From the Montana Collection

The International Bear

The settlers of the Kootenai region found that this remote corner of the west was home to many wild creatures. Deer, elk and fish provided vital food staples. Bears, on the other hand, were occupational hazards for these pioneers. Bear encounters were quite common, as evidenced by the many stories recorded over the years. Bears in the Rockies, by Olga Johnson, is dedicated to this shared natural and human history, with stories ranging from the terrifying to, well, the absurd...

"Which brings me finally to the saga of the International Bear and a noted character named X.Y.Z. Jones. What the initials meant, I never learned. He had a little cabin on the Montana side of the International Boundary where he lived the life of Riley in a trapper's paradise.

One day a grizzly bear in British Columbia near the border charged Jones as he was hunting a little Canadian game. Jones raced toward the safety of his cabin but tripped over the International line. (This is his story, not mine!) As it happened, Jones was lame, with one short leg, which he declared gave him an advantage in racing on a circle track. He headed for a giant spruce tree and started to circulate, the bear a close second, with its mouth wide open. Something would have to be done quickly if he were not to become a meal for the Canadian grizzly.

Then Jones had a bright idea. Taking his box of snuff from his jacket pocket, he tossed it back, right into the great slavering mouth of the bear. After two laps the bear slowed down. Jones reckoned the cover was off the snuff box, and as the snuff took effect, Jones began to gain until he was chasing the bear. He then quickly rolled out into the brush and sneaked home. The bear, chastened and docile, limped up to his cabin the next day, looking for more snuff -- and the legal pyrotechnics began (according to Jones, that is).

Canadian officials charged that Jones had lured a Canadian bear into Montana, had abused it by encouraging it to chase itself around a tree, and furthermore, had taught said bear to use snuff, a pernicious habit not condoned for Canadian wild-life. The United States Border Patrol made counter charges in defense of Jones. They charged that the bear had entered the United States illegally and that it should be deported as an undesirable citizen.

Charges and counter-charges were dropped when the bear wandered north in the fall. When Jones was offered a charter membership in the local Ananias Club as a result of his account of subduing the grizzly bear, he was quite offended and refused it, insisting to all and sundry that he spoke nothing but the truth. However, I do believe that Jones exaggerated just a bit when he said that he tripped over the International Boundary line, which is nothing more that a cleared space marked at wide intervals by boundary monuments."

Johnson, Olga. Bears in the Rockies. Kootenai-Craft, Libby, MT. 1960. pp. 36-37