Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the June 1953 issue of Outdoor Life and it reflects the language and stereotypes of the times.

A COLD OCTOBER drizzle was soaking the Ontario bush when the old Ojibway Indian and his wife beached their canoe below our tent. They had a little boy with them, sort of wedged in the bow ahead of the woman, and he was yelling bloody murder. 

They looked too old to be his parents, and the man explained that, jerking a finger at the toddler and grunting, “Mamma dead.” 

After we welcomed them with cigarettes, the woman held the boy up and pointed to his mouth. “Hurt,” she said. And he wailed at the top of his voice. 

Neither my partner, K. K. (Knick) Knickerbocker, nor I is a medicine man, but we got the idea. The poor little cuss was teething, and they’d come to our camp hoping we could do something for him. I rummaged in my gear for the best remedy we had, a bottle of aspirin. We didn’t dare give them the whole bottle for fear they’d feed them all to the kid. So I shook out a dozen tablets, broke each in half, then pointed to the face of my watch and held up half a tablet for each hour. 

They were tickled pink. The woman poked the first dose into the boy without ceremony. He went right on crying, but they paid no attention to him. 

They came up to our tent and the man’s eyes fell on our two 70-pound-pull hunting bows and the arrows. Curious as a kid with a bulging Christmas stocking, he tested the razor-sharp edge of the four-bladed arrowheads, tried the pull of my bow. Then, after looking in vain for firearms, he grinned at me, and said, “Moose big. String-gun too little.”

KNICK AND I were still chuckling about it long after the Indians paddled away. 

“Honest Indian,” Knick said. 

But we didn’t share all the old man’s doubts. I started hunting big game with a bow in 1935, and I’ve never carried a gun since. Knick’s also an experienced archer, and he’d come all the way from Virginia to match his bow with a moose. Up to the time of our moose hunt, I’d killed nothing bigger than deer (though I’ve added moose, bear, antelope, and elk to my list since) and neither had Knick. Still we both felt our bows would stop a moose. Other archers had proved that. 

The Indian wasn’t the first to rate us underequipped for moose hunting. We’d had difficulty finding outfitters and guides willing to handle us, once they learned we intended to use bows rather than guns. 

One outfitter bluntly canceled our reservations. Another said he was booked full. 

We didn’t blame them. Surprisingly few know much about the killing power of hunting bows. And since big-game guides live largely by the success of their parties, it’s only natural that most shy away from archers. Guns get more game. 

It wasn’t until Knick and I contacted Archie McDonald in Quibell that we were able to arrange for a moose hunt in Ontario. And I confess we’d been in Archie’s main camp on Cliff Lake two days before we let it be known we were gunless. By that time it was too late to pack us out. 

For guides we drew Bill Humphries an Victor MacQueen, an Englishman and a Scot respectively, and they were good sports about the thing. We were to hunt in an area where they trap beavers in winter. They assured us there were plenty of moose there, and if we were willing to take chances on bows it was O.K. with them. 

So the four of us set out for Cedar River, the outlet of Lake Wabaskang, 100 miles north of International Falls. We worked through a chain of lakes—Twilight, Evening, Mystery, Cliff, Cedar, Perrault—traveling in two canoes with five-horsepower outboards, and portaging over rocky trails. Cold rain fell in an endless drizzle, broken only by harder squalls. We were wind-bound on Cliff Lake, on Cedar, and again at the lower end of Wabaskang. 

We made camp late one afternoon, dried our clothes and bags, and let a good fire drive the chill from our bones. By morning the rain stopped, and the world began to look like a fit place to live. 

It became a wonderful world when we took our casting rods down to the Cedar and flipped our spoons at the foot of a low waterfall. We caught wall-eyes and northern pike as fast as we could take ’em off the hooks. The pike ran 10 to 12 pounds apiece. In 30 minutes I landed three that totaled 40 pounds. We hung a few in trees around camp for bear bait. We put back the ones we caught after that; it was wall-eyes we wanted for eating, and the river swarmed with them. 

Yet we found the best fishing of all at Wine Lake, a few miles down the Cedar from Wabaskang. Lake trout from three to 12 pounds had come up in the shoals to spawn, and they pounced on our lures the way a leopard goes after a goat. Now and then we hooked lunkers that wouldn’t be handled on our medium-weight casting rods. We broke lines and smashed tips on some I bet weighed over 25 pounds. We kept no lakers, still preferring wall-eyes at camp, but we caught them at the rate of 10 or 12 an hour anytime we fished. 

