In his book Learning to Talk Bear Roland Cheek devotes many pages to a unusually dark-colored male grizzly who was nicknamed Mudlake Bear. His official name however was Grizzly Number 146. This bear was snared several times and radio collared. One time the snare held him only by four toes. During these episodes the Mudlake bear acquired an obvious distaste for traps but also an education on how they work.

After a trap is set the study trappers flag-hang orange flagging ribbon on their way back so they can follow the trail back to the site. The Mudlake bear took down every orange ribbon as well as the warning signs that keep people away from the traps. Every study trap has a camera that takes pictures of the bear. On of the first things the Mudlake bear did was destroy the camera. Sometimes the camera was not totally broke and some photos could be developed and these photos clearly identified Bear 146.

The Mudlake bear would then trigger the snares by dropping stones or sticks on top of them, sometimes he bent a sapling down to trigger the snare. That done he would take the bait and leave.

The Mudlake bear had lost his radio collar when he was four and researchers wanted to catch him again but he destroyed every site before he took the bait and vanished. One time there were 22 snares around a bait suspended from a tree and the bear triggered them all. In 1993 the Mudlake bear disappeared.

Timothy Treadwell once observed a mother bear and her cubs trying to climb a steep ridge. The mother had no problem but her cubs were unable to follow. The mother bear then turned around and dug holes in the dirt that served as steps for her cubs. (Treadwell, 1997)

Bruce McLellan, a grizzly biologist from British Columbia tells an anecdote about a female grizzly that was originally darted in her rear and then set free. When she was caught in a snare three years later she was sitting in a hole in the ground she had dug to protect her rear from the tranquilizing gun.

The naturalist Wright tells the story of one grizzly bear who outsmarted the hunters he accompanied more than once. The hunters built a log pen and put into it the remains of an elk and set the trap for the silvertip grizzly they had seen earlier. But when Wright and the hunters returned to the site the pen was torn down the bait removed but the trap had not been touched. The hunters saw where the bear had hid the remaining bait under moss. They set the trap under the moss and put pieces of meat around the moss. The bear returned the following night and ate the meat that had been thrown around the moss but did not touch anything under it. Because the grizzly seemed so smart the hunters got even more sure that they wanted to kill it. A notion I can't understand at all. It seems to me that an animal of such intelligence should have been spared.

The hunters found a bank where an almost vertical gully reached from top to the waters' edge about 100 ft below. To get to the bait the bear would have to get through a narrow passage between a log jam and a rock outcrop. The first night no trap was set. The bear cam back ate some meat and hid the rest under leaves and dirt meaning he intended to come back. The hunters set bear traps around the bait and hid them carefully. Again, the bear avoided the traps without a problem.

Since the hunters had to return home soon they wanted to be sure to kill the bear this time. They set up a gun pointing to the path the bear was thought to take. A fishing line was attached to the trigger and stretched across the path. To be sure the hunters set up a second gun about 10 ft from the first. To the hunters disappointment there was no gun fire the following night. When they returned to find out what had happened they clearly saw bear tracks approaching the first fishing line then turning around and trying to get to the bait from the other side. Here too the tracks stopped. The grizzly then worked his way from ledge to ledge until he was down at the bait. After finishing his meal backtracked and disappeared. Wright called this, “as wonderful a record of animal sagacity as I have ever seen.”