If you missed the news, last week grizzly bear No. 399 emerged from her winter den in Grand Teton National Park with a new cub.
That makes 22 little ones for this amazing 27-year-old bear.
And now No. 399 has tied the mark for the oldest wild grizzly bear mother in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
With this birth and renewal of the species, I think it’s time we modify that old saying about the certainties of life.
Going forward, the phrase will be amended to read “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes and No. 399 emerging from her winter den in the shadow of the Grand Tetons with a cub, or cubs, in tow.”
One cub might seem a letdown considering 399 last raised four. That gang emerged from their mother’s den in 2020, and all survived to be weaned from their mother in the spring of 2022.
She was probably 24 when she took on the massive task of raising four cubs. Litters of four cubs are uncommon, turning up in 8% of the litters in one study of black bears I found. Another study of grizzly bears in the Flathead didn’t report any four-cub litters.
Rare, but what’s more impressive is the survival rate of her cubs, at least until weaning. All four of that last litter lived long enough so 399 could chase them off last years so she could mate again.
A four-cub litter is a sign of a remarkably healthy sow, and usually, a griz as old as 399 has a hard time qualifying as remarkably healthy.
So maybe 399 earned an easier go of it in this latest two-year hitch, training her cub what it means to be a bear. It might also be a sign this remarkable bear is finally slowing down. One-cub litters are most common with young bears in their first or second pregnancy.
Though she also had one cub in 2016.
While 399 has been a prolific cub producer, that only four of them still survive says a lot about the nature of nature. And only one of her offspring, No. 610, has grown to produce offspring.
The reality is most wild animal babies are born to die. And by that I mean die young, before they grow old enough to reproduce themselves.
This is especially so for prey species, but it’s also that way for slower reproducing predators as well.
The primary role of baby wildlife is to be food for predators. Just a small fraction need to make it through the bottleneck to reproductive age so they can continue the species.
Bird hunters know this as well as anyone. Although we’re aware of trophy birds — primarily long-tailed pheasant or bearded turkey — pin feathers reveal that most of the birds we kill are young of the year.
Since I like cooking my birds nearly as much as I like hunting them, I’m quite fond of pin feathers. When I find them, I know I’ve got a tasty, tender bird.
Young of the year represent somewhere between 60-75% of the quail I shoot, especially in bobwhite country where the birds sometimes re-nest or nest late in the season.
I was hunting bobwhite in November and flushed a single female. Her flight was slow and unsteady. She careened off the limbs of a tall cedar a more-experienced bird would have sliced into for safety.
I might have shot, and surely the bird would have been delicious, but instead, I let it fly.
Grizzly No. 399’s story is special. That she has stayed out of trouble long enough to have so many cubs is remarkable.
That so few have survived is a reminder of the Hobbesian warning that life in the state of nature is often “nasty, brutish and short.”
But not that short for the incredible 399.