The Historic Grizzly

[brotherbear]

Grizzlies and Grizzled Old Men by Mike Lapinski - 2006.
Much of the West was still uninhabited when professional California grizzly hunters were notching scores of kills. Jedediah Smith, famous scout and trapper, was the first American to note the presence of grizzly bears in California. While beaver trapping in the Sacramento Valley in 1828 he wrote, "I saw a Grizzly Bear and shot at him but did not kill him." John Work and a hunting party in the Sacramento Valley killed forty-five grizzlies between November 1832 and May 1833. George Nidever killed forty-five bears near San Louis Obispo in 1837, and Nidever claimed to have killed about 200 in previous years. William Gordon of Yolo County killed nearly fifty bears in one year in the 1840s. And three hunters in the Tejon Pass region in 1854 are said to have killed 150 bears in less than one year. 
Farmers and ranchers paid these men to kill bears on their lands, and the bear meat was sold to hungry immigrants and later to gold miners. Then a curious demand sent these men to the hills to bring grizzly bears back, not dead, but alive. ( bear/bull fights ).  Reply