Campbell Church, Jr. writing in The Sportsman, February, 1933

A four hundred pound dead bear had vanished overnight. I stopped amazed—wondering if I could be mistaken—looking around to pick up my bearings. That was certainly the gravel bar where a few days before my wife had come unexpectedly face to face with a large black bear and had had to shoot it in the open mouth. Since then the skinned carcass had lain there, a white glistening landmark in its blanket of fat. Now the gravel bar was empty!

George, our Indian guide, gave a grunt and started on a dogtrot to investigate. We followed. Those twelve-inch tracks in the gravel bar pointed unmistakably to the big grizzly who had been playing hide and seek with us ever since we pitched our camp in his domain. It was evident that the huge bear had approached the carcass on all fours, picked it up in his arms, and walked away with it on his hind feet, like a boy carrying a young pig. He swam the river with it and took it up a high bank on the other side, as we could see from a freshly broken-down face of the slope.

Just a week previously we had bidden our friends aboard the yacht Westward a temporary good-by. We were to hunt for grizzly up this beautiful Alaskan river, while the remainder of the party were to cruise on further north for the same purpose.

Carefully we examined the ground, but found no evidence as to how the grizzly got that heavy carcass up the six-foot bank—there was certainly nothing to indicate that he had dragged it. His trail entered a cedar swamp, dry at this time of year, consisting of a thick tangle of underbrush, fallen timber, and bog holes. It was clear, and we followed it easily. I was leading with a 6.5 Mannlicher rifle.

About two hundred yards in I was electrified, amid the utter stillness, by the sharp unmistakable snapping of powerful jaws, of ivory clicking on ivory. This was followed by a low rumbling growl. It was barely audible, but it had a wicked note of warning. The sound came from a thicket of evergreens and undergrowth about twenty-five steps ahead. By stooping a little I caught the glint of a dark brown patch of fur, about the size of a hat. I could not, however, make out what part of the bear’s anatomy was exposed.

I was afraid to shoot, knowing that the chances were all against us in case the first shot did not prove deadly. Twenty-five steps is too close to such an antagonist. My wife and George were immediately behind me, with little or no chance to get into action, for there was thick brush on all sides. George kept whispering excitedly in my ear, “Shoot, shoot.”

I advanced a few steps, stooping down this way and that, trying to make out the position of the grizzly, but, after the first move, I lost sight of even that small patch of hair. I stood there looking and looking, struggling to penetrate the tangle with my eyes, keyed up to the highest pitch, momentarily expecting a charge.

After the first growl and clash of his tusks, there was not a sound from the thicket until, suddenly, after many tense seconds, we heard him break cover a hundred yards or more farther back in the swamp and go crashing away with all the quiet secrecy of a steam roller. Fortunately for us the bear had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. That huge beast had slipped away through matted dry brush without one of us hearing a sound. It seemed impossible, for my wife has a particularly keen sense of hearing, and George was an Indian. When the bear had reached a safe distance, however, it had broken into a run, making no attempt to hide its flight to the mountain cliffs back of the swamp.

George was bitterly disappointed that I hadn’t shot. Personally, I had only a feeling of relief that I had not been forced to shoot. When I started to follow his trail through the swamp, I assumed that the bear had taken the carcass in a short distance, eaten his fill and then gone to the cliffs to sleep. I know better now than to assume anything about a grizzly!

We pushed into the thicket to take a look at the carcass, and to see how much a good big grizzly could eat in one meal. The bear had made a clearing about ten feet in diameter and dug a hole deep enough to bury the body completely. It had then piled sand and gravel on top of it and had bedded it down nice and smooth. On top of this mound it had lain down on its stomach; back legs stretched our behind; forelegs in front; its head down on the ground between its paws. The imprint was perfect. It was in this posture that we had surprised him.

“George, will the bear return tonight?”

