Bear Size ~

[brotherbear]

California's Day of the Grizzly by Willaim B. Secrest.

George F. Kent, "Life in California in 1849," California Historical Society Quarterly, March 1941:

A few grisly bears were killed in the neighborhood this winter, and three of our men had fell in with one while out hunting & shot him in the head with a charge of buckshot, but instead of attacking them he made tracks for his den. I was out shooting that day and had parted with them but a short time before they saw the bear. The next day we got up a party to track him to his den, some six miles distant, but he was not at home, though there were traces of his recent occupancy of the cave. Some of these bears are very large, weighing in instances round 1200 to 1500 pounds. Toward the last of the winter I met a man who a few weeks before was wounded very severely by a grisly bear, and he showed me a wound on his arm that had not healed. His brother, who helped him fight the bear, was nearly killed, but had then got so as to walk about. They fired two or three balls into the bear's head before he attacked them, but he at last got away alive, though probably died in his den. This affair occurred within a few miles of our camp. Generally, these bears are very hard to kill, but a Mr. Taylor shot one near the Shingle Machine, in March, with a single bullet. This bear weighed when dressed 960 pounds. And his meat sold for $1 per pound. Reply