My grandpa was a game warden in northern Pennsylvania during the mid-twentieth century. When I was growing up, I always enjoyed our family visits with him, for he inevitably had interesting stories to tell us kids from his days as a game warden. In particular, we enjoyed his tales about black bears.

My grandfather told us a story that took place one year about a month before bear hunting season started. He told me he had often heard about bear wallows, but he had never been fortunate enough to see one. Well, this day he was walking along in the woods when he saw a huge tree that the wind had blown down, with the roots and soil all torn out of the ground to form a large hole. Rainwater had accumulated in this basin to make the perfect bathtub for bears.

Muddy paw prints emanated out of the bear wallow like a bunch of spokes from a wagon wheel. Grandpa guessed that quite a few bears were using the wallow. He told us that he supposed that bears have fleas and vermin to deal with and that they use these wallows to rub off any insects and to keep them off.

My grandfather said that cubs apparently don’t like baths any better than we boys did. So while their mothers were soaking in the water, the black bear cubs amused themselves by climbing the hemlock trees nearby and cutting off the tips of the branches. He said that the ground under several trees was almost completely covered with these hemlock tips. The outer bark of the trees was so worn by the constant climbing up and down that the trees actually appeared a lighter brown than the other trees.

Grandfather said that he guessed there must have been a whole lot of cubs climbing those trees! However, my grandfather never could come up with a reason as to why the bear cubs wanted to break off the tips of the branches.

Finding a Bear’s Den

The mention of hemlocks reminds me of grandpa’s story about the time he came upon a dense thicket of hemlocks. He was hunting bobcats when he stumbled upon it. It was a nearly impenetrable thicket around ten feet high.

However, in the middle of the thicket, it was like an little room. The tops of the hemlocks were so dense that the snow couldn’t go through them. So a black bear had picked the spot for his winter home. In fact, the bear had turned the empty area inside into a perfect nest.

The black bear had broken off the tips of the surrounding hemlocks, similar to what the cubs had done at the bear wallow. With the hemlock tips, the bear had fashioned a neat rug that was around five inches thick. Grandfather noticed that the the forest-green hemlock tips were bunched close together with the branchy part down. Because of this, the edges of this “bear rug” were as neat as a braided oval rug. He told us children that he could hardly believe that a bear had made it! “It was just one of nature’s wonders,” he said.

How to Observe Wildlife

I once asked grandpa how he happened to see so many interesting animals in the wild. He told us that if we truly wanted to learn what takes place in the woods, we would first need to lie down on the ground somewhere in the woods. Then we must cover our faces with leaves or something, and then lie very still. Grandfather said it’s the human face that spooks wildlife.

Grandpa told us about a time he was lying on the ground with a bit of grass over his face when he saw a bunch of grouse eating nearby. After a while they all sat on a log and cleaned their feathers and “gossiped” about grouse life. Suddenly they got worried about this object they didn’t recognize ( my grandfather ). But he didn’t move a muscle, and they eventually relaxed again and kept cleaning themselves.

On another occasion when he was lying on the ground, a weasel chasing a chipmunk ran down his whole body, not even realizing it was a human.

Tad Brenk spends his time in the Allegheny mountains of southern Pennsylvania. His house backs up to a state forest, so he has lots of opportunities to observe wildlife. In fact, every summer one or more black bears visit his home. He invites you to read more of his stories of bear encounters at The Knowledge Universe.