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11
FISHING
As important as plants are in the diet of an Alaskan bear, salmon are its best source of energy-rich lipid. My cubs’ prospects for long-term survival and reproductive success would be greatly enhanced if they could learn to fish. It was essential that they learn where salmon could be found and have the opportunity to learn how to fish efficiently, while I was still available to provide supplemental food if necessary and protect them from rivals.
For the cubs, competition was a fact of life which I never dared to forget. Their mother and JeenTo were not the only adults that used this area. Within a mile of the cabin, I had seen the adolescent boar QuiLog and at least two fully adult boars, at least one sow who struck me as being fairly old, JeenTo with her triplets, and one pair of preadolescents who had probably been weaned that spring. This latter pair included KeeSaw, who was sometimes with her pal or sibling and sometimes alone, as on the occasion when she met my cubs and was chased by them. That was a total of least six adults, two juveniles, and three infants who spent at least part of their time in the center of my cubs’ domain, with a lot more bears living further away. So far, we had had few direct confrontations with other bears because I avoided salmon streams, and most bears fled immediately on sensing my presence. But the time had come when avoidance would no longer suffice.
The brook that ran past our cabin eventually joined Catlin Creek, which in turn flowed into a river where red salmon were running in modest numbers–as evidenced by bleached salmon skeletons and jaws all along the creek’s gravel bars. For now, salmon numbers were so low that competition from other bears would be fierce. I could only hope that once Catlin Creek was filled with reds, other bears would be too busy catching fish or digesting them to rebuff the cubs; and the cubs would have more success in catching their own salmon.
Meanwhile, Jonjoanak and her siblings needed to be fed. Not only had they consumed the supply of fish heads and offal collected by Zak and Alatanna, but we were out of steaks and fillets for ourselves. I would have to catch more.
In preparation, I practiced casting with the heavy pole and reel which I had recently bought at a garage sale. The line on the reel wasn’t wound properly and failed to unwind smoothly. The cubs were still inside the cabin with Alatanna, so I took the opportunity to rewind the reel. Tying the tip of the line around a springy willow stem, I backed down the trail for a hundred yards, then began winding it in slowly and carefully.
Man proposes; Murphy disposes. Less than half the line was back onto the reel before all three cubs appeared nearby. The willow stem wiggling at the end of my line proved irresistible. They attacked. Within moments, Jonjoanak was entangled in the monofilament fishing line. Her angry bawling did nothing to dissuade the other cubs; they were soon entangled too, quickly stripping line back off the reel as fast as a 200–pound halibut heading for the depths of the Pacific Ocean. As I released the pole with one hand to pull a knife and cut the line, the pole was jerked out of my hand and pulled into the maelstrom of panicked cubs. The fiberglass rod was snapped within seconds as I stood by helplessly, wondering how in Hades I could cut the cubs free without being shredded by their claws and teeth. The main thing keeping them safe from each other was the fact that they were bound together too tightly to reach one another.
In a moment of rare wisdom, I simply sat down and waited for the inevitable. The more the cubs entangled themselves, the less they could move, and the more exhausted they became with the effort and heat. Finally, all three were panting heavily and had nearly given up trying to break free. They seemed to have reached a stage of perceived helplessness which instinct told them demanded surrender, as though to a mother bear. As I cut the fishing line, I watched them carefully, lest Jonjoanak or one of the others "blame" me for this mishap and retaliate. But even the normally aggressive little female seemed to be watching me expectantly, as though knowing she depended on me for rescue. When I cut the line binding her mouth, she licked my hand gently, something she had rarely done before. Strangely, this incident was the turning point in our relationship with Jonjoanak. She was never as friendly and trusting as her siblings, but her previous antagonism gave way to something warmer than neutrality. More than ever, the cubs looked toward us for protection and security.
The next morning, I dropped Alatanna off for work, then headed to Zak’s. He had borrowed a riverboat for my fishing trip, to be towed behind the Blue Mustang. Tony himself would have to spend the day at work, but he was looking forward to king salmon steaks every bit as much as the rest of us.
Tony was in high spirits when I arrived. He helped me switch the boat and trailer off of his green Jeep and onto the Blue Mustang. Then we sat down to heaping plates of fried potatoes and onions, eggs, and kielbasa.
During my first hour on the river, I passed numerous schools of salmon fighting their way upstream toward the oxygen-rich gravel beds where they would spawn. Only where the turbid river was less than two feet deep could the fish be clearly seen. When they raced through shallows over gravel bars, humpy (pink) and chum (dog) salmon are readily identifiable by their shape and color. A cock (male) humpy has a high humped back, a long hooked jaw, and dark grey back and flanks with a slight greenish cast. A chums has a smaller hump, elongated jaw and greenish-silver body slashed with maroon-colored tiger stripes. A humpy reaches about ten pounds; a chums reaches thirty. Although both humpies and chums are fine if cooked right, they are disdained by most Alaskans. Nobody would object to me catching these species for the cubs, if I happened to hook one. They would probably be abundant within a week or two; but for now the current humpy and chum runs had barely begun.
Meanwhile, to fill Tony’s freezer and the smokehouse with salmon for us, I was looking for more flavorful species. The few schools of chinooks (kings) that passed through the shallows were easily distinguishable by their bright–silver color and enormous size. Although some chinooks approach 100 pounds, I never saw one more than half that big. In the opinion of most Alaskans, this is the tastiest of all salmon. Personally, I like sockeyes (reds) and cohos (silvers) just as well. Cohos reach 25 pounds, and sockeyes only about half of that. Creeks filled with them were so red that they poetically reminded me of lava flows.
