The Grizzly by Enos A. Mills

A mother grizzly and her year-and-a-half-old cub came shuffling along the shore of a little lake in the No-Summer Mountains. Where a brook flowed into the lake she stopped, looked at the cub, and possibly grunted something to him. She may have said, "Here, Johnny, is a territory not claimed by other bears; this is to be your domain. " I watched him as she went ambling away alone. He stood looking at the ground for several seconds, then turned to see his mother in the distance, and finally surveyed his surroundings. Pushed off into the world to shift for himself, the cub walked up the mountain-side and disappeared in the woods.

I had seen this cub and his mother on the other side of the Medicine Bow Mountains, at least fifty miles away. When I saw her leaving the cub to make his way alone, I wanted to ask, "Is it common for a mother grizzly to take her children to the territory that is to be their home? " The selection of this domain may sometimes be made by the mother but most often, probably, it is made by the cubs.