Hunting stock killers in the Southwest and Mexico has been my hobby for half a century. I’ve killed lots of mountain lions, wolves, and jaguars in that time, many of them smart, dangerous animals that behaved with as much individuality as humans, but the animal I’ve learned to admire and respect most is the grizzly.
For one thing, dogs seldom help much in hunting an outlaw grizzly. They usually fail to stop and hold a grizzly long enough for a hunter to catch up and get in a shot. More often the bear pauses just long enough to kill a few valuable dogs. If they keep pressing him, he’ll take to country so rough that even a dog can’t follow. Dog hunts commonly get some bruin that’s just an innocent loiterer and the real stock killer goes right on killing.
When I heard of the grizzly that was raiding the Babbitt herds, I became interested in trying to get him my way. The Babbitt brothers were running lots of cattle and sheep in northern Arizona and losing a good many cattle to a grizzly. Most of his killing was done on the west side of the San Francisco Peaks, a range more than 12,000 feet high and covered with snow most of the year.
I figured that this old grizzly holed up somewhere on the mountain but was never able to find his den. He had no deformities by which he could be identified; he was just another big, tough, and persistent stock killer, smart enough not to show himself within range of a high-power rifle or fall into a trap.
The Babbitts said this one grizzly had cost them about $5,000 in stock killed during the previous six or seven years. He’d been hunted every year by first one and then another group of men. I talked with one of these hunters, who told me, “Yes, we hunted him. We had several cases of booze with us and most of the boys never left camp. Those that did were hoping they wouldn’t find him and they didn’t.”
That grizzly seemed to come from nowhere, a hurtling gray mass. He swatted the yearling on the back where the hips joined. Down it went and off the steep trail, rolling over and over, hindquarters paralyzed.
I heard things finally got so bad on the mountains that the Babbitts moved their cattle out of the district. I couldn’t believe that one grizzly could account for so many cattle. To check for myself, I drove over to Flagstaff to see Ed Babbitt. Ed had made several dates with me to go after the bear. If you get in a tight place with a wounded grizzly, it’s comfortable insurance to have a man along who can be depended on to deliver the goods; and Ed was that kind — a good shot, dead game, and a swell fellow. But something always happened and we never got together. This time Ed was sick.
When he told me they’d moved out the cattle, sure enough, I said I thought I could get the bear in short order if they’d put some cows back on the range; for I had learned from experience that the best way to get a stock killer is to wait for the bear at the place where the killing’s being done. But Ed surprised me by saying he didn’t know where that place was, nor did any of his men. He told me that if I could find the kills he’d try to get some stock put back there to help me lure the grizzly to his execution.
I was then an engineer on the Santa Fe Railway, and there were many times that I could have a full day at home in Grand Canyon, at the end of my passenger-train run from Williams. But if I started the hunt at either of the usual points of departure, Williams or Cameron, it would be a long trip by car, and after that I’d have to get a horse and ride several miles farther to reach the real bear country. This wouldn’t give me time enough to hunt.
Finally I thought of an old road I hadn’t traveled in years. It left the highway between Williams and Grand Canyon near where the airport is now and led almost straight to the base of the San Francisco Peaks. This would cut the distance in half and take me just where I wanted to go without switching to a horse.
When I arrived at San Francisco Mountain and looked up at the thickets of scrub oak and aspen, I thought the climb would be fairly easy. But it wasn’t-mainly because the brush was much denser than I expected.
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That first trip was fruitless. I saw both deer and wild turkey and found a few old kills that had been made by bears, but they weren’t–what I was looking for. I wasn’t too discouraged, though, as I knew stock-killing grizzlies were cunning. They seldom actually hunt their prey; they let it come to them. Sometimes they waited by a salt lick used by cattle, deer, and elk, but usually it was some narrow, steep trail that cattle had to use in going to water. I was sure there’d be such a trail here, though in this rough, steep country it was just about the same as looking for a needle in a haystack.
Back at the car I scanned the country again. Frost had already nipped the leaves of aspen and cottonwood trees. I could see one promising area up in a brush-choked canyon. The aspens and cottonwoods there were larger and taller than others in the vicinity, a sure sign of water. That might be where the grizzly operated his butcher shop. If so, my time had not been wasted.
It was several weeks before I could get back. Heavy snowstorms were due anytime now, and the livestock was being driven out of the high country for the winter. Leaves all over the mountainside had turned yellow and gold, so it was no longer easy to identify the stream-fed cottonwood and aspen grove that I’d located on my previous trip. But I headed for where I thought it was.
After a while I ran into some cattle trails, then a rocky steep-banked canyon showed ahead of me. Several trails converged into one that had led along its south rim out onto a narrow shelf and then dipped downward. There I saw what I was looking for — water. A spring trickled out of the escarpment rock and flowed into a deep pool at the base of the ledge. And beside the pool I saw enough bones to fill a boxcar. This was it!
