Post 24744
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I saw a grizzly make a stand in the ripple of an Idaho stream, where he was partly concealed by a willow-clump. In about half an hour he knocked five large salmon out of the water. With a single stroke of his fore paw each fish was flung on the shore, fifteen or twenty feet away. He made only one miss. These salmon weighed between five and twenty pounds each.
One autumn day, along the timber-line in the Rocky Mountains, wild folk were feeding on the last of the season’s berries. Birds were present in such numbers that it appeared like a cosmopolitan bird picnic. There were flocks of grouse and robins, numerous jays and camp-birds; and noisiest and liveliest of all were the Clarke crows. I watched the scene from the top of a tall spruce. This annual autumn feast is common to both bears and birds. In this region, and in the heights above, the bears sometimes fatten themselves before retiring for their long winter’s sleep.
While I was up in the tree, out of the woods below a mother grizzly and her two cubs ambled into an opening and made their way slowly up the slope toward me. Mother Grizzly stopped near my tree to dig out some mice. Just after this operation she evidently caught a faint scent of me and instantly stood on tiptoe, all concentration. Motionless as a statue, she looked, listened, and gathered information with her nostrils; but just one whiff of danger was all that came to her through the calm air.