Such an abundance of salmon was a sportsman’s dream come true. But with three hungry cubs to feed, sport was the last thing on my mind.
When I started fishing that day, I had no premonition that filling Tony’s freezer and smokehouse would have to wait until I had fed an overly friendly grizzly bear. It took an hour to land two kings. After hauling the first ashore, I threaded a line through its gills, and lowered the fish back into the chill water of a nearby creek to stay fresh.
It was only when I had my second king in hand and walked over to add it to my rope stringer that I realized that I had a guest. Approaching the little creek with that second salmon dangling from one hand, I discovered that my first fish had been vandalized. Little remained of it but the mangled corpse, which had been skinned and gutted of any roe. The brain had been bitten out. Obviously, the culprit was a bear; the tracks suggested grizzly.
There he was, not twenty feet away, eyes locked onto the king in my hand, following each swing of its body. As quickly as it takes to tell this, I tossed my fish into the creek to distract the bear. Then, with a leap that would have done credit to a kangaroo, I was off the riverbank and inside the boat. An instant later, I was yanking furiously on the boat's starter rope, but the engine wouldn't fire.
I was dripping with sweat and shaking with fatigue when the curious grizzly wandered over and sat down on the bank, just beyond the bow of the skiff, as though bemused by my antics. Fortunately, he didn’t climb into the boat with me, or I would have taken my chances in the river with the salmon.
Light brown in color, weighing at least 300 pounds, this bear had the long-legged gangly appearance of a teenage boy. His head was far longer than it was high, as seen in profile, and somewhat narrower than high when seen frontally. By contrast, the head of a mature bear is usually thicker and wider relative to its length. This was a juvenile, probably around four years old.
Bears are still juveniles–sexually immature–when they become independent of their mother so that she can breed again and rear a new litter. Having gotten used to sharing the mother’s status while intimidating rivals, some juveniles remain aggressive through their first few months of independence, until they learn the hard way that they are at the bottom of the pecking order. Then they tend to become the meekest of bears. Only gradually, as they reach sexual maturity–adolescence–does their aggression rise again as they begin competing vigorously to climb the social ladder. Years may pass before a bear reaches full adulthood, not merely able to reproduce, but fully developed physically and behaviorally.
Although this juvenile was hungry enough to risk coming out in the open to steal my salmon, he was still too diffident to barge his way onto the skiff. He sat with his head hung below shoulder height, ears forward, mouth relaxed with lips hanging slackly–a posture revealing his peaceful intent.
I quit tugging at the starter cord, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and sat down to rest, half convinced that I was safe for the moment. Only then, in my growing calm, did it dawn on me that I had forgotten to reset the motor's kill switch and activate the ignition. I took care of that, but the motor was already flooded. I had two choices: wait there until the carburetor cleared of excess gas, which could take half an hour, or untie the boat and drift downstream until the boat would start. I looked around for oars; there were none. The idea of floating down the river out of control had little appeal; too easy to get into serious trouble.
So we waited–both of us–the bear and I. Having eaten close to twenty pounds of salmon may have taken the edge off his appetite, but it hadn’t satisfied him.
What the heck; if necessary, I could catch a few more fish for his dessert, and then start all over to lay in my own supply. I considered that approach, but I had a hunch that this fellow could keep packing them away until he was too full to waddle. I have heard that bears can eat up to a hundred pounds of salmon a day, but suspect that no bear could eat more than 15 percent of his own body weight–or about 45 pounds for this individual. In any event, waiting the bear out was as good an excuse as any for doing nothing. I just leaned back and waited for the carburator to clear or the bear to leave, whichever came first.
Eventually becoming rather bored, my mind drifted to Alatanna. Her way of combating ennui was to play card games, usually Hearts, Old Maid, or Fish. Come to think of it, “playing fish” is exactly how this bear and I had spent our morning, except that he’d gotten to take all of my fish without giving me any in return.
Finally losing patience with me, he rose and stretched, arching his back, bowing it up, then down, and yawning, sticking his tongue out so far that I wondered humorously whether it could touch his toes. Taking a few steps backwards, he tucked his hind legs a bit under his body, swatted slightly, and deposited the residue of his meal on the gravel bar.
Showing no further interest in me, the young grizzly turned and lumbered down the river bank. Wading along a gravel bar to the eddy at its base, he watched intently for several minutes, leapt out into the river, and slapped his paws down on something. Dipping his head underwater, he then lifted it again, moments later, jaws filled with a fiercely flopping king of roughly forty pounds. Only as he climbed the bank did he chance to look in my direction, as though to say, "This is how it's done!"
By the time the boat would start, there was no need to leave. The grizzly was content. He had caught two more salmon. He had taken the fat-rich portions of these fish too–the bright reddish-orange roe, the skin, and the brain. The protein-rich flesh was abandoned, and the bear wandered off, leaving the carcasses on the sand for any passing eagle, gull, or fisherman.
Well, fair’s fair. Time to turn the tables; he'd stolen the “choicest” parts of my fish. so I stole the remains of his. Combined with what was left of my two salmon, this gave me nearly fifty pounds of mangled flesh for the cubs and nearly that much rich, reddish-orange flesh from which to cut thick juicy steaks. Tony, Alatanna, and I dined well for the next few weeks.
* * *
It was in the third week of July, on Alatanna’s next day off, that we finally enrolled the cubs in fish school, where they majored in salmon. The cubs would find eating them delightful; and catching them was incredible sport.
