush. It was unnerving to me working in Alaska without my dog(s). We were doing scientific work which requires having one's head down working with monitoring devices, water samples, plant id, etc. We had to get in the habit of looking around once in awhile. I never liked working alone in those conditions, we usually worked in pairs. Several times I looked up and saw the same bear behind me from an hour or two ago. They followed us around, nearly always male black bears. Most had probably never seen a human before and were just curious. A few pesky ones could have been predatory.

I have been taking dogs in the bush for almost 60 years. My dogs can get really loud and boisterous about loud groups of hikers, and a group of large dogs, not to mention a 2-3 foot rock or a tree stump blackened by fire. In the presence of tracks, scent or sightings of predators I usually get the hackles up and the low growl. Last fall when there was a bear near camp in the willows my dog was on alert but did not make a sound. Learn to read your dogs sign.

I had one cow dog that was fearless even though she weighed only about 35 pounds. She seemed to enjoy finding bear tracks and following them. She was very enthusiastic about chasing bears out of camp. One winter I took her bear hunting. She found multiple tracks and helped us stay on them, but the trails ended up in tight, brushed in canyons with only one way out. One was a sow with cubs. I have retired from hunting, but have fond memories of chasing the problem bears around in the snow in the coastal mountains of California a long time ago.

ppine said:

cow dog that was fearless

Click to expand...

Redundant.

There are coursing dogs and heeling dogs for working cattle. Snuffy was part heeler and worked in close and would bite cattle in the hocks, the tail and the nose. Then on command she would get behind my horse and take the pressure off. My Border Collies are coursing dogs and they herd from some distance and use their size and famous eye to put pressure on cattle.

Alan mentioned the dead cow story. Thirty years ago I had a crew one spring on the Navajo Res in Arizona. We were evaluating the success of the vegetation and mine reclamation on Peabody Coal's Black Mesa Mine. It is an arduous and repetitive job in a very interesting place. One day on the way into the mine site, there was a large Angus bull laying dead by the side of the road. The weather got warm and we started placing bets on when the bull would blow up from the gases of decomposition. It took about 6-7 days. A friend of mine won a bunch of money.