It was raining again the second morning, but Knick and I had come a long way to kill a moose and we didn’t have all fall to do it. So after breakfast we climbed into the two canoes and headed downriver. 

Knick and Bill turned off where Wine Lake has its outlet in the Cedar, but Vic and I kept on another three or four miles. Then we went up a small creek and into a little unnamed lake that Vic said was a moose hangout. By that time the wind was blowing a gale and the cold rain had us drenched to the skin. We went ashore, got a fire going, and huddled over it until our teeth stopped chattering. Then we went moose hunting. 

Wet weather gives an archer one great advantage over the prey. He can move without noise, which he must do to get close enough to score with an arrow. Vic and I traveled slowly, combing every open place ahead. Eventually we spotted a sleek whitetail buck, a six-pointer, coming toward us. I picked an opening ahead of him in the brush and lined an arrow on it. When he walked into it I let go. It should have been an easy shot, since his neck and part of his shoulder were in sight at about 30 yards, but there was too much thick stuff in the way. Or maybe it was my fault. My fingertips were numb with cold by that time, and I didn’t get off a good release. 

I heard the arrow thud into something solid and saw the deer whirl and run. I found the arrow, bedded in a young pine, three paces short of where he’d stood. It had brushed a twig, glanced off, and whacked into the tree. “I got a name for this place.” I told Vic. “Let’s call it Arrow Lake.” 

He grinned, but it was a feeble performance, and I could see he was biting his tongue to hold back some remark on my performance. 

It helped when I missed another shot at a bigger buck late that afternoon. I shot high, and again I blamed my cold fingers. But I knew better than to alibi to Vic. We saw seven deer that day, including three bucks, and I could have killed all three with a rifle. By the time we got back to camp I realized that any fragment of faith Vic and Bill may have had in archery was as good as gone. At supper the guides exchanged significant glances across the fire and acted like a couple of guys who have picked a lame horse. 

THE WEATHER broke two days later, and we saw stars overhead and pink in the morning sky for the first time since the hunt began. We hurried through breakfast and were on our way before sunrise, running, the canoes through a winding canyon of gold and scarlet foilage. We hadn’t realized how far autumn had advanced. Ducks got up in front of us, and an eagle soared lazily overhead. 

We separated once again, agreeing to meet for lunch. Vic and I saw two cow moose that forenoon, but nothing with antlers. Knick and Bill stalked a good buck but couldn’t get within range. 

At noon we met in a cove formed by a big point that thrust half a mile out into the lake. We were finishing the last of our grub when a series of low, whimpering grunts rolled across the water to us. Bill lifted a warning hand. We listened until it was repeated. 

“Cow, calling,” Vic said softly. “She may have a bull with her.” 

We got up noiselessly and laid our plans in a hurry. The point was connected to the main shore by a neck of land about 200 yards wide and timbered with open stuff. Knick and I would have a chance for shooting there. The guides would drive, starting at the far end of the point, and if there was a bull with the lovelorn cow he’d have to come past us to get ashore. 

Knick and I picked our stands and Bill and Vic shoved off in one of the canoes. Ten minutes later a cow moose come out of the willows 300 yards away, splashed through the shallows, and struck out across the cove. When nothing else showed up in three or four minutes I relaxed. Then I heard a heavy animal coming through the brush in a hurry and headed almost at me. I caught a glimpse of brown, too light for a moose, and an eight-point buck came busting out of the adlers. He was spooked, and going places, but I had him in the open and I knew he was my buck. 

He went past me at 15 yards, running in long, reaching bounds. I shot when he was broadside. The arrow made a good solid hit, but I saw that I’d failed to lead him enough. I’d aimed for the rib section but the arrow had flashed into his flank. 

I found out later the shot would have killed him anyway, likely within 100 yards. The four-bladed head had severed big arteries and was bedded against the hip bone. But I didn’t know that at the time. 

The only apparent effect of the shot was to slow him down. His long jumps changed to short, high hops. I sent another arrow after him before he’d gone 20 yards. It sailed over his back, a clean miss. 

He was going straight away from me, 40 yards off, when I loosed a third arrow. That sounds like fast shooting with a bow but my average time between shots is five seconds, and the buck lost a lot of his speed as a result of my first shot. 