The day before, I’d made a solo hike down to Catlin Creek and found only a few dozen reds left in the pools, where the water came up to my knees. As shallow as that was, it would thwart every effort the cubs made to catch salmon–unless the cubs could drive the salmon up– or downstream over gravel bars were the water was sometimes only inches deep, a trick I could teach them. Judging from the lack of fresh carcasses and scat on the shore, other bears had apparently moved on to richer pickings, so the cubs weren’t likely to run into trouble that I couldn’t handle.
Leaving the cabin early Sunday morning, Alatanna and I were filled with light–hearted joy, and all three cubs were bursting with playfulness. Half an hour of hiking brought us to the slope above Catlin Creek. Soon, we were deep within the shady gorge, refreshing ourselves in the clear, cold, spring water.
The only hint of the salmon were occasional splashes and ripples where their fins and backs momentarily broke the surface. These were initially ignored by the cubs. My attempts to entice them into the water were futile.
But nature takes its own course. After thirty minutes of climbing trees and racing around on the ground, our furry charges were panting with exhaustion and heat. One by one, they waded out into the stream, where they stretched out, neck deep, and lapped water. Only by chance did one cub notice an exhausted salmon and follow it halfheartedly until the fish found itself in a shallows and panicked, spurting forward suddenly in an attempt to reach deeper water. The violence of its movement caught the attention of all three cubs, and the race was on.
Quickly, the pool became a maelstrom of surging fish and splashing cubs, running this way and that, having the time of their lives.
Unfortunately, enthusiasm is no substitute for skill. The only salmon the cubs got to eat that night was one that I caught on a hook and line. I could only hope that the cubs’ dismal success trying to catch reds was not a harbinger of things to come.
On the last weekend of July, we again descended into the valley toward Catlin
Creek. The cubs raced around, chasing and wrestling, so full of fun and joy that they made our hearts sing. Alatanna bounced lightly down the slope after them, carrying a few sandwiches and apples in her pack, along with her guitar. I plodded along last, with nearly 100 pounds of video equipment, 35mm camera, and tape recorder. Traveling last made it easiest to keep track of what everyone was doing and make sure no one got left behind. It also increased my chance of spotting any bear approaching our small family. Before I could detect other bears upwind or ahead of us, the cubs often scented their wild kin or spotted their movement, but the cubs rarely noticed any bear approaching from downwind or behind us until he was within fifty yards. Ontak and his sisters were extremely sensitive to movement up to about three hundred yards away, so long as something was moving crossways to them. But they were poor at spotting anything standing still or walking straight toward us–keeping its appearance nearly constant–while more than 50 yards away.
We were still a quarter mile from Catlin Creek when Alatanna pointed out several eagles riding the thermal air currents along the creek. The birds were silhouetted against scattered cumulus clouds that were like giant snowdrifted icebergs floating in an azure sea.
Descending the steep trail toward the creek, the white heads and dark bodies of more eagles became visible on the tops of majestic jade-green spruce trees lining the shore.
So many eagles meant that another run of salmon had arrived; other bears might already be fishing in the creek. Alatanna and I tried in vain to call the cubs back and keep them close to us. “Ontak,” “Chrislee,” we yelled repeatedly, not wasting any effort on Jonjoanak, who was in the lead, as usual, and who never complied anyway. This was not one of the few times the cubs decided to cooperate.
These youngsters had learned their names within a week of being adopted. Even when Alatanna cooed one of their names softly, that cub’s ears would usually prick up and his head swivel toward her. Ontak and his sisters paid closest attention to us when we had food to offer, or when they had caught the scent of another bear and become agitated, blowing and jaw-popping in fear. But rarely did they come when called, much less desist from any activity we wanted to halt, or stay away from something that we feared might endanger them. I had observed mother black bears grunting, tongue-clucking, and gulping to summon their cubs or to warn them. I tried repeatedly to imitate those sounds closely enough for my cubs to respond as though I were their parent. But it did not work then, and it has never worked since. Perhaps I would have better luck with high quality tape recordings, but the opportunity to try has never arisen.
In any event, Chrislee and her siblings showed no sign of agitation as we neared Catlin Creek. They raced pell–mell out onto the gravel bar at the creek’s edge, apparently heedless of who or what might lay ahead. Either they had become reckless because of the overpowering scent of fish, as I have seen numerous other bear cubs do, even with their mothers calling loudly with concern; or their sensitive noses had already assured them that we were alone. As much as I was tempted to trust their instinctual alertness, wariness, and powers of perception, Alatanna frequently reminded me that they were just babies and almost as dependent on learning how to survive as any young primate. She was right; it was imperative that I keep constant watch. Before the day was out, we could be sharing this section of stream with another black bear or two and maybe a grizzly.
My worries about the cubs running headlong into trouble proved groundless. Although the creek was swarming with fish, neither the cubs nor I detected any fresh sign of another bear. All scat and fish carcasses were at least a week old, from the last run of red salmon, not from the current run of humpies. Perhaps the salmon had arrived only within the past few hours. And most local bears might have gathered a mile or more downstream at Otter Creek, or farther away at the river, both of which supported much heavier runs of fish. While we couldn’t count on having Catlin Creek to ourselves for long, at least we had it now.
The air throbbed with the cry of the gulls. Some of these white birds were resting on gravel bars; others were riding the current downstream. A few were paddling slowly upstream, occasionally lifting their snowy wings and surging forward several inches as their black beaks stabbed through the shimmering surface, apparently catching some prey too small for us to see.
