The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1922-02-23
THE BEARS OF YELLOWSTONE

breaks into hotels Tor 1000 IS one OF
the uncertain quantities of Yellow
stone Park, says Edmund Heller, the
big game hunter, who has just re
utrned from several months in the
park studying the wild life of larger
animals for the Roosevelt wild life
experiment station connected with
the School of Forestry at Syracuse
University.
Mr.. Heller likes bears. He has
/ spent hours watching and photo
graphing them during the past sum-
mer, and thinks they are by far the
most interesting things in the park,
more so than the geysers and hot
springs. A geyser is only a geyser
after you have seen it a few times,
says Mr.. Heller, but bear is
source of infinite humor to those who
study him.
Big game in the park is increas-
ing, with the exception of mountain
sheep and antelopes, he says. Much
of his report will be devoted to
methods of preventing the graceful
sheep and antelope from disappear
ing altogether from the Yellowstone.
1t is not their natural habitat, for
in winter, unless restricted, they
would move south into the Dakotas,
he says. AS it is they stay in the
park, many freezing to death. On
the other hand, moose are increasing
rapidly, and elk are so numerous
that they can be heard bugling all
day long as they charge across the
bottoms. They number at least TO-
600. Mr.. Heller said he frequently
saw large herds with bulls driving
their cows and trumpeting defiance
at the world. Mule deer are also in
creasing fast, and beavers fill the
streams.
The greatest change in the Yellow
stone in the last few years, however,
is in the greatly increased number of
tourists, according to Mr.. Heller. The
automobile and the war are both
largely responsible, although, oddly
| enough, most of the tourists are
Westerners, to whom wild country is
no novelty. The park is filed with
camps at which automobile parties
may stop for the night under the
supervision of a ranger to see that
they do not fire the woods
The bears are a constant source of
l N 70
are left a moment, fat, black bear
may soon be found paving the seat
and upholstery to pieces in search of
food. The bears are fairly tame, be-
cause they are never molested. They
have regular feeding places where
the waste from the hotels is dumped,
and the tourist watches from behind
a screen.
''They come Looping in at regular
hours, often a mother bear bringing
her cubs. She will put the cubs up a
tree and tell them to stay there If
they come down while she is feed
ing, she runs back and cuffs them
into the tree again, just like naughty
children. Bears often go back after
a meal, climb tree in full view of
people and go to sleep.
''They are funny things. They
walk like a man when they stand up.
When they are in tree they often
sit like man, with legs dangling on
each side of a branch and clutching
the trunk in front of them.
Zone bear followed me around
for days, trOtting at my heels like
dog. We called him the kodak bear
He was as tame as a kitten. There
are about sixty grizzlies in the park
now, although they are not seen so
often as the others. You should see
the black and cinnamon bears run
when a grizzly comes up to the feed
ing place behind the hotel. They
scatter in every direction and take to
the trees, for grizzly, although he
can run like a horse, can't climb
trees.
''The deer and the elk also come
up to the houses to be fed, and some
times deer can be fed from the hand
One old elk is called 'Ash-Can Pete
because when he comes looking fol
food he goes around tipping over al
the ash cans. He has been there for
years. Everybody knows him."
The buffaloes, which seemed in
danger of determination a few years
ago, are now increasing so rapidly
that there are two large herds OF
them in the park, says Mr.. Heller
Some of the tbun buffaloes grow tt