December 27, 1997 Missoulian Article By Sherry Delvin: Black bear mauled by grizzly.
Attack on hibernating bear is first ever, says Diane Boyd-Heger, wolf researcher.
A grizzly bear apparently looking for one last load of calories before winter's respite, excavated and ate an early denning black bear in the remote North Fork last month.
The incident, documented by wolf researcher Diane Boyd Heger and her husband Ed, is the first record of a grizzly bear hunting and killing a hibernating black bear.
The story of its discovery is a lesson in bear behavior and human misbehavior. the couple said Friday. It goes like this:
On an ordinary overcast, snow-encrusted day in November, Ed Heger took his dog for a walk out behind his cabin, in the North Fork of the Flathead, on the edge of Glacier National Park in far northwestern Montana.
As it often does, Heger's path passed an oversized slash pile, a 35-by-35-foot monstrosity abandoned two decades ago and loaded with dirt and trees and logs. At the edge of the pile, he saw blood on the snow and a drag trail.
CAG Comments
Two decades ago people were in the area trying to eck out a living by cutting timber, posts, poles or whatever. Over the score of years bears have made use of the pile for denning purposes. This further demonstrates that bears do not avoid humans activities in their habitat.
End CAG Comments
He suspected hunters and a deer kill at first, but realized a short way down the trail that there were no human footprints in the snow. And that there were grizzly tracks.
Heger and his dog, Beamer, followed the path 50, maybe 60 yards, Heger reaching for his bear spray and lifting off the safety. Beamer nervously watched a stand of lodgepole up ahead.
"She's a border collie and she's very bear smart," Heger said Friday. "She'll let you know there's a bear in the area."
Which was just about when Heger heard branches breaking "Beamer gave a little woof and turned tail. Heger saw the grizzly charging out of the trees.
"The speed at which that bear came out of the woods was unbelievable," he said. "There wasn't time to get scared. It was all just happening."
Heger fired his bear spray in the air and it hung in a big cloud. The grizzly hit the spray about 15 feet from Heger and veered away, never slowing.
"And Ed got the hell out of there," said Boyd-Heger. "The dog was already gone."
A few days later, Heger loaded Beamer into his pickup and drove to the slash pile. But when he rolled down the window, Beamer went into her bear alert and I knew the grizzly was still around, so we left right away."
"I felt bad already," Heger said. "Here was a bear doing what it was supposed to be doing, and here I was invading its territory, doing what I wasn't supposed to be doing.."
Not until two weeks later did Heger returned to the slash pile with his wildlife biologist-wife - each with a can of bear spray, and the dog alongside. That's when they discovered the unusual nature of what Heger had happened upon.
The grizzly had, not long before Heger's arrival, discovered a black bear's den below the old slash pile. Opting not to use the entrance and tunnel already dug by the black bear, the grizzly tore through the top of the den and dragged out its prey.
"I imagine the denning bear was somewhat lethargic," Boyd-Heger said, and surprised. The grizzly dragged the black bear, which Heger believes was a fairly small animal he had seen a month or so earlier near the slash pile, into the lodgepole pines - very near to where Heger was charged.
"Ed didn't know it when he started following the drag trail, but the grizzly bear was right there on a fresh kill," Boyd-Heger said.
"The bear's reaction was very normal and completely justified. Ed was in his territory." Boyd-Heger said the grizzly ate the black bear "to the toenails. There were only a few bone splinters left. And there weren't really any signs of scavengers. The grizzly sat there and ate it all."
There was but one end of a femur to take to the animal museum at the University of Montana for comparison purposes. But from what she saw, Boyd-Heger said, the black bear was fairly small.
And the grizzly, based on its 9-inch-long toe-to-heel hind footprint, was about 250 to 300 pounds either an adult female or a subadult male.
Boyd-Heger said she called "all the bear people I know," asking. if anyone had ever heard of a grizzly bear excavating and consuming a den fling black bear.
They had not.
She found articles on black bears killing black bears and on grizzlies killing grizzlies - and on grizzlies killing black bears encountered by chance ("say, they were feeding on the same huckleberry patch.")
But no one had heard of or recorded an in-the-den attack; thus, Boyd-Heger's plans to publish "a little note" about the North Fork incident as a scientific paper.
"My over-Christmas project," she said.
Boyd-Heger has spent the past 18 years in the North Fork, on the edge of Glacier National Park, studying wolves and, less so, coyotes - "and inadvertently mountain lions and bears."
Black bears, she said, tend to den about a month earlier than the larger grizzlies, who spend the extra time loading up on calories for the long winter.
Most grizzlies den and hibernate when the snow gets deep enough to hinder hunting, but some North Fork animals stay out for part of the winter, she said. "Because we've got wolves and lions in the area, there's a Carrion resource all winter. The grizzlies take advantage of that."
Boyd-Heger and her husband emphasized, though, that he should not have followed the drag trail into the woods when he saw the bear tracks. And that the pepper spray was his salvation.
"I would really emphasize that I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing," Heger said. "But you know how human nature and curiosity are."
"Luckily, the bear spray worked exactly as it should have," Boyd-Heger said. "It was a very successful deterrent, better than a handgun by far. It saved my husband and the bear, most likely." And the story.
bitterroot.com/grizzly/BEARS11.HTM
