'Walking Among Giants': A Writer’s Introduction to the Grizzly Bear

My passion for watching wildlife began when I was 12 years old and my parents gave me a new edition of the classic Field Guide to Animal Tracks, written by the great biologist Olaus J. Murie in 1954.

“To Kevin, our family’s great pathfinder, fisherman, and outdoorsman on his birthday,” my father inscribed on the title page.

At the time, my family lived on 46 wooded acres in Brentwood, New Hampshire. I was in sixth grade and reading all the great books about boys and their dogs: Old Yeller, Sounder, Shiloh, and Big Red. I dreamed of hunting raccoons with two redbone hounds like Billy in Where the Red Fern Grows, but instead of two new puppies, I shared ownership with my siblings of a mutt named McGee. As for hunting, no one in my family had any experience, so instead of a rifle, I received the Field Guide to Animal Tracks, a subscription to Field & Stream, and a Havahart metal cage trap with two spring-loaded doors that promised to safely and securely catch raccoons, rabbits and squirrels.

Far from being disappointed with my live animal trap and our timid beagle-black Lab mix, I was thrilled, wandering the woods with my guidebook and scouting for animals. During my backyard adventures, I spotted whitetail deer, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, and red foxes and looked—futilely—for bears, the true emblems of the wilderness.

I was fascinated with bears. And as I looked around my life, I noticed bears everywhere. A teddy bear tucked me in each night, promising companionship, comfort, protection, and sweet dreams. My mom, a loyal and protective mother bear, gave me a bear hug before I left for basketball camp each summer; my father lamented the drop in stocks that occurred with a bear market; Smokey Bear—with his flat-brimmed ranger hat—reminded me “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires”; in geography class, I spotted a grizzly bear prowling prominently across the California state flag; and on a starry night, I would gaze up at the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear) in the northern sky with the utmost wonder.

I pored over the bear prints in the Field Guide to Animal Tracks. The bean-shaped foot pad and oval toes were strangely human-like, and there was an enchanting calligraphy in the claws.

Hoping to see them, I memorized the difference between Ursus americanus and Ursus arctos: the claws of a black bear are smaller, and the toes are more separated and curved. Grizzly bear claws are larger, and the toes are closer together and less curved. But the ultimate test involved employing a ruler to find the lowest point of the outside (largest toe) of the print. From there, I’d find the highest point (or front) edge of the palm pad. Connect the two points with the ruler and if 50 percent of the inside (smallest) toe is above the line, it’s a grizzly bear. If more than 50 percent of the inside (smallest) toe is below the line, it’s a black bear.

I never stumbled across any bruin tracks in my backyard, but my family did run into a black bear later that summer during a camping trip to Moose Brook State Park in the White Mountains. We’d gone for a night hike around the campground after dinner, and as we walked, I sensed that a bear was nearby. Like some kind of animal ESP, I could feel the bruin before I saw him, and as we approached an old water pump beside a lilac bush, I knew he was hiding in the dark shadows.

Suddenly, we heard a low growl that clearly meant, “Don’t come closer.”

“Bear!” I yelled, and my family did the one thing you should never do when encountering a bruin: we ran and, by doing so, mimicked prey. Our mutt, McGee, definitely wasn’t from the Old Yeller lineage—he left us all high and dry, clinging to the old adage, “You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to run faster than your friends.”

Thankfully, the bear didn’t chase us. But shadowy ursid apparitions ambled through my unconscious in the nights that followed, causing me to wake up and look under my bed. The bear had become more present because of its absence.

In between homework assignments, I read more about bears and discovered there were eight species in the world: Asiatic black bears, pandas, sun bears, speckled bears, sloth bears, brown bears, black bears, and polar bears.

Grizzlies, black bears and polar bears are all found in North America, though polar bears are found only in Alaska and the northernmost parts of Canada. Despite their names, color is not a great identifier for bears. There are “brown” black bears, “black” brown bears, and every shade in between—cinnamon, blond, bluish-gray, and even white. The Kermode bear, also known as the “spirit bear,” is a white subspecies of black bears found in the central and north coast of British Columbia, and there are rare cases of white grizzly bears, such as one near Banff, Alberta, that locals called Nakoda, named after the Indigenous people of Western Canada and the United States.

