Too Close to Grizzlies

If you were a young man just after the war and wandering through the mountains of Montana, you were fortunate indeed, for the wilderness is a tough and tender mother. She gives you dreamless sleep and builds you up instead of tearing away. She is the great teacher, forcing you into your spirit her eternal values. She's always willing to forgive, yet instantly ready to slap. Her animals are her aides; the sheep, the goat, the deer and, of course, the majestic elk. But one animal surpasses them all as her final taskmaster--the grizzly. When you bump into one of these great bears, you will learn many things never to be forgotten, and yet, after a lifetime of it, you still won't understand, for no one really knows the grizzly.

We were asking for it by hunting elk in late November high in the mountains of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. That time of year, the suspended sledge of winter hangs over the northern Rockies, and the weather varies from bad to miserable. But when real winter does slam down, you'll stop complaining about comfort and start worrying about survival.

For five days, the misery storms had sailed through--awesome gray airwaves whitecapped with snow--and then in the night, winter fell with fury and we all knew that the waves before were only trying to warn us to get out before the passes were blocked. I stayed awake and propped tent walls to slip the snow, and I worried about the weather. I should have worried about bears.

We had 23 horses--one apiece for the four hunters, the three guides and packers, and the cook, plus 15 head of pack stock--and in the morning they looked like four legged snowplows. I decided then to move the camp 10 miles down, closer to the pass. The string trailed out like a half-mile snow snake over the same country we had hunted so hard without seeing fresh sign, but now I could see elk tracks everywhere, furrowing the powder. The elk were migrating lower--they also knew that winter had come to stay in the high country.

In the darkness the next morning, we circled the fires at camp, slowly spinning to dry our clothes for the coming day's hunt. Someone asked about bears because one of the packers had spotted a good-size grizzly four days before, up high in the cliffs. I vowed sure that the bears would be holed up--they sensed the seasons. I should have known better. In 35 years of wandering grizzly country, I had learned the hard way how unpredictable those bears can be. Despite this, that mistake, that little over-confidence, would almost cost me my life.

We fanned out in pairs to hunt afoot, saving the stock to pack us out. I had cautioned everyone to anchor his elk somewhere close to the trail, because packing one off the snow-covered bear grass up high in the rocks would be another one of those "unforgettable experiences." My hunter, who was from Milwaukee, was after meat, not horns, and was using a new .300 magnum. We gained a little altitude, and it was tough going through the hip-deep snow, so we stopped to blow.

Then came one of those magic moments that mysteriously make the hundreds of hours of work and misery worthwhile, that special kind of moment that lures you back year after year, just to see if it might happen again. Eleven head of elk filed out of a fir thicket like a slow, tan freight train--one big herd bull that you had to stare at came first, then seven cows and three calves. They were 400 yards away on a perfect intercept course, so we slithered down to within 50 yards of the crossing. I whispered to my hunter to shoot the fourth cow in the boiler room, then watched in amazement when hair flew off the jaw plate and the cow split from the herd at full speed. He had tried a head shot.

The blood trail was easy to follow, but I was heartsick. Gone was the chance for the clean kill, and a wounded elk will go far. We trailed fast, and after three miles, the red snow vanished into a washout, with only pure powder on the far side.