The snow-capped mountains surrounding Lake Karluk south of the North Pole were the greatest surprise to the hunters. This was only the third day of a journey that could have lasted several weeks. And before them was the writhing, writhing form of the largest Alaskan brown bear any of them had ever seen.
He had not planned it like this. Actually, it was a reconnaissance trip for three people from the Los Angeles County Museum. Melville N. is the chief curator of the Lincoln Museum; HT Beck, its taxidermist; and JR Sewell, its staff-in-residence background artist. They were on Kodiak Island, Alaska, with a dual purpose: first, to obtain suitable bear specimens for the resident group in the museum, and second, to make direct observations of the country so that their exhibits would be completely realistic.
In Los Angeles, museum director Jean Delacour and expedition sponsor Keith Spaulding of Pasadena secured the cooperation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And so the fourth member of the search party that afternoon was Roy Lindsley of the Service. While stationed on Kodiak, he was intimately familiar with the terrain.
The men had made their way painfully through the rugged country of alder bushes and magnificent salmon runs. They were afoot; The use of horses was out of the question. From their base camp, the four of them would cross Karluk Lake each morning in an outboard-powered boat, then climb into the mountains wearing hip boots for protection from the moisture and stabbing brush.
They had timed their visit to catch the salmon spawning, as the museum group would be showing a family of bears eating the fish. But when they reached the lake on May 20, 1952, they found that the salmon run was late. So they decided to spend a few days sketching the country and looking at the bears’ “prospects”, then went to Pribilof Island for seals. They later returned to Karluk when the salmon season was in full swing.
This was still their plan when they encountered the bear on the rugged, brush-covered mountainside. Lindsley led with a .30/06 rifle loaded with 180-grain bullets, and Beck followed with a .405 Elephant gun. Lincoln and Sewell came up the rear.
No one was afraid of the bear. Lindsley has seen a lot of Kodiak browns, which are common. He is also an expert rifleman, although he has never shot a large bear. Lincoln and Beck hunted grizzlies in Montana. Sewell was busy sketching, intending to view the landscape.
And then suddenly the huge bear was in front of them – maybe 40 or 50 feet away. Its body was somewhat obscured by willows and alders, so people climbed over it in the hope that it would stand up to “inspection”. They also whistled and shouted: “Sit! Sit!”
However, this particular bear did not want to be inspected. Instead she put her head down and came towards them with all the speed and purpose of an express train. Lindsley decided in an instant that either he would become a hunter immediately or become a hunter himself. He slung his .30/06 over his shoulder, his eyes fell on the charging brownie’s thick neck and he pulled the trigger.
Striking the neck at a height of 34 feet, the bear charged forward and landed with a loud thud right in front of the hunters. Its spinal cord was broken. But he was still alive, and both Lindsley and Beck pumped additional bullets into him until he gave a final shudder and calmed down.
People heaved a sigh of relief. Only now did he realize how close his meeting had been. The sight of the bear, the attack, the shot by Lindsley – all came in a matter of seconds, giving the hunters no time to worry.
Lincoln later said, “Most Kodiaks are wary of man and do not attack him.” “But they don’t see very well, and obviously we startled the big fellow when we got that close. He just put his head towards the ground and came for us. It was a tough shot for Roy but he came like a veteran.”
The fallen brownie looked as big as an igloo, and the people were at a loss as to how they would break it apart and bring it back to camp. At a distance of 1,000 yards from the lake there was a rough, alder-dense mountain, and even without burdens they found the path extremely difficult. Furthermore, it was now 8 o’clock at night, and although the sun would continue to shine until almost midnight, it was too late to begin dressing the corpse. So they threw a sweater over the bear–its manly smell would ward off scavengers–and went back to camp, stumbling over dangerous ground and making their way through the brush.
The next morning they returned for the murder with accurate scales. When they cut the brownies into pieces they weighed each part. This work took the whole day. The animal, emaciated after a long winter sleep, weighed a total of 1,190 pounds. His weight in summer might have been around 1,400 kg. The hide alone weighed 157 pounds.
Bringing the slain back to camp – including the skull and bones – was the most difficult part of the job. It was almost impossible to get a firm grip on the thick, slippery hide and dragging it through the alder bushes was a heartbreaking task. Beck recalls, “When we reached camp, we were so exhausted that we decided our next expedition would be to the chipmunks.”
But after the Pribilofs’ visit, the team returned to Karluk, ready to continue their studies on raw bears. They observed that a total of 53 people were busy fishing and eating salmon in Kodiak streams. A mother bear proudly paraded with four cubs instead of the usual three. Despite being afraid of the big brownie, the museum people soon lost all fear of the bears, who were determined to stay out of their way.
One evening Sewell decided to investigate the intensity of light in the mountains, and three other men accompanied him to a game path near the camp. Nobody had a gun.
Then it happened again. At the intersection of two trails they suddenly came upon a male who until that moment had been invisible in the tall grass. This time the brownie stood up for “inspection”. Then she decided she didn’t like company, and started working for men.
Beck was a pioneer. He later said, “All I could think about was getting to a tree. The hip boots stopped my running and I could hear the voices of the other companions behind me. The only suitable tree was just to the right of the oncoming bear, so we actually ran towards it. I climbed the tree with Sewell, but Lincoln fell. If you have ever tried to climb a tree in hip boots you can imagine what we were up against. By the way Also, Lincoln got to his feet and jumped into the tree.
“What saved us was the bear’s surprise when we ran toward him. He stopped, looked at the pile of hip boots, and walked off down the trail. I swear he was shaking his head.”
With this the pleasant evening walk without guns came to an end. Two encounters with anti-social bears gave visitors a fix.
Back in Los Angeles with the trophy, Beck began his work reconstructing the skeleton for mounting, Sewell worked on a giant background canvas for the housing group, while Lincoln began examining the shape of the bear.
The curator soon realized that it was an exceptionally large specimen. After making some preliminary measurements he came into contact with the Boone and Crockett Club in New York. Grensell Fitz, who is on the club committee that keeps North American big game records, traveled to the West Coast to view the trophy. He took it back to New York, where he met with committee chairman Samuel B. Measurements officially verified with the web.
In March of this year, Fitz informed curator Lincoln that the Alaska grizzly bear was the largest bear ever taken. The length of its skull (measured, as usual, without the lower jaw) was 17 15/16 inches; Its maximum width was 12 13/16 inches. The total score under the club’s new rating method was 30 12/16 – which was 3/16 more than the record holder now listed as top in the North American Big Game Records, the so-called Wagner Specimen at the University of California at Berkeley.
Meanwhile Beck finished assembling the skeleton, made a clay model over the bones, took a plaster cast and made a burlap-and-plaster model from it, onto which he applied the skin. Today this trophy, eight feet eight inches high, dominates the highly realistic housing scene at the Los Angeles County Museum, which opened to the public a month ago.
When I saw the big bear I thought, “God, it almost scares me, and I know it’s dead. Wonder how Lindsley felt when he encountered it alive, roaring and attacking?”
This story was originally published in Outdoor Life in July 1953