I asked. He was certain it would, and suggested that we come up the river by canoe next morning before daybreak and crawl into the swamp to a log lying fifty feet from the cache. Behind this we could get a good shot, if we trimmed out the brush a little with our pocketknives. This we proceeded to do.

George made a rope by cutting a root lying partly exposed on the surface of the ground, and twisting and bending it until it became pliable. It was very strong—looked as though a team of horses couldn’t break it.

He uncovered the head of the carcass and with his knife made a slit in the under jaw. Through this he inserted the long thick cedar root and passed it out of the mouth. He then took a half hitch around the neck and tied it to the trunk of a ten-inch alder close by. We covered the head again and patted the sand and gravel down smoothly, taking precaution to conceal the cedar rope. George explained that he was afraid the grizzly might dig up the carcass and carry it away again in the night because we had discovered his cache and had driven him off.

While it was still pitch dark the next morning George and I rolled out. We beached our canoe where the grizzly had climbed the bank the day before and started crawling with infinite patience on hands and knees to our log. We had to feel our way. It was an eerie sensation—crawling into that black swamp to attack a half-ton grizzly. We had no idea where we would find him. He might be lying around almost any place. George, behind me, accidently touched my leg. My heart stopped beating. The end of a stick, as I put my weight on it, hit me in the side.

Would we never reach that log? When we did, we could see nothing.

Then came half an hour of anxious waiting before there was light enough to reconnoiter. When daylight broke we moved slowly forward and with the greatest caution approached the cache.

George looked all around and shook his head.

“Damn! Him no come down last night. Eat so much go up on mountain, lie down on back, legs up in air.” (Pantomime.) “Make big noise—how you call um?” (More mimicry.) “Him snore loud—wake up—think about big black bear. Him come down tonight. We catch um!” His eyes gleamed.

I had already turned to go back to the canoe when George gave an exclamation. He went over to the alder, where the bear’s head had been tied, and picked up a small piece of cedar rope. It had been broken off from the main strand. After kicking around a bit, we discovered that there was no rope around the tree. George at once began digging with a stick. I picked up another, and at it we went.

The carcass was gone. But—even more astounding—we unearthed the entrails. They only had been left for us. George and I looked into each other’s faces in blank astonishment. Then as the grizzly’s grim joke slowly dawned on us, we broke out laughing.

Although it was by sheer accident that George had detected the small piece of rope exposed on the surface, nevertheless this bit of luck enabled us to thwart the jester at least in part. Otherwise we would have come back, probably several times and watched that mound before discovering the portion of meat, if you could call it such, left as our share. And the old cannibal would have dispatched the remainder and cleaned up the bones.

The grizzly’s behavior was incomprehensible to me. If he wanted to save those “innards” for himself, why didn’t he leave them in the carcass? If he didn’t want them, why bother to bury them again? It takes an even greater stretch of the imagination to be believe that he thought we would be satisfied with this division and so leave him alone, on the theory that he could square things by restoring an orphan’s portion of his big steal.

We picked up his trail and followed it through the swamp, angling down stream to the base of the mountain; there we found he had again buried our kill and covered it all over with brush, leaves, and sticks. It looked so natural that at first we passed the spot, walking almost over it. He had made a real job of it this time and had hidden it like the veteran woodsman that he was.

We dug up the carcass and found that it had been dressed as clean as a butcher would have done it. By this time it was so light that I could drag it about with one hand. Half of it had been eaten. One more meal, or at best two, and there would have been nothing left but the memory.

I asked George what we should do next. He admitted that we had to do something right away, or there would be nothing to do with. This would be our last chance. So we picked out a couple of alders, four feet apart and thirty feet from the carcass. About twenty feet above the ground we made a seat for ourselves in these by lashing two fir boughs, one on each side, across the trunks, horizontal with the ground. After carefully reburying what was left of old bruin, we camouflaged the cache as neatly as the grizzly had done.

