152 ON A CUB FOUND IX A BEAR'S DEN — GILPIN. 



cub to have been ten or twelve days old when taken, from 

 reasons I have before stated, it puts its birth about the first of 

 January. Our snows rarely fall to any depth before the middle 

 of November, and our bears usually seek their dens about that 

 period for hibernation. The male bear is easily satisfied ; behind 

 the root of an upturned tree, a mass of tangled wood, or a hol- 

 low cliff in a rock serves him, and the snows soon cover him in 

 his rugged sleep. Not so the female, parturient. She selects 

 the most obscure and hidden places, lining them oftentimes with 

 layers of spruce fir branches. It is an unquestioned maxim 

 with Indians, that no one has ever taken a she bear with young. 

 This is both owing to the obscurity of her hiding place, and the 

 asserted fact that if disturbed she will always abort. My son, 

 in hunting some years ago, came upon many spruce firs with 

 their lower branches torn off and strewed about the snow. His 

 Indian told him it was the work of a she bear lining her den. 

 Hard by they found a crevice in a ridge of rock, which, after 

 ascertaining it had no occupant, he entered, crawling upon hands 

 and feet, with his Indian holding his leg. The interior was a 

 comfortable apartment in which he could sit upright, floored by 

 spruce boughs, and which no tired hunter would refuse as a rest- 

 ing place. But it is not usual to find so comfortable quarters as 

 these. Richardson quoting from Pennantand Godwin, both attest 

 to the truth of our Indians' assertions regarding the deep privacy 

 of the female in denning, The former saying, in veiy severe 

 winters many bears migrate south, but no females found 

 amongst them ; and the latter asserting that out of many 

 hundreds of males only two females were found, and those not 

 with young. The hard and early winter had prevented the 

 males from obtaining that condition of fat necessary for hiber- 

 nation and therefore they became what our Indians call wander- 

 ing bears, never denning. Instinct compelling the female to do 

 so, as well as her always being in the proper condition, when 

 the male is wasted by the September rut. A party with whom 

 I was hunting in 1841, met and killed one of these wandering 

 bears on the first of March. Our Indians also corroborate the 

 assertions of the older naturalists, that though the bear comes 