Nearby, a great blue heron stood statue-still for minutes at a time before his long beak knifed into the water, then emerged with a small shiny fish. When I walked downstream to catch sight of his prey, this stately bird spread four-foot wings and flew another hundred yards before dropping back into the creek near his grey-blue mate. (This was the only time I saw herons so far north. So far as I know, they are rare above Southeast Alaska, and especially above Prince William Sound).
As soon as the cubs raced into the creek, the harsh cries of gulls and ravens more than doubled in volume, like a crowd of eager fans watching a football team take the field. With a touch of wry humor, I wondered whether the birds really were enthusiastic over the arrival of my cubs. The gulls were unable to catch any of the hundreds of pink salmon which I now saw swimming here. For access to that feast, the birds depended on scraps left by bears.
Peering into the creek, it would have been easy to see the salmon if they still had the bright–silver bellies and flanks they had sported during their years of growth and maturation in the ocean. But no sooner had they gathered in the brackish water at a river mouth than their bodies had begun to darken–camouflage that would increase their chances of surviving their upriver fight through the gauntlet of hungry bears and eagles.
Over much of the creek’s length, its canyon walls were cliffs of bluish-black shale, sprinkled with patches of gray, green, and orange lichens. Hundred–foot spruce and fifty–foot cottonwood overhung the creek, casting deep shadows and dark reflections on its gently roiling water. In this water danced the images of those shadowed walls, splashed here and there with blue sky. The water itself had been slightly stained to the color of coffee where it had percolated through muskeg swamps, a few miles upstream.
Yet whatever protection was provided by those reflections and stains, and the fish’s own camouflage, was undone by the high visibility of the salmon's whitish or pale pink wounds. Some had lost patches of skin and scales up to two inches across from by being battered against rocks as they fought upstream through rapids. Others, wounded in combat with rival males, looked like they had lost strips of skin, especially along the spine, which could run the entire length of a salmon; or rivals had nipped off the tips of their fins and tails, or chunks of flesh, leaving them with roughly hemispherical wounds up to an inch in diameter and a quarter-inch deep. The hooked jaws and enlarged teeth of the cocks weren’t just for show! Injuries were often covered with a white layer of fungus.
While Ontak and his sisters were on the gravel bar nearby, exploring eagerly, I continued to study these fish. At first, I thought they were just resting in the shallows, gathering strength for the next phase of their tough upstream journey to mate, then die. Some were holding stationary positions in the river by swimming just hard enough to counteract the current. Then, two to five fish would converge, swirl around, and shoot off together–soon to be replaced by others.
Or so it seemed, until I realized that the replacement fish at each site had a similar pattern of discolorations to the one which had left seconds earlier. No, not just similar; identical. Watching closely, I finally realized what I was seeing. In the pool before me, each of several individual fish was defending a particular area of the riverbed, presumaby where it and its mate had buried their fertilized eggs. They were protecting those eggs from being eaten and/or evicted by rival fish that wanted to incubate their own offspring on the spot. When an intruder tried to crowd in, the resident would drive the intruder away, perhaps violently, then return to guard its nest. I wondered whether a male and female remained paired after mating to guard their nest jointly. But I never saw any pair of fish that I could be sure remained consistently together, if only because the hens tended to be less heavily discolored than the males, making them harder to see and to identify individually.
As clusters of fish competed for mates or nest sites (redds), they sometimes whipped their bodies back and forth in the foot-deep water, making splashes that my cubs could not long ignore. The sounds of splashing made the bears pay attention. Their eyes were drawn to the shining white wakes thrown up by the fish. Perhaps reluctant to face failure again with these pinks, as they had previously with the sockeyes, all three cubs held back for several minutes, standing poised on the creek bank, heads high and ears cocked forward, as though ready to dive in, yet never doing so. Finally, in frustration, I jumped into the nearest pool, scattering fish in every direction. Several pinks raced upstream into a riffle mere inches deep, where their bodies threw roostertail wakes a handspan above their backs. The cubs burst into pursuit.
Pounce, miss, pounce, bite, catch salmon, lift to carry ashore, lose grip, lose fish, stand in confusion, then race off again, pounce, miss, pounce, and SUCCESS!
Jonjoanak caught the first salmon and carried it ashore with her head held as high as possible. Even then, the five-pound fish was so long compared to her short legs that its tail and head dragged in the water. Once she reached the gravel beach, the usual squabble erupted, with all three cubs bawling loudly as Ontak and Chrislee sought a share, and Jonjoanak tried to keep the fish entirely to herself. She stood over her prize, ears back, nose down and face elongated, making sudden short lunges at her siblings to drive them away.
Hoping to prevent a serious fight, I pulled a fishing line from my backpack and quickly caught a salmon. There were so many fish that it took only seconds.
Normally, when the cubs were competing for some goody, they ignored my attempts to distract them. Lately, though, they had begun to realize that when I called, I often had more treats to offer; so it was now. Ontak saw the salmon and hurried over. Before he could claim it, I lifted the fish above his head and walked toward a shallow riffle to release it again. Ontak followed, protesting loudly and trying repeatedly to reach up and take the prize away from me. When I dropped the fish into the riffle, it struggled momentarily, then began to swim away. Ontak pounced. Minutes later, I repeated this process with Chrislee. Soon, all three cubs were munching lustily.