That night, before dark, we returned with a ten-gauge double-barrel shotgun, my rifle, an axe, two flashlights, and a coil of small rope. I decided that this ten-gauge of George’s whose brass shells, loaded by himself, contained all the buckshot and powder they would hold, was a much more certain weapon in an emergency at close range than this little 30-30 carbine. The latter was so rusty you could hardly see through the barrel. The action was wobbly and loose; the sights were made out of pennies, and put on mostly “by guess and by God.” George had already described to me his method of killing grizzlies with this gun. He would locate one asleep on the mountain side lying on his back, mouth open, snoring. He would creep up like a cat until he could stick the end of the gun almost in the bear’s mouth.

“Then I shoot and lun like Hell.”

I tied a flashlight to each gun barrel so that at short range all we had to do, in case of emergency, was to put the center of the spotlight on the target and shoot. I had mine arranged on the side of the gun, so that it would throw a little light on both sights, as well as a direct beam on the bear, should he come in.

Everything was all set shortly before dark. As we had padded our perch with moss and each of us had a tree to lean against we were “sitting pretty”. We took the precaution to tie ourselves in so we couldn’t fall. We also tied the guns, leaving the rope long enough so that we had full freedom of movement.

Then began the long vigil.

I asked George when the old boy would likely to come down for his “steak.” He promptly, and with considerable assurance, said nine or ten o’clock. Night settled down early, particularly in the depths of this swamp. We were dressed warmly and were prepared to stick it out until daylight if necessary. Each of us had a couple of thick bear-meat sandwiches in his pockets.

George was so certain the bear would come that he filled me with enthusiasm.

“Old bear come down to eat—him fool us—him laugh.”

We talked back and forth in whispers and were unquestionably excited. Every little while we would throw on our flashlights for a second to be sure they were working.

The swamp was as still as death, not a breath of air stirring. There was apparently no living thing in it. The darkness was indescribable. It was as black as the hinges of Hell. Blacker than that. I tried closing my eyes time and again. That gave temporary relief. But I soon had to open them in spite of myself, trying impotently to break through the blackness that seemed to be smothering me.

Relief came from an unexpected quarter. George nudged me twice; the signal agreed upon that something was doing. I forgot about my eyes, as another sensation gripped me. The stillness was so intense, and I was trying so hard to hear the slightest noise or the slightest movement below me, that, without realizing how it came about, the whole world seemed one mad chaos of sound. My head was ringing so that I was deafened by it. In spite of this roaring and through it all I distinctly heard, off to the left, what sounded like the mew of a kitten or the whimper of a wee puppy crying in its sleep; and then, to the right, I couldn’t tell how far, but not very far, the cry was answered. Then again utter silence.

In a few moments George whispered in my ear “Too bad.”

Whispering back, I asked what is was all about. Two timber wolves had come in from opposite directions. They stood off about twenty yards from the bait and one had signaled to the other that something was wrong. Some faint lingering scent of our presence had probably given the clue. At any rate, both had cautiously withdrawn. George had heard them approach as well as leave. I had heard nothing except the two faint signals.

After hours of waiting and many false alarms, I was electrified by the loud noise of a rolling stone on the mountain side above us. This was unmistakable and real. Then a stick broke, and another stone rolled. George began to tremble. I could feel it all through his body, so close to mine. I knew that the grizzly, fearless at night, disdainful of all caution, was coming in for his meat. When we first heard him he must have been a long way off. We could distinctly follow his approach as he came down the mountain to the foot of the cliffs, fifty yards back of us.

There he turned to the right and went downstream. The sounds gradually died out, until again the ringing, rushing, noise in my head came upon me, in the intensity of my effort to hear. I was sick with disappointment. I knew that the bear had gone downstream toward his favorite fishing hole. He had decided on fish instead of steak.

George was optimistic about it, however, and began to tell me how the grizzly would catch some big fat salmon and eat them, and being satisfied would go back up on the mountain to sleep. And in his sleep he would dream of this luscious black bear with its rich tempting meat. He would dream about it until finally he would wake up and come tearing down the mountain, never stopping a minute until reaching his cache. George was convincing.

