Humans and bears - Wild encounters

[brotherbear]

In my own words, the most famous grizzly bear of all was Old Brin, Clubfoot, or Reelfoot. He was indeed a very real and a very large grizzly. However, as with such characters as Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, or Daniel Boone, the stories just keep getting told and the character just keeps growing bigger and stronger.

California Grizzly by Tracy I. Storer and Lloyd P. Tevis, Jr.

The most famous bear in the world was, is and will continue to be the gigantic Grizzly known variously on the Pacific Slope as "Old Brin," "Clubfoot," and "Reelfoot." He was first introduced to the public by a mining-camp editor named Townsend, who was nicknamed "Truthful James" in a spirit of playful irony. That was in the seventies. Old Brin was described as a bear of monstrous size, brindled coat, ferocious disposition and evil fame among the hunters of the Sierra. He had been caught in a steel trap and partly crippled by the loss of a toe and other mutilation of a front paw, and his clubfooted track was readily recognizable and served to identify him. Old Brin stood at least five feet high at the shoulder, weighed a ton or more and found no difficulty in carrying away a cow. He seemed to be impervious to bullets, and many hunters who took his trail never returned. A few who had met him and had the luck to escape furnished the formidable details of his description and spread his fame, with the able assistance of Truthful James and other veracious historians of the California and Nevada press.

For several years the clubfooted Grizzly ranged the Sierra Nevada from Lassen County to Mono, invulnerable, invincible, and mysterious, and every old hunter in the mountains had an awesome story to tell of the ferocity and uncanny craft of the beast and of his own miraculous escape from the jaws of the bear after shooting enough lead at him to start a smelter. Old Brin was a never-failing recourse of the country editor when the foreman was insistant for copy, and those who undertook to preserve the fame of his exploits in their files scrupulously respected the rights of his discoverer and never permitted any vain-glorious bear hunter to kill him. As one of the early guardians of this incomparable monster, I can bear witness that it was the unwritten law of the journalistic profession that no serious harm come to the clubfooted bear and he should invariably triumph over his enemies. It was also understood that a specially interesting episode in the career of Old Brin constituted a pre-emption claim to guardianship, and, if acknowledged by the preceding guardian, the claim could not be jumped as long as it was worked with reasonable diligence.

But a later breed of journalistic historians, having no reverence for the traditions of the craft - and no regard for the truth, sprang up, and the slaughter of the clubfooted grizzly began.

In my own words - So many outlandish tales were told of Old Brin and by numerous names, that the truth was long-ago lost. He has been killed and resurrected many times and in many locations. Never-the-less, there was indeed a living breathing club-footed grizzly who was quite large and quite powerful and was certainly notorious in the eyes of farmers, ranchers, and shepherds. Reply