Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1880 — A Famous Grizzly. [ARTICLE]

A Famous Grizzly.

Grizzly Davis, of Bierrville, an .old bear hunter, has been telling our reporter about old Bruin, the club footed bear. Davis got old CJußfoot in an iron ' trap in 1863. He dragged the trap around a young tamarack tree and tore the jaws out of it. It was a big, stone machine, with strong iron jaws fourteen inches wide when open. The old bear came every night to feed off oxen apd horses that died out of passing freight teams. He hurt his jaws considerably, and Davis followed him through the snow by his bloody tracks. He came up to him as he stood in some chapparal and let him have a charge of snot from his long ducking gun. He hit him in the shoulder and the old fellow fell, but got up and started off, falling twice more. Next day he was tracked nearly to Lake Bigler. The year following Davis got him in a trap again, but he shook it off and Jbroke it. That same summer he put his foot in Davis’ trap, but It caught his toe only. He pulled the toe off rather than bp taken, and thus gained the name of Clubfoot. Old Bruin’s track measured eleven by fourteen inehes. Davis says the biggest bear he ever killed made a track six by ten inches. It dressed over 700 pounds, and must have weighed 1,000 pounds when alive. He thinks Bruin would certainly weigh 1,500 when he saw him last. He got very, nearly white at last. The bear spoked of above was a female and was old Bruin’s mate. They were always near together. After he lost her, old Bruin refused all sympathy or consolation and was never seen to associate with his kind again. Davis is satisfied that old Bruin is dead. Noone has seen him since JohnFleckenstein, of Sardine Valley, in 1874. Only bar-room bear hunters claim to have seen hlm sinoe that «. *• *tll “1* °ld haunts between Sierra Valley and lake Bigler, and in the country around Webber, no one has ever seen him nor any track or sign of him fbr six years, and it is safe to say he has not found a new country where he could abide so long. —Reno (Nev.) Gazette.