I looked at my radium-faced watch. It was not yet quite ten. Again I asked when the bear would return.

“Three or four o’clock,” George replied.

I had seen so many examples of his keen knowledge of the grizzly and its habits, that I became fully reconciled to six more hours of waiting, if necessary.

We arranged to watch, turn about, an hour at a time. I had no difficulty at all in sleeping. In fact, the great difficulty was in staying awake during my turn. I forgot about the darkness, forgot about the sounds. I was fully convinced that the bear would not show up again for many hours, and I had lost interest in timber wolves. So I settled down for a quiet wait, getting as much rest as possible.

George knows his grizzly. About three o’clock I again heard the big fellow’s crashing descent down the mountain side. It was unnecessary to rouse George. He was instantly wide awake, and quivering with suppressed eagerness. This time the bear came straight toward us.

I frankly admit that I could hardly breathe by the time he reached our tree and stopped near the bait almost beneath us. We had been sitting up in this tree ten hours, waiting, hoping, and praying for this moment. It is hard to describe my sensations. I know that George was even more tense. Picture it for your selves—the dense swamp, inky black; our perch in the slender alders; the strange ghostly feeling in the unusual surroundings; the excitement of each augmenting that of the other; the timber wolves coming in so close and then eluding us; and now, just below us, the big bear that we had been hunting and coveting for days—the big bear that had already twice outwitted us.

I hesitated several seconds in order to get hold of myself and then I gave George the signal with my elbow to switch on his light—I needed all the light I could get—and at the same instant I snapped mine.

There beneath us was a great black hulk standing perfectly still.

The flashlights momentarily blinded me and my eyes refused to focus after the long hours in the dark. Before I could even see which way the bear was facing, a deafening crash tore into shreds that ghostly stillness.

It was the roar of the ten-gauge. George was knocked backwards almost out of the tree. His gun flew over his head and hung dangling from its rope behind him. He clutched wildly at me. Both trees shook with our lurching forms. My light was still on but not on the bear.

For what seemed an eon there was again a deathly silence. Then, before I could realize what had happened, there was another terrible roar almost in my face—this one full of concentrated venom and hatred. It curdled my blood. At the same instant a huge form shot past me, apparently on a level with my eyes, twenty feet above the ground. Instinctively I swung my gun, and just as I pulled the trigger the bear crashed against the tree on my left as he tore madly away. With that my light went out too.

We heard the grizzly running. We heard him hit a still pool in a dry river bed some yards behind us, with a mighty splash. Again silence. It didn’t seem possible that two such ear-splitting, devastating sounds, which had just rent the air, could have given way so completely to that cursed silence, and I shouted, “We’ve got him, he’s dead!”

I started cutting the rope to let myself down. We hit the ground about the same time, found one light still workable, and ran for the bear. We did not use even ordinary caution, because we were so certain that he was stone dead in the center of that pool.

But—the pool was empty and placid. The clay banks were wet high up on the sides as if a small tidal wave had passed.

We picked up the trail on the other side, and saw where the bear had come up over the high bank, and disappeared into the timber. We followed to the foot of the mountain, a short distance away, but not a fleck of blood could we find. George cried like a baby. He was ashamed and angry and I didn’t blame him.

We sat down, and talked it over, when George had flashed his light on that old grizzly, standing there beneath us, he had clutched his gun so hard that he pulled off both triggers at once. At least ten drams of powder and I don’t know how many ounces of buckshot were in those two shells. George was resting his gun loosely on his knees. He did not expect to shoot. When it went off, it hit him in the chest with a kick-like that of a mule, and hurtled on over his head.

A cunning and resourceful foe had fairly outwitted us twice. On the third encounter, luck had intervened in behalf of this courageous fighter and humorous gentleman.