Even as small as the cubs were, still under forty pounds, none was satisfied with a single fish. Each abandoned her fish while only partly eaten and returned to the creek, leaving a flock of squabbling gulls and ravens in her wake. Now that each of the cubs had caught a salmon, this success overcame whatever discouragement they had learned from failing in attempts to catch the more vigorous sockeye salmon. They quickly tried again. Although each spent at least another half-hour before succeeding a second time, none quit trying. During the interim, there were many near successes as they chased fish and caught them momentarily in their claws, or sometimes even in their teeth, before losing them again. Literally, the “taste” of success and the sport of it were enough to keep them fishing.
While the cubs explored along the creek, Alatanna and I took advantage of the brief respite to enjoy the lunch she had packed, savoring ham sandwiches and apples without having to fend off three voracious youngsters. I chewed contentedly, enjoying the cubs’ excitement and the affectionate company of my wife. The pair of herons had worked their way upstream and were now feeding within thirty feet of us, apparently unconcerned by us or the cubs upstream.
After cleaning up from lunch, Alatanna picked up her guitar and softly sang folk tunes. Much as I would have liked to join her, the sound of my own voice would have blended well only with a chorus of frogs.
By the time Ontak and his sisters had their fill of salmon, all they wanted to do was sleep. Alatanna and I were sitting side–by–side against the cool creek bank. Ontak and Chrislee shuffled over and plopped down on either side of us, rolling onto their backs, with their taut tummies bulging upwards like balloons swollen almost to the bursting point. As had become our custom, Alatanna and I stroked their tight bellies, scratched under their chins, and lightly massaged their limbs. They purred briefly, then were asleep, breathing heavily, sometimes snoring. Twitching of their legs, occasional whines, and rapid movements of their eyelids made me wonder whether they were now chasing salmon in their dreams.
Jonjoanak, as usual, kept her distance. She had buried her last salmon in sand and gravel, then bedded down atop her cache. I have seen bears cache moose and other mammalian carrion by burying it with brush, then sleep atop their larder or nearby; red fox do the same thing. But this was the first time I had seen a bear do it with fish. As David Henry showed with red fox in Canada, caching is a good way to hide prey from aerial scavengers, such as gulls and ravens. But, at least in Jonjoanak’s case, it was a lousy way to get any sleep. Her eyes were rarely shut for even a minute before an overly bold bird provoked her into leaping up and lunging at it. The gulls and ravens, and even a magpie, were well aware of what the cache held, and seemed determined to steal a share.
Generally, these birds are far too fast to be caught by a bear. But the evolution of superfast reflexes came with a price: the death of “retarded” birds. To my surprise, Jonjoanak contributed to the genetic fitness of ravens in general by eliminating one of their culls. As she lunged forward, the bird leapt into the air a bit too slowly. She batted it down with one paw, pinned it to the gravel, bit down, and shook her head violently. Rather than eat the bird, she dropped it and walked back to her salmon cache, with her tongue repeatedly extended several inches, then withdrawn, getting rid of clinging bits of feather.
After waking up, Ontak pulled my hand to his mouth and bit it gently, inviting me to play. Lulled by a belly full of lunch and the warm afternoon sun in which we basked, I had no interest in anything so energetic. To distract Ontak, I fished out a handful of peanuts and raisins, then dropped a few onto his tummy. Pulling his chin to his chest, he could barely see the treats; but that was enough for him to recover them one at a time, gripping each peanut or raisin between the tips of two middle claws as if they were chopsticks–in much the same manner as another black bear plucked willow catkins with her claw tips.
Although we commonly refer to a bear as having four "feet" because it walks on all of them, we could just as well refer to its forefeet as “hands," since that is essentially what are formed by its metacarpal bones and phalanges. Its fingers are joined by webbing and don't move as independently of each other as ours do. Yet they still have far more dexterity than the digits of a canid or felid. Small objects can be gripped between any two adjacent "finger claws" (analogous to our fingernails). Even without an opposable thumb such as we and pandas have, other kinds of bears can exert a powerful grip on larger objects. For example, an adult black bear once jerked a walking stick away from me by gripping the stick with two middle claws over the stick and the outside claws under the stick (you can use your fingers to firmly grip a pencil the same way).
As delighted as I had been at slowly winning the cubs’ trust and affection, and helping them learn to forage, I was even happier at the great strides made this day in advancing their self–sufficiency. Catching salmon wouldn’t always be this easy, as their defeat by the sockeyes had shown. But their next attempt with those challenging fish would be facilitated by whatever skills they had learned with today’s easier prey.
Bears employ many methods to catch salmon. Some differences among bears
may be just idiosyncratic variations; but others are clearly tailored to different circumstances.
When I have watched bears along a stretch of river where the water was no more than about three feet deep, each bear typically sat or stood on the shore, or in the water itself, listening and watching for a fish or for the V-wake above its back. Then the bear would lunge forward and try to pin the fish to the bottom with his claws. Once a salmon had been pinned, the bear’s head would dip underwater and he’d grasp the fish in his jaws.
Sometimes the bear’s claws were driven like spear prongs into the fish; at other times, the fish was apparently held mainly by the pressure of the bear’s paws. Bears occasionally bring a salmon to shore, then discard it–which gives me an opportunity to later examine the fish closely. Some of these victims have indentations of claw and tooth tips on their skin, but little or no wound at all.
