Vo!. XC 
OCTOBER, 1920 
No. 10 
HUNTING GRIZZLY WITH THE BOW 
THAT THE AGE-OLD IMPLEMENT OF THE CHASE STILL HOLDS ITS PLACE AMONG 
MODERN WEAPONS IS CONCLUSIVELY PROVED BY TWO CALIFORNIA SPORTSMEN 
T HE California Academy of Sciences 
has in its museum in Golden Gate 
Park some of the finest habitat ani- 
mal groups in the world. But the Cali- 
fornia grizzly bear is not among them. 
He is extinct. It was decided, therefore, 
to secure specimens of the Wyoming- 
grizzly, the “silver tip,” a species whose 
range extended westward to the Sierra 
Nevada mountains, and which in size 
and general characteristics closely re- 
sembles the California great bears. 
Permit was obtained from Washing- 
ton to take specimens for museum pur- 
poses in Yellowstone National Park. We 
offered our services as professional bear 
slayers with the object of delivering 
those specimens to the Academy, inci- 
dentally to kill these beasts with the bow 
and arrow, and strange to say, our offer 
was accepted. 
As a sporting proposition, a great 
many people will say shooting bear in 
Yellowstone Park is rather a tame pas- 
time. These people think that bear are 
all over the park, playing around the 
hotel garbage pile and pillaging camps. 
This is true to some extent, but it is 
also a fact that there are 3,000 square 
miles in the Park. The highest portion 
of the Rocky Mountains is also there, 
and the time the pelts of the bears are in 
best condition is before the park opens 
to tourists, when the bears are in the 
mountains. 
Don’t imagine, however, that because 
a bear comes up and eats out of your 
hand near a camp he may not take your 
arm off if he gets a chance. In fact, 
William Wright, whose book on the 
grizzly is the best authority we have, 
states that these same bear that fre- 
quent the hotel dumps, when beyond the 
confines of civilization, are just as wary 
and just as dangerous as any bear in 
Alaska, or any other wild area. 
During the past few years no less 
than four people have been badly mauled 
or killed by Grizzlies in Yellowstone Park. 
One man was seized while asleep and 
dragged out of his tent, being bitten 
By DR. SAXTON POPE 
through the arm and in the chest. At 
another time, a bear entered the tent of 
Ned Frost, the famous Yellowstone 
guide, and attacked a sleeping man. 
Frost, hearing his cry, sat up in bed 
and hurled his pillow at the bear, which 
immediately turned upon him, seized him 
by the thighs and dragged him from the 
tent. The bear carried Frost fifty yards 
or more, shaking him so violently from 
side to side, that he was thrown entirely 
out of his sleeping bag. While the bear 
still worried the bag, Frost escaped in 
a thicket of jack pines. Although his 
thighs were badly bitten and the flesh 
torn, he managed to climb a tree, while 
friends came to his rescue, driving off 
an enormous grizzly. 
Jack Walsh, a teamster, sleeping under 
his freight wagon at Cold Springs, was 
attacked by a large grizzly. His arm 
Saxton Pope and Arthur Young 
was practically bitten off at the shoulder 
and his abdomen was ripped open. Walsh 
died of blood poison a few days later. 
The question may be asked, “Well, if 
you have to shoot a grizzly bear, why 
worry him with a bow and arrow; why 
not take a gun and shoot him like a 
man?” Most people can only picture 
to themselves the little willow bow they 
used to shoot when children, and they 
imagine that if any animal were acci- 
dentally hit with an arrow his death 
might possibly result from nervous pros- 
tration and insomnia, but hardly from 
any damage done by the arrow. 
In a way, killing a grizzly with a bow 
is an experiment in anthropology, to 
learn exactly what can be done with this 
primitive old weapon. Secondly, it is a 
much more sportsmanlike thing to use 
a bow to kill any animal than a gun. 
Every big game hunter will tell you 
that there is no danger and very little 
excitement in killing a bear at a hun- 
dred or two hundred yards with a mod- 
ern high power rifle. 
F OR some years back, Arthur Young 
and I have hunted with the bow and 
arrow. We have killed ground squir- 
rels, quail, duck, rabbits, skunks,- wild 
cats, mountain lions, deer and black bear, 
with this noble old weapon. We have found 
it more humane to shoot an animal with 
an arrow than with a gun; he never gets 
away when wounded severely. It is a 
fairer contest of strength and cunning 
when one pits his own nerve and vigor 
against that of his quarry. The bow as 
a game weapon makes for fair sport, 
careful hunting and stands on its past 
record for honorable service. 
Our bows we make ourselves of Ore- 
gon yew. They are 5 feet 8 inches long 
and pull about 75 pounds. Our arrows 
are birch dowels, % of an inch in diame- 
ter, a cloth yard long, or 28 inches, 
feathered with the pinions of the turkey 
and tipped with tempered steel broad 
heads. The extreme range of such a 
bow is about three hundred yards, but 