I discovered the best way to differentiate between black and grizzly bears is by their size and shape rather than their fur color. Brown bears are generally bigger and can be distinguished from black bears by their long claws, dish-shaped face and distinct shoulder humps—a large mass of muscle used for digging, fighting and climbing.

Later during that summer of my 12th year, I saw my first black bear, but it was hard to call it “wild” since it was feeding on garbage in an open-air dump with a bunch of other hungry bruins. That was in the 1980s, before people realized a fed bear is a dead bear.

As soon as I saw Thomas Mangelsen’s iconic photograph “Catch of the Day,” grizzlies captured my interest. The picture—which has been called the most famous wildlife photo in history—shows a large brown bear standing on the lip of Brooks Falls in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, and it’s about to clamp its massive jaws on a sockeye salmon leaping up the falls. I immediately bought a poster of the photo, mounted it on posterboard, and hung it above my bed, next to posters of basketball greats like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.

It wasn’t until after college that I finally encountered my first bear in the wild, in Washington State’s North Cascade Range. My plan that afternoon had been to hike up to the old fire lookout atop Sourdough Mountain, where poet Gary Snyder spent a summer in 1953. On the way up, I ran into an off-duty park ranger named Dena. This chance encounter would change my life forever.

Dena was the first “bear person” I’d ever met. She was comfortable living and working in bear country and didn’t mind incurring a little bit of risk because of the many benefits of having bruins on the landscape. She took pains to secure things like garbage, compost, bird feeders and beehives around their house so as to keep bears wild and not attract them to human areas.

As Dena and I hiked down from the lookout that sunny afternoon, I rounded a corner and saw a black bear with tiny eyes, seated on his haunches, feasting on huckleberries.

“Bear!” I exclaimed, as the bruin stood tall.

“Don’t run,” said Dena, grabbing my arm.

“He’s going to attack,” I whispered nervously.

“He’s just getting a better view and smelling us,” Dena replied. “Stay calm.”

She pointed out that the bear wasn’t showing any signs of aggression

or agitation. “He’s just curious.”

I was amazed. Dena seemed to speak the same language as the bruin, understanding and knowing how to interpret its behavior.

Moments later, as the bear grew disinterested, wandering away up the hillside, Dena led us down the trail.

“That was awesome!” I said. “My first wild bear!”

As we continued, descending over 4,500 feet down the steep trail with switchbacks, Dena told me about her job working for the National Park Service. She was an interpretative ranger who staffed visitor centers and gave campfire chats at Joshua Tree, North Cascades and Isle Royale. She told me about her colleagues who manned entrance stations, handled maintenance, or served as law enforcement rangers and ambulance workers.

“Sounds like a dream job,” I said. I was amazed at the idea that people could be paid to live and work in magical places like Zion, Glacier, Acadia, or the Great Smoky Mountains.

Consequently, years later after I graduated from paramedic school, I eagerly applied to work at Yellowstone and was eventually hired as a summer seasonal paramedic in the Old Faithful District.

It was there that I encountered my first grizzly in the wild, crossing the Firehole River near Morning Glory Hot Spring.

A few tourists standing beside me happily snapped pictures as I freaked out and fumbled into my pack for my bear repellent and radio when I spotted the tawny brown fur, the shoulder hump and the flat, dish-like face.

“Dispatch,” I said, keying my radio2. “We’ve got an emergency at Morning Glory. There’s a grizzly!”

The dispatcher copied my radio traffic. “How far away is the bear?”

“About a hundred yards!”

“Is it approaching people?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are people approaching the bear?”

“Negative.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“No.”

I heard what sounded like a sigh over the radio, and I could literally picture the dispatcher rolling her eyes. “So, you called to tell us there is a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park?”

I felt like such an idiot. Even the tourists, city slickers from Boston, looked at me like I was crazy.

“Um yeah,” I replied. “I guess so.”

“Are you in danger?”

I said no.