I have seen this pounce-and-pin technique thousands of times with bears fishing for salmon and a few times with bears fishing for trout. I once watched a black bear in California miss while using this technique and accidently swat the trout ashore. It may have been such accidents which led turn-of-the-century writers to describe Rocky Mountain black and grizzly bears purposefully swatting salmon ashore. Personally, I have never seen that, and don’t know anyone who has. You could speculate that fish-swatting was a local tradition confined to bears in the Rockies, and that the tradition died out due to overhunting of knowledgeable bears, or to elimination of salmon through overfishing and downstream dam construction in those watersheds. But any bear attempting to swat a fish out of the water would be likely to fail most of the time. The fish would get away, or its carcass would be stolen by another animal.
Where the water is a few feet deep, a bear using the pounce–and–pin technique is rarely successful on more than one in five attempts. Although water turbidity (murkiness) and glare off its surface seem to affect both the ease with which bears can spot salmon and probably vice versa, I have never been able to draw a clear correlation between visibility and fishing success. Water depth, salmon abundance, and salmon vigor seem to play at least as great a role. Indeed, some bears are very successful at night, when fishing may be guided more by hearing than by sight.
Fishing techniques differ where salmon are climbing a waterfall. In Katmai National Park, I have watched salmon struggle upstream over slopes of twenty degrees or more, weaving among boulders as they fight their way through just inches of water, moving from one pool to the next. They rest in these pools, mouths opening and closing like sprinters gasping for air at the end of a race. Just as we gasp air, fish gasp water to increase oxygen uptake.
The pools and shallow passageways between boulders became so crowded with salmon that the bears could walk up, dip their heads, and pluck salmon out of the water almost as easily and calmly as if they were plucking mushrooms off the ground. Most of the bears walked out to catch a fish, then returned ashore to eat it, often going out of sight to avoid having the fish stolen by a rival. More dominant bears ate their fish where they killed it.
The fish might be steadied by using the right paw to hold the fish on the back of the left paw, or against a rock. Then the fish was bitten, usually on the back, just behind the head, and the fat-rich skin pulled off. Any roe were eaten, and then the brain was bitten off with a crunch so loud that I could clearly hear it fifty feet away. Even after listening to that crunch several hundred times, it still makes me shudder, with a kind of premonition of the noise that would be made if a bear were chewing on me. Bears fascinate me and evoke my affection. Generally, I trust them, sometimes so much that I have fallen asleep briefly while making observations of bears within fifty yards of me. Then, little things like that “crunch” jerk me back to the reality that these are extraordinarily powerful predators, with no more hesitation about killing mammals than they have about killing fish. Rarely, a bear preys on other bears or even people. Serial killers and cannibals are not confined to the human race.
One boar I watched on another creek had broken his lower jaw, either while fighting another boar, or by being shot. He could not bite down to catch salmon or to chew them; to compensate, he had developed an alternative and nearly effortless method of fishing. He sat at the base of a falls facing upstream. The pool between his legs and belly provided a resting place for salmon–and a living larder for the bear, who speared the fish with his claws, tore the fish apart, then used his fingers to stuff flesh into his throat.
Another bear, at Katmai’s Brooks River, sat facing downstream in chest-deep water so that her body formed an eddy where salmon rested, likewise providing her with nearly effortless meals. The same thing has been seen at McNeil Falls, just north of Katmai.
Brooks Falls at Katmai presents a very different challenge to both fish and bears. These falls are at least five feet high, and salmon try to leap this distance. I have watched sockeye salmon race upstream toward the falls, explode out of the water like blood-red titan rockets, flying high and far until they landed on the lip of the falls, then give another tremendous burst of speed to move upstream before the river flow and gravity could sweep them back down again. Some fish try again and again before they succeed. Others never do make it over the falls, either because they lack the strength, or because they fly into the jaws of a waiting bear.
At any given time, I have seen up to three bears stand at the crest of Brooks Falls, ready to snap up salmon. Footing is precarious, and bears don't generally take more than one step to either side to catch a fish, lest the bear stumble and be swept over the falls. Although the range of motion for a bear is thus limited to several feet to either side of where he stands, the bears are so quick that salmon sometimes seem to literally fly into their jaws, as though the fish had been caught in some kind of Star Trek tractor beam emanating from the bear’s mouth.
The most dominant bears fished either at the falls or where the river was shallow. I saw several grizzlies attempt to chase down salmon in water over three feet deep, but the fish easily outswam most of them. Only subordinates, like the two-year-old female I called Nitsi, were forced to fish in deep water near the end of Brooks River where it emptied into Naknek Lake. This area of the river was over ten feet deep that summer–the year before I became foster father to Chrislee and her siblings. I suspect that Nitsi caught salmon by swimming up underneath them as they rested beside the riverbank, often in a shadowed area where the bank had been undercut by erosion.
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Although salmon are what most people normally think of when anyone mentions bears fishing, in fact, bears also catch other species. I have watched both grizzly and black bears prey on suckers and cutthroat trout, which leave Rocky Mountain lakes to spawn in streams. Both grizzly and black bears likewise catch trout which have become stranded in pools as a river dries up. My fellow grad student Tommy Smith saw catfish taken this same way by black bears in the White River area of Arkansas. Grizzly and black bears on the seacoasts of Alaska scavenge dead or dying halibut, crabs, and other animals washed ashore; they flip over rocks for tiny sculpins and blenny eels.
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I started educating my cubs in fishing techniques where the water was shallow and fish were relatively helpless, hoping that this would give the youngsters a head start for graduating to areas where the water was deeper and rougher, requiring much more skill.