Examining the bones, I saw that none of the kills were really fresh. There were a few black-bear tracks around but no grizzly sign. Still, I knew all this was the work of a grizzly. He’d had easy pickings all summer, for he only had to frighten the cattle coming to water on that narrow trail. In the panic some of them would be shoved off the ledge, and a few probably jumped from fright at the sight of him. The badly injured would be easy prey. But when the cattle had been moved off the mountain the killer got out too, perhaps going to an oak grove to feed on acorns and put on fat for hibernation. So there was nothing for me to do but wait until spring, when I was sure he’d be back.
Returning to my home at Grand Canyon, I spent my spare time hunting lions, roping a few alive and killing many others. In this high country spring doesn’t come much before May. We usually have one or two snowstorms early in June, but the snow soon melts.
One of the Babbitt brothers got lost that winter and froze to death. Ed was grief-stricken and not well, so once again I had to go after the grizzly alone.
Now, I have too much hard-learned respect for grizzlies to hunt them singlehanded by choice. My old friend and hunting pal Dr. P. A. Melick once rode 20 miles through a spring snowstorm to set my broken leg and patch me up after I’d been mauled by a grizzly. I had emptied my rifle into that bear, but it still came on to clout me on the head and then fall dead across my leg. I lay unconscious until a cowboy, Curly Gray, found me. So I knew a grizzly’s unbelievable strength and courage can be considerably more than a match for a lone hunter.
With rifle ready and an icy finger on the trigger, I watched the old grizzly standing on the trail, swinging his beer-keg head.
On my third trip to the peaks the snow was gone from the valley up to a point above the water hole. Game and many cattle were watering there and I found several fresh kills. One dead cow had a broken neck and two others had been broken down behind, no doubt by a blow from the grizzly’ s huge paw.
I had noticed when coming up the trail that there were several small bunches of cattle leaving the area and I should have realized that something was keeping them away from the spring. And I shouldn’t have come up the trail with the wind at my back. Two mistakes. But I really didn’t expect the grizzly to be out of hibernation so early at so high an altitude. I was just scouting.
Signs at the pool told me the grizzly. had just left. Whether he’d scented me or had just finished his toilet and gone on, I never knew. The rocks were still wet where water had dripped from his hairy body. If I had come in from any other direction I might have killed him at the pool that day. I didn’t feel too badly, though, for the tracks showed he’d ambled off up the canyon in no hurry, which meant he’d be back to his bath and cuisine.
I drove home, waited a week, and then took 15 days off — long enough, I thought, to allow for some bad luck. I was using my old .30/40 Krag.
Leaving the car on the divide, I took the rifle and 20 cartridges, my .45 handgun, and enough supplies to last several days. The altitude was more than 8,500 feet and I knew the nights would be chilly. I wore two pairs of pants and a fleece-lined jacket and carried one blanket. Deer and wild turkeys will follow the snowline and that’s where the latter nest. It was their mating season and they were gobbling everywhere. Every time a Santa Fe train or a logging engine whistled, a turkey would gobble.
The wind as usual was from the southwest. All I had to do was keep to the north of the rugged little canyon and no animal in that area would scent me. They might hear me struggling through that dense brush but they’d never see me.
The brush was my big problem on this off-trail detour. In some places I had to crawl on my belly. I kept well to the north until I was opposite the little grove of trees, which now were in bud. Not until I was on the edge of the canyon bordering the water hole did I get out of that awful thicket. My hands and face were bleeding and my clothes were torn.
There were some birds watering and two dead cows that looked as if they’d been there a day or two. Animals had eaten on them. From where I stood I couldn’t tell what animals had fed on the carcasses. (I didn’t wish to get close enough to leave my scent and scare away my quarry.) But the grizzly, I was convinced, was still on the job.
What worried me was whether he was making his kills in the daytime or under cover of darkness. Thinking it over, I decided cattle wouldn’t come into this spooky place after dark. Besides, the place was well hidden and seldom visited by man. So I reasoned that the grizzly was killing in the daylight.
I would have no fire at all for coffee or warm food, but I did find a natural depression such as Indians sleep in when the weather is cold. The pit was so deep that I couldn’t see out across the canyon unless I stood up. I leaned my rifle against a small oak tree that shaded the pit and went to work filling up the hole with green boughs and dry oak leaves, making a nest that would be at least fairly comfortable in subzero weather.
I had just finished my bed and crawled down in the pit to try the springs when I heard a purt from a wild turkey. Raising my head very slowly, I saw a gobbler standing at attention and staring straight at me. Not winking an eye, I watched as some 20 other turkeys joined the first. At least half a dozen of them stretched their long necks too, trying to identify me. They must have been satisfied, for soon they all trotted off.
