Bear Size ~

[brotherbear]

Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears by Matthew P. Mayo.
In his line of work as Yellowstone's superintendent ( 1877-1882 ), Philetus W. Norris routinely faced massive grizzlies. One unstoppable brute almost got the better of him.
Norris held his pose, rifle to his shoulder, and touched the trigger one last time. It clicked on nothing. Slowly he pulled his face from the stock and let out the breath he'd been holding since the bear rose and charged. He stood from his kneeling position and finally lowered the rifle, but kept a firm grip on it. He knew the bear was dead, of course. It had to be - he'd pumped in more than a dozen regular shells and two exploding dynamite shells. But any creature that could rise again and again after being shot - in the shoulder, the lungs, and the spine - deserved nothing but caution. 
Later, Norris and one of his employees, Stephens, loaded up their pack animals with as much of the elk and bear as they could carry and trudged twenty miles back to their base at Mammoth Hot Springs, at the park's northern end. 
Two men spread the bear's hide flat and found it to measure nearly nine feet from snout tip to tail base, and six feet seven inches wide. "This has to be a record, Phil," said Stephens, measuring for a third time and shaking his head. Reply