I wanted them to learn as many fishing techniques as possible in hopes that they would never be at a loss for a successful method, no matter what the water conditions or species of fish. I didn’t dare take them where they could spend several hours a day watching other bears fish, but I tried to guide them to situations where they could learn for themselves.
On occasions when I tried to demonstrate new methods personally, however, I could rarely get the cubs to pay attention. Either they took these as invitations to play–with the fish and with me; or they were too busy using their own fishing techniques, however unsuccessful. I sometimes felt like a father trying vainly to get his kids to stop playing football long enough to learn a few pointers. The excitement of chasing fish left little room for distractions such as my attempts at education.
Mother bears don’t face quite the same problem with their youngsters. Although “wild” cubs commonly play while their mother grazes, they spend a lot less time playing while she fishes. One reason for the difference is that most play occurs only after the cubs have dined well, whether on milk, plants, or meat. Cubs are free to eat their fill of plants, and then to roughhouse. But meat-fed cubs have to wait for mama to provide salmon or other prey, so the youngsters are hungry most of the time.
Perhaps there is a second reason. Almost no skill is required to graze, whereas catching salmon can be extremely difficult. Even some adults succeed no more than once in every 10 to 100 tries to catch a fish. Given the wide variety of fishing challenges, and the need to employ somewhat different techniques in different situations, you might expect these highly intelligent animals to pay rapt attention to those of their fellows which are most successful. In particular, you might expect cubs to pay close attention to their mothers. In fact, however, cubs seem no more attentive than human children. Much of their time is spent looking around, napping, or playing in a rather distracted manner. Even when cubs watch their mothers, they remind me of myself as a kid while my own mom cooked supper; I was far less interested in the how of preparation than in the when.
At the same time that I was rearing and studying my black bear cubs, Mike Luque investigated development of fishing skills among fully wild grizzly bears at McNeil Falls.1 There, cubs did not seem to learn much about fishing by watching their mother. Even trial and error attempts on their own were infrequent until they were several years old. The water at McNeil is so deep, swift and turbulent, and the number of aggressive adults so high, that fishing is both difficult and dangerous. Although most learning seemed to be by trial-and-error, Tom Bledsoe did observe a few cases of clear imitation at McNeil.2
I suspect that imitation has occurred anytime I find a stream where several bears exhibit a
fishing style which is seldom seen elsewhere–like leaping forward so powerfully that salmon
are splashed up on shore, where they can be captured. While I can’t preclude the possibility
that each bear independently invented this technique and discovered that was especially
effective in this situation, I could detect no features of any fishing site so unique that they could
have shaped learning so uniformly or selected for this particular technique over so many
alternatives.
My own observations indicate that fishing skills develop much faster at locations where fishing is easier and competition less intense. On occasions where I have seen unweaned cubs trying or succeeding in catching fish, their techniques did not necessarily correspond to their mother’s– further suggesting that imitation plays little role for most cubs. However, I do not believe that we have adequately assessed the extent of imitation. Given the keen intelligence of bears, I would have expected them to depend heavily on imitation–as heavily as chimpanzees do for culturally transmitting knowledge from individual to individual and generation to generation. As research continues, we may indeed find many examples of imitation among bears, although it may play a larger role in relatively simple skills than in something as complex as fishing. After all, how many of us could watch someone fly fishing or playing a musical instrument or using a computer, then imitate their expertise without months or years of practice?
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Once Chrislee and her siblings were full of salmon, they played for awhile, then settled down for a midday siesta. Later, they played again.
Like many bears, the cubs loved walking on logs, both those lying on the ground and those which bridged a creek. Here and there, the bedrock of the cliff behind us was draped with a thick layer of organic soil as rich and brown as cocoa which had eroded from the slope above. From these deposits of soil sprang alder, spruce, and birch trees, as well as shrubs, forming a dense canopy that was all but impenetrable to a person, but perfect cover for a bear.
At the top of the cliff were large spruce and cottonwood trees. Where the soil had eroded, exposing their roots, some trees had fallen prey to wind and gravity. As though they were walkers who had stubbed their toes and tripped, these trees had pivoted on their roots and fallen headlong across the valley. The taller ones struck the far rim with such force that their crowns snapped off as neatly as if Madame La Guillotine had done the job. Their headless trunks dropped farther down the slope and lodged there. In time, some of the rootmasses broke loose too, and the whole tree slid down into the gorge. This produced a maze of trees cris–crossing the narrow canyon from the cliff rim down to the creek bed. As though this maze had been constructed for their enjoyment, Jonjoanak and her siblings raced up a trunk, leapt to the bank, jumped onto a higher or lower tree, then sped off in pursuit of one another.
The cubs were able to romp back and forth across the creek, for few of the “beheaded” trees had more than a few branches on the surviving portions of their trunks. One cottonwood, the trunk of which exceeded three feet in thickness at its base, had a foot-thick branch thrusting out and up more than twenty feet. Up this climbed Chrislee, followed closely by Jonjoanak. Chrislee climbed until the branches became too small to support her weight. There, she performed a pirouette that might have delighted Michelle Kwan and turned to face her pursuer. Gently, they chewed at one another’s cheeks, and batted each other’s head and shoulders. Jonjoanak rose up on her hindquarters and pressed forward against her sister. The branch under them cracked. Their support fell away, and they were plunged forty feet into the creek. Unlike cats, they were not able to twist in midair to land on their feet. Chrislee hit the water on her back, and Jonjoanak landed on her flank. Their splash rose up and outwards a good twenty feet, nearly drenching us. By the time Alatanna and I could get to our feet, to race over and rescue the tykes in case they had been wounded, both of their heads had popped to the surface and the little daredevils were swimming ashore, where they shook violently to rid their fur of water. Chrislee walked toward us as though to see what we were making such a fuss about, then turned back, sprinted forward, and leapt on her sister’s back. Then they were off again onto the maze of fallen trees to catch their brother.
