On October 27, 1826 the Scottish botanist and explorer, David Douglas, responded to an attack on one of his guides and pursued and killed a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) near the Umpqua River. His journals did not mention many more encounters in western Oregon with these large brown bears. Lewis and Clark described many fearful accounts of encounters with “white bears” (one their names for grizzly bears) along their expedition route. Sadly if you travel their route today, you may see a few grizzlies only at one site, Lewis and Clark Pass in Montana. Grizzly bears occupied most of the western North America before being exterminated in many states including Oregon. Early human hunters in North America during the Pleistocene crossed vast prairies and high mountains in fear of massive 2200 lb short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) who, if they still lived, would dwarf our largest grizzly bears. Apparently the last brown bear in Oregon was killed in 1933 on Chesnimnus Creek in Wallowa County. However, black bears are still common in the state and likely number between 20,000-30,000. I have seen a number of black bears in the wild, mostly in Oregon’s Coastal Mountains. Some were pure black, others dark brown or beautifully, cinnamon colored. Most were seen lumbering across logging roads as I drove to various study areas. I had a giant stuffed brown bear as a child and would often chase my brother around the house holding the bear and growling. When I was in my thirties my mother called and asked if it was permissible to dispose of my much-loved bear, which after hibernating in the attic for 25 years, was sadly diminished. I remember pausing a second or two before I granted permission.
During one winter day in 1990, I drove into the Coast Range near Mary’s Peak with 3 wildlife biologists. Snow had fallen the night before and we often stopped to wrestle chains onto the tires of the 2 pick-ups. Reaching higher elevations we plowed through snow drifts until we could go no further and then left the trucks to continue on foot. We had a radio receiver and a general location for the radio-collared bear taken during the previous week. We were searching for a bear den. Bill was a graduate student at Oregon State University. He had captured 12 black bears a year earlier with cabled leg snares and radio-marked them. His study was to examine how bears used the thick shrubby coastal mountains of the Willamette Basin and perhaps illuminate the reasons why bears strip the sweet outer bark of young trees in some areas but not others. Thousands of young conifers were lost from this gustatory girdling.
A separate but unique part of his study was to learn more about where bears spend their winter days. We followed the radio signal down slope for 45 minutes tracking the direction by the volume of the transmitter’s signal. We paused near a pile of down trees likely blown over during a previous winter wind storm. Black bears that hibernate in milder climates such as western Oregon are generally more mobile and may occasionally leave their dens to forage during winter months. Most respond to human noises and smells while in a mild torpor condition, and may leave their dens if disturbed, so we were very cautious and silent as we crept around the down trunks. No luck. We could not pin-point the location of the entry point for the den. I turned to walk a few steps towards a down log and then stopped to consider abandoning our search for fear that we would spook the bear (a female) that was likely with cubs when a slight breeze brought a very rank odor from the direction of the down log. I quickly backed down the slope signaling to Bill and our other companions that the den was likely in the down log. Our day was done, the den location was recorded and we left to return to our trucks. Bears like to smell and that was good because now we would be able to return in the spring after the bears had left and take measurements of the den and describe the surrounding vegetation. We located 10 den sites that winter. Most were in large stumps or down logs. Bill and I inadvertently found one den because of nasal congestion. We had stopped to get our bearings and turned off our radio receiver and paused to decide our next course when we heard loud snores from a nearby large stump. The female was deeply asleep in a large cavity excavated at the bottom of the stump. We could barely hear two cubs mewling above their mother’s stentorian snores. We located one den in an ancient live Douglas-fir near Alsea. When I returned to the den that spring and removed the piles of vegetation near the small entry, I crawled into the spacious interior cavity excavated by the bear. The floor of the cavity was littered with dried leaves and wood shavings. It was large enough so I could stand up inside the tree. I felt like Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest hiding from the Sheriff of Nottingham.