“Do you need additional resources?”

“Negative,” I replied. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

As I turned off my radio, the bear disappeared into the woods.

My radio transmission had been broadcast over the entire Old Faithful District. I felt utterly ashamed, but I was terrified by grizzlies.

Over the next five summer seasons I worked at Yellowstone and Grand Teton, I saw probably a dozen brown bears. But the bruins were often far away in the Lamar or Hayden Valleys or ambling along the distant tree line of Pacific or Pilgrim Creeks. I’d watch the bears through binoculars or from the safety of my car or the ambulance—as if at some drive-in wildlife movie theater—and then go home each night comforted by the thought that I lived near but not in bear country.

Things began to change in 2019.

One morning that October, I arrived at my home in the South Park area of Jackson Hole, bleary eyed and exhausted after a 48-hour shift at Jackson Hole Fire Department, to discover an orphaned, emaciated black bear cub perched in my cherry tree.

“We’ve named him Hissy because of the sound he makes,” Taz, my 10-year-old neighbor, said. “He’s been here for two days.”

“He’s been sitting in your tree during the days and sleeping under the deck,” added Taz’s mom, Heide. “We’ve called Game and Fish.”

The wildlife team arrived an hour later, and Heide filmed the biologists as they darted Hissy with a tranquilizer then prepared to catch him in a large tarp when he fell from the tree.

When Heide later posted the video online, it immediately went viral, racking up millions of views on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. There was something so heartwarming and human-like about how Hissy dangled from the tree by his two forepaws with his legs hanging below as if participating in some kind of team-building exercise, seeming to say, “You guys will catch me, right? You promise?” before letting go and landing safely in the tarp.

Hissy spent the winter in a wildlife rehab facility in Idaho and was released into the wild later that spring as a healthy, 112-pound yearling. I’d assumed the encounter with Hissy would be a one-off incident, but little did I realize that he was a harbinger of things to come.

Two years later, in the fall of 2021, the grizzlies arrived.

It began with an email and a subject line reading: “SAGE MEADOWS HOA: Notice Regarding Bear 399 & Cubs.”

Bear 399 was the scientific number biologists had given to a 26-year-old sow born in Grand Teton National Park. She was also known as the Matriarch of the Tetons, famous for raising her cubs roadside. To the delight of millions around the world, she had raised more than six litters around Pacific and Pilgrim Creeks since 2006. She was also a muse of Jackson Hole photographer Thomas Mangelsen, who had shot hundreds of photos of the celebrity sow.

Bear 399’s fame grew in 2020 when she emerged from the den with four cubs, a rare feat in the ursine world. Sadly, celebrity also had a dark side: two of her cubs from previous litters were killed by vehicles over the years, numerous of her offspring were captured or killed due to conflict, and in the fall of 2020 the family of five got into unsecured compost, livestock feed and a beehive south of Grand Teton and were fed molasses-enriched grain by an eccentric homeowner in the Solitude subdivision who believed she had a special bond with wild animals and routinely fed bears, moose, elk and deer in her backyard. The problem with bears obtaining food from humans is they forgo natural foods and become increasingly emboldened. They gradually lose their fear of people and are more likely to attack someone or cause property damage.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2021. I opened the email from my homeowner’s association and read, “399 and her cubs are not back north near Grand Teton National Park. The bear clan was spotted south of the town in a big area known as South Park. Please keep dogs on a leash, secure food and garbage cans inside home or garage. Be alert when walking outdoors and carry bear spray.”

Apparently, the ursine clan was on an extended walkabout around Jackson Hole and Teton County. They’d strolled through the parking lot outside the police station, a block from the fire station where I worked. They’d wandered on the hillside above Albertson’s grocery store where I shopped. They’d also been spotted on Josie’s Ridge, my favorite hiking trail, and even at the rafting take-out spot on Snake River where Meaghan and I ended our river trips. I no longer relished the thought of living in bear country. Bear 399’s presence felt personal, intrusive and, to be honest, a bit predatory.