This was about noon, and nothing else happened until 2 p.m., when eight cattle came down the trail to water. Between 3 p.m. and 4 :30 I counted 19 deer, also coming to water. The last of them had just gone when a black bear went to the pool, drank, and then eased his body into the water for a bath. After his toilet he stopped at the nearest cow carcass, ate hoggishly, and left. If none of these creatures had noticed me in my hiding place, I was sure the grizzly wouldn’t.
From then until dark it was a mixed bag. I saw two coyotes, several gray foxes, and a lynx before it was too dark to see. After that I sat and listened to animals fighting over the meat until I went to sleep. Pack rats and skunks soon awakened me. They had scented the food I’d put beside me. I got up and made a neat package of it and hung it in the tree above me. The moon came up and I could see almost as well as if it were broad daylight.
As I sat looking and listening a small, stupid skunk ran across my legs. He seemed to want to get in bed with me. I was all set to grab him by the tail and throw him as far as I could, when he stepped right into the palm of my hand. Holding my breath, I gave him a quick fling over the side, but for some reason he gave no scent even after he hit the ground. He may have realized that he had deserved his rather cavalier eviction.
I went to sleep, and when I awoke about daylight something in the canyon below me attracted my attention. I could see my sights when I held the rifle up to the sky, but when I tried to put them on any object in the canyon they blurred. As it became lighter I made out the form of a mountain lion eating one of the dead cows.
That puzzled me, because lions usually make their own kills. This one seemed to be tearing off great chunks of meat and swallowing them whole. Since animals are not much alarmed at the report of a rifle unless they scent or see the man doing the shooting, I chanced warning the grizzly and fired at the lion’s shoulder. He went down, rolled over, raised his head once and let it fall. He was dead.
Picking my way around to keep my scent away from the pool, I reached the lion carcass and found him to be poor and mangy. His claws and fangs were short and blunt, and when I opened his mouth the odor almost choked me. His jaw teeth were practically all gone. Just a few decayed snags remained of them.
I was still inspecting the battle-scarred old lion when I heard a splash that gave me the cold shivers. I looked up the canyon and saw the grizzly at the pool taking his morning bath! He had stolen a march on me and come in while I was looking over the lion.
He was less than 100 yards away. Not a difficult shot, but I waited, believing that I would get a better one. I knew he’d come here for two reasons — a bath and fresh meat. He was taking the bath and if not disturbed would waylay the first cattle that came in to water.
I thought he’d go back into the timber and circle around to an ambush near the trail. Instead, he came right down the rim of the canyon toward where I stood screened from view by a small, bushy tree. There wasn’t a chance of my getting back to my hide-out without being seen.
I cussed myself for having shot the lion. I hadn’t had a square meal in so long that my belly felt as if it were stuck to my backbone. I could have ended this hunt right now if I had been up in my nest, but it was much too dangerous to chance a shot with the grizzly so close and above me on the canyon trail. Fortunately, the wind was still from the south, so he hadn’t scented me.
After a few minutes of suspense I heard cattle coming and craned my neck. An old skinny cow came in to view followed by a lone yearling, perhaps her last year’s calf. And then it happened.
That grizzly seemed to come from nowhere, a hurtling gray mass. He swatted the yearling on the back where the hips joined. Down it went and off the steep trail, rolling over and over, hindquarters paralyzed. The old cow raced on down the trail, but another cow I hadn’t seen jumped or fell over the edge, ending up with a broken leg and other injuries that made her completely helpless.
With rifle ready and an icy finger on the trigger, I watched the old grizzly standing on the trail, swinging his beer-keg head. Satisfied with the job he’d done, he lumbered to where he could climb down with ease and stopped broadside for a final look.
It was the break I was waiting for. He was about 75 yards from where I stood. I put the bead on his shoulder and fired. I had held low, hoping to break both shoulders and penetrate the region of the heart. He let out an awful roar, which ended choked with blood. Then he tried to use his foreleg — and fell off the trail.
From the bottom, he kept looking up the canyon as if he hoped to spot his enemy there. Unable to locate me, he died like his victims at the foot of the rocky ledge.
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I had forgotten about the time in the excitement of those moments, but it was still early morning when I went down to examine the bear and put the paralyzed cattle out of their misery. I rolled a cigarette and went to work skinning the big brute, including the head.
When hung in my cabin at Grand Canyon, the feet touched the ceiling and his head lay on the floor. He had been long in tracking down but at the end of the trail he proved the easiest grizzly kill I’ve ever made.
This story, ‘The Biggest Stake,’ first appeared in the January 1955 issue of Outdoor Life.