As a dead tree decays, moisture collects under its bark, which loosens the bark’s grip on the wood beneath. If the bark becomes covered with moss, this accelerates the decay and the bark separates into pieces. Trunks that might appear to offer good footing thus become treacherous. When stepped on, the bark can break loose, sending the walker slipping, sliding, and perhaps tumbling. This has happened to me countless times, which is one reason I sometimes hike wearing hardened steel spikes on my boots and carrying a ski pole in one or both hands to provide added stability. You might expect this to be less likely to happen to bears. Although a bear’s foot might slip on bark as easily as a person’s, a bear has four feet for balance, a lower center of gravity, and twenty claws to pierce through bark to the solid wood beneath. Yet our cubs seldom dug their claws in deeply enough to penetrate through the bark, so they slipped frequently.
This is what happened to Ontak as his sisters chased him. One instant, he was racing along a trunk; then, too fast for my eye to see, he was dangling by a single paw, more than thirty feet above a pile of shattered rock which had been split from the cliff face by ice expansion during winters long past. His sisters had fallen farther without injury because they had landed in a couple of feet of water. Ontak would not be so lucky. Alatanna stifled a scream, lest she distract the cub and cause his death. I was already running forward, trying to find a place beneath Ontak where I might be able to catch him if he fell, hoping that he would not claw me too badly in his terror.
Even as I scrambled over the rock slide under him, he took his rescue into his own “hands.” Hanging by his left “hand”, he reached upwards with the right one and sank his finger claws into the wood. Then he strained to lift his hindquarters to get a grip with his toe claws. Failing in that twice, he swung his body back and forth several times until one of his hind feet, then the other, gained solid purchase.
Now what? He was hanging upside down with his arms and hindlegs extended as far as possible around the underside of the sloping trunk. Had the trunk been thinner, he could have reached completely around it and sunk his finger claws into its upper side, then slipped down its length toward the ground. But with a trunk more than two feet thick, he could not even reach its vertical sides. Moving one “hand” and foot at a time, he gingerly turned until his body was crossways under the tree so that he would be able to inch upwards, around the trunk. His “hands” were just coming up over the curve of the trunk when more bark slipped, and his toe claws tore loose. Again, he was dangling by just his “hands,” and then by a single “hand.”
Bawling more loudly than ever, he surveyed the ground and me beneath him, then tried again to climb to safety. Another fifteen minutes of heartrending gymnastics were required for success. Then, as though the whole thing had been part of their game, all three cubs were back at play.
On another occasion when Ontak ended up dangling by a single “hand,” he was on a birch limb just a few inches thick, with bark too smooth to offer much grip. There was no way for him to climb back up; and again, he was too high, over rocks, to simply drop to the ground safely. He swung back and forth a few times from the single “hand,” then reached out and grasped the branch with the other “hand.” Letting go with the first “hand,” he repeated the process, moving “hand over hand” several times until he reached safety. That was my first clue that cubs can brachiate almost as well as a gibbon or chimpanzee.
Brachiation is much less common as black bears mature and grow in body size (I have never seen it in grizzlies). However, biologist David Garshellis3 recently told me that brachiation remains common even into adulthood for Asian sun bears, perhaps because those bears seldom exceed 100 pounds. Furthermore, sun bears have finger claws at least two to three times as long as those of a black bear; similar to those of a grizzly, but even more strongly curved. Long, heavily curved finger claws may facilitate brachiation because they can curl entirely around to the top side of a branch or vine so that the bear can hang by its claw tips–much as I have hung from a gymnastic "horizontal bar" by a wood dowling under my fingertips, supported by leather "grips" that covered my palm.
Sloth bears, which are of intermediate body size between black and sun bears, have finger claws similar to those of a sun bear, which a sloth bear commonly uses for ripping apart termite mounds to eat the insects. It would be interesting to know how commonly they brachiate, especially as adults.
As evening drew upon us, the cubs regained interest in the salmon and resumed fishing. They chased many and caught several apiece, but ate little of each fish, as though they fished now mainly for sport. Had they still been with their mother at this stage, our three imps might have observed her eating only the fattiest parts of each fish–its roe, skin, and brain–and learned to follow suit. In Doddy’s absence, Alatanna and I tried to mentor her cubs. A firm squeeze to the belly of each fish revealed whether it contained reddish-orange roe or white milt (semen). Most bears readily eat roe; but they have no liking for milt, despite its popularity with some people; for instance, when fried with onion, pepper, and eggs. When one of our cubs carried a fish ashore and discovered it was a cock, it was abandoned, whereupon we rushed the poor creature back into the water–even knowing it had no more than a few days to live. Or, if the fish was already dead, I cut into its head to expose the brain. Unlike fully wild bears, our cubs showed little interest in brains, which they just sniffed, pawed, and licked, but generally did not eat. Nor were the cubs much interested in the skin. At this stage, my youngsters were much more finicky than fully wild bears. I would have to try again when they were far hungrier.
They had mastered important new skills this day. Not all that we had tried to teach, much less all that they would need in the years to come, but, there would be many more chances to teach them–and to learn from them. Meanwhile, I would have to continue tutoring them about edible plants and sharpening their skills in hunting land animals.
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