Turned out 399 and her four cubs weren’t the only grizzlies near our home. Another friend spotted eight brown bears on my favorite mountain biking trail, Munger Mountain, and a big cabin-brown boar with white claws had raided my buddy’s chicken coop down the street from us. The bear had to be caught in a culvert trap by wildlife officials.

After reading the email from my HOA, I leaped up from my computer and hurried downstairs. When I worked in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, I was terrified of grizzlies. Now, as they invaded my community, I considered them a dangerous nuisance.

“Asher, come inside!” I called to our golden retriever in the backyard. “Let’s go!”

It was overcast and windy outside, the way it looks in the movies before a big storm or aliens arrive. Once Asher was safely inside, I went into the backyard and grabbed our bird feeder.

“What’s going on?” Meaghan asked as I tore through the kitchen. “What about my hummingbirds?”

“The grizzlies are here!” I exclaimed and raced back to the deck to bring inside two big white compost buckets, overflowing with eggshells, banana peels, coffee grounds and wilting lettuce.

“This compost has to go!” I exclaimed.

“Huh?” Meaghan replied.

“The bears!” I declared. “We need to batten down the hatches!”

Meaghan watched in amusement as I ran between the back deck and garage, removing anything that a curious bear might find interesting. After my final trip to the garage, I gave her a can of bear spray. “Don’t go anywhere without this!”

“You’re insane,” Meaghan said with a laugh.

“And we need to keep the dog on a leash at all times!”

Even Asher was looking up at me like I was crazy.

The next week felt like a Hollywood movie. Bear 399 and her four cubs toured most of Jackson Hole, getting into food and damaging property. Due to the onslaught of incidents and phone calls, Wyoming Game and Fish had to call in the feds. U.S. Fish and Wildlife launched “Operation 399,” which consisted of personnel “bear sitting” the ursine family 24–7 as they roamed around Teton County, trailed relentlessly by wildlife paparazzi photographers.

“We’ve had repeated conflicts over a three- or four-day period, way down south,” Game and Fish large carnivore biologist Mike Boyce told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. “Property damage, livestock feed and apiary damage. We’re having grizzly bear conflict way down south. That’s been a change.”

The irony is that the town of Jackson Hole and Teton County is filled with people who love the outdoors, and we pride ourselves on protecting wildlife. Yet when it came to bears, we were not as up to date on bear safety as other communities like West Yellowstone, Montana, or Durango, Colorado.

“The whole county is kind of behind the times in terms of trash and storage and conflict prevention,” said Hilary Cooley, grizzly bear recovery coordinator with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. “Beehives, livestock feed, open dumpsters. Almost everywhere you look there’s something.”

Fortunately, despite 10 conflicts involving 399 and her cubs, the family eventually returned to Grand Teton National Park and went to den without having to be relocated or killed; however, six other grizzlies in the area—including three descendants of 399—had to be euthanized due to causing property damage and bypassing native foods in favor of raiding garbage cans, beehives and chicken coops.

Am I a bear person? I wondered one day while gazing out at the Tetons. Now that they were in my backyard, I felt strangely conflicted.

I wasn’t alone. After grizzlies were placed on the endangered species list in 1975, their recovery in the Lower 48 has been one of the great conservation success stories. As brown bears increased in numbers and expanded their range beyond protected areas, millions of people in the West found themselves at a similar crossroad. What risks do grizzly bears pose? Is it worthwhile having them in the landscape? How can I stay safe in bear country? And, most importantly, how can we coexist?

I wanted answers, but I also realized I needed more information. Beyond their size, strength and perceived ferocity, I knew very little about brown bears.

A few weeks later, I was surfing the web when I happened upon a link for the Sixth International Human-Bear Conflict Workshop, held in Lake Tahoe in October, which promised four days of nonstop lectures, panels and presentations about conserving bears and connecting people.

Seems like a good place to start, I thought, registering and booking a flight. I had no idea my relationship with brown bears and the natural world would change forever.

I thought I was just going to a conference.

Excerpt taken from Grizzly Confidential by Kevin Grange. Copyright © 2024 Kevin Grange. Used by permission of Harper Horizon, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus, LLC. Find your copy at amazon.com or wherever books are sold.