The Grizzly's Claim

By Jamie Ross

I was bent at the waist with Rebel's front left foot cradled in my lap. I was just tapping in the last couple of nails, replacing a shoe that had been click-clacking down the trail that afternoon, the footwear on his front feet looking more like flip-flops than horseshoes.

Sweat dripped from my brow and ran into my eyes as I struggled with the weight of a 1,200-pound horse who was quickly losing patience with me. Tired of standing on three legs, he was leaning into me. I set his foot down and tried to straighten my back. Shoeing was not something I enjoyed, but it was a necessary task out here in the mountains. The rocky terrain meant the string had to be well shod.

Truth be told, I had learned to shoe on the job, and my talents paled miserably when compared to some of the more seasoned guides and packers. Not far from me Mark Hobman was clinching off the shoes on a pack mule named Jill– a less than honourable creature whose main focus through the entire exercise was to try to add a double ought horseshoe-shaped bruise to Hobman’s fine physique. The talented packer avoided her quick feet, and went on whispering terms of endearment into her lengthy ears. I worried about Mark. I’m not sure his affections were reciprocated.

As I was reaching for the clinchers and rasp to finish my job, three excited guests came scurrying up from the direction of the Cascade River carrying fishing rods like jousting poles.

“Any luck then?” I asked, while crouching back to the task.

“We didn’t even get to the creek,” stammered one of them, while the other two nodded vigorously, each confirming the story. Mark and I straightened up and leaned on the corral, thankful for the brief break, and listened to their story.

On the way to the river, they had pushed through some riverside willows and come upon a gruesome scene. A big bull elk was badly injured and lying in willow brush, its back left leg torn and mangled. Blood was everywhere.

“So, we got the hell out of there!” said the first angler, while the others bobbed their heads. “Must have been a big animal to take that elk down!”

“Yes, real big,” the other two nodded their collective heads in agreement.

They asked whether we had a gun to put the poor ungulate out of his misery. We definitely weren't allowed to carry firearms in the National Park. Only Park wardens were permitted, and I was quite fine with that. Out here, nature always took its own course.

Our best guess was wolves. They often attack the hindquarters of elk, hanging onto a back leg until exhaustion finally catches up with their prey. I was a bit surprised that they hadn’t finished the job. Perhaps the big bull had struggled off for a distance before finding a place to lie low.

We all agreed that fishing was not a great idea given the circumstances – nor did we condone the three dudes’ idea that they might return with their wives in tow to get some lovely photos of themselves with the poor creature.

Mark and I decided that we would stroll down to the river for a look after dinner.

From the rear of the rail horse corral a well-worn dirt trail meandered south to the river. In the riverside willows slightly downstream, we came across the spot described by the guests, where the elk had been injured and laid low. The foliage was even worse than the men had described – branches broken and trampled and covered with fresh blood. But there was no elk, just thousands of flies attracted by the scent of death.

We pushed through the willows, stepping carefully over broken branches and dark patches of drying blood. Then we stopped.

Fifty yards away, a sow grizzly had hold of the bull elk by the neck. With astonishing ease she dragged the massive carcass over sand and rounded boulders toward the river before pulling it into the current. The bear then caught a scent, waggled her snout in the air, and turned towards us with a grunt. She let out a loud “huff” through her nostrils, having picked up the unmistakable rancid odour of humans nearby. We backed away slowly and crept back to the camp.

“No more fishing,” we told the group. “No more fishing for a while,” we informed the cook, who saw three rides come through her Flint’s Park tent camp weekly. Though the group of dudes in our care worried the night away, that a grizzly remained close – we knew that the bear had her food and would stay with the kill. She had probably claimed the elk from the wolves, and would not willingly give it up.

Early the next morning, we got ourselves ready to depart for the next camp in our 6-day ride, across Forty-Mile Summit before descending into Mystic Valley. Before breakfast, I saddled my horse, and rode him in a roundabout way to the river. The sow was bedded down in some grass on the far bank.

Spying me, she snorted, grunted and jumped to her feet, charging towards me into the river, before stopping halfway to where I sat on my saddle horse. She splashed water in my direction with her front paws, and woofed a fearsome warning. My guide horse, an Appaloosa named Stoney, although sometimes afraid of grouse, mice, and dropped rain jackets – a flightiness that helped keep him out of the dude string, was calm and collected in the face of the grizzly. Gently telling the grumpy girl that I did not want her catch, I reined my horse away and rode back to camp.

For the next three weeks I brought a new six-day ride though Flint’s Park Camp. After directing the guests to their canvas lodgings and to the coffee waiting in the mess tent, I would eagerly mount my saddle horse and ride back down to the river to check in on my bear. The first couple of weeks, the grizzly would leap from her resting place on the far side of the river and repeat the fake charge into the Cascade, though each week she showed less enthusiasm.

She seemed to decide that I was simply part of the scenery, a harmless nuisance who appeared once a week, looked across the river for a minute or two, then politely left her to dinner.

By the third week, the bear simply struggled to her feet and sauntered slowly to what was left of the elk. She placed her right fore-paw on the carcass and looked at me as if to say – “This is mine!” Her belly hung low into the current and her coat glowed healthy and beautiful. I took my camera from my saddlebag and clicked a few photos, tipped my hat at the sow, and trotted away.

When I ventured down to the Cascade River on the fourth week, the bear was gone and all that was left of the elk was a bit of the hide hidden under the clear mountain water. The bones, bleached and cleaned by sun and river current, had been taken away. Even the bull’s ample rack was gone.

I could once again tell each new group that the Cascade River was open for fishing. After hearing the story around the campfire, however, most decided they were perfectly content casting into lakes farther from camp.

Trout suddenly didn't seem quite so important when you knew who had been using the river before you.