All grizzlies appear to be fond of fish. In many places they are most successful fishermen. I watched a grizzly standing in the riffles of an Idaho stream, partly concealed by a willow clump. In half an hour he knocked five large salmon ashore. With a single lightning-like stroke of a fore paw, the fish was flung out of the water and sent flying fifteen or twenty feet. Rarely did he miss. Each of the salmon weighed several pounds.
A grizzly in the Sawtooth region, trying to catch some fish, sprawled out on a low bank by the edge of a stream. Holding himself with one fore paw, he reached over with the other and felt along the bank beneath the water. He did this very much as a fat man might. More frequently the bear makes a stand in driftwood on the bank, or on a log that has fallen into the stream, or behind a willow clump. Sometimes he captures fish by wading up a brook and seizing with claws or teeth those that conceal themselves beneath banks and projecting roots.
A huge brown grizzly mother catching trout for her two fat cubs held my attention one day. The cubs waited on the grassy bank of a brook while the mother brought them trout after trout. She sometimes caught the fish by thrusting her nose into the water beneath the bank or by reaching in with her paws. Occasionally she knocked them out of the water as they endeavored to dash past her in the riffles. The cubs watched her every move; but they were not allowed to enter the water.
Sometimes the grizzly will collect and cover over an excess of carcasses or fish. By a little mountain lake at the headwaters of the Columbia I found a pile of stale salmon beneath a number of large logs and stones. The fish had been caught during spawning-time and stored for future consumption. A day or two later I returned, and tracks showed that the bear had come back and consumed the salmon.
The grizzly eagerly earns his own living; he is not a loafer. Much work is done in digging out a cony, a woodchuck, or some other small animal from a rock-slide. In two hours' time I have known him to move a mass of earth that must have weighed tons, leaving an excavation large enough for a private cellar. I have come upon numbers of holes from which a grizzly had removed literally tons of stone. In places these holes were five or six feet deep. Around the edges the stones were piled as though for a barricade. In some of them several soldiers could have found room and excellent shelter for ordinary defense.