I took a little more time with that third shot. It struck him in the back of the neck, just below the head, and he went down like a dishrag. When we dressed him we discovered the arrow had gone through the first vertebra behind the skull and had driven deep into the brain. No bullet ever killed a deer quicker. 

Bill and Vic came out of the brush in a few minutes, plainly disappointed and disgusted. They’d heard no shooting, of course, and I realized it hadn’t even occurred to them there could be a kill without gunfire. 

“See anything?” Vic asked with patient resignation. 

“Saw a cow moose and a buck,” I replied. “The moose swam the cove.”

“What happened to the deer?” 

“He went right through here,” I said, pointing. 

I let them take the lead, and they almost fell over the dead buck. 

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Vic muttered. Bill added, “No shooting or nothing.” It wasn’t lavish praise, but the way they said it made it about the biggest compliment I’d ever had on a hunting trip. 

Back at camp that night, however, I could see the two weren’t convinced that a bow was proper moose medicine. They’d witnessed a trial demonstration and were inclined to give me more credit than I deserved, but there’s a difference of something like 800 pounds between a moose and a deer, and to their way of thinking, killing a moose would require a far more lethal weapon. 

Knick and I voted to try the Arrow Lake country next morning. We’d seen plenty of moose sign there and also a couple of cows. It looked like a good bet. 

Knick and Bill left camp first but they loitered on the way down the Cedar, scouting for tracks, and Vic and I passed them. But five minutes after we paddled into the little lake they came out of the creek behind us—just in time for the show. 

Right then, with both canoes in plain sight, a moose showed up at the edge of the alders across the lake. We saw his antlers first, over the top of the brush, and then he waded into the water. I had my glasses on him before he took three steps. He was a big bull with a fine head. 

WHY HE DIDN’T spot us, I still don’t know. While our canoes were fairly close to shore and he was almost half a mile away, we had no cover. I didn’t think there was a chance we could cross to his side of the open lake unseen. But we had to try. 

Vic and I crouched low and drove our canoe with hard, noiseless strokes. Knick and Bill were close behind as we rounded the end of the lake. A brushy point now hid us from the moose, so Vic turned the canoe toward shore. I was out of it and into the alders before its bottom touched land. 

When I’d last seen the bull he was coming down the lake in our direction, walking slowly in shallow water about 25 yards offshore. There was a strong wind, blowing in my favor and making enough noise in the undergrowth to cover my movements. A few yards back in the brush I found a game trail running parallel to shore, and I followed it until I figured I was halfway to the moose. Then I took a branch trail down to the water. 

Unable to see more than a few yards along shore, I crouched at the edge of the alders and waited. Nothing happened for a minute or two, and I was sure the bull had heard me and turned back. But I squatted there patiently and listened. 

Then I heard him, splashing and grunting. Another five seconds and I caught sight of him through a hole in the bushes, 75 yards off. 

For an instant I was as near to buck fever as I’ve ever been. He looked as big as a boxcar, and I recalled what the Indian had said about my string-gun. Suppose he was right? That was a lot of moose bearing down on me. I wondered what he’d do when my arrow drove into him. Would he come crashing for shore and pound me to a pulp with his big hoofs? 

Then I took another look, sizing up his black bulk and his broad antlers, that shone like polished mahogany. They’d go 48 inches or better. I thought of Knick, Bill, and Vic back on the point, watching from the brush, waiting for my shot. 

My bow was up to it. Was I? 

IF THE MOOSE kept his course he’d pass in front of me about 20 yards away. I could take all the time I wanted, and at that range I could hardly miss. 

I found another opening in the brush and settled myself on one knee. I could no longer see him but I could hear him coming. Then his neck and shoulders filled the opening. I brought the bowstring back to full draw and heard the sharp, satisfying twang as the arrow left it. And I was on target. The feathers of the arrow suddenly sprouted out from the center of the bull’s rib section. 

“That ought to fix him,” I murmured to myself. 

The moose flinched and stiffened. For an instant he froze in his tracks. Then he whirled and lunged toward deeper water. But he made only three jumps before he stopped broadside to me. 

I had a second arrow on the string when he humped his back, stretched out his neck, and blew a red gush from both nostrils. I eased off my draw then, knowing he was done for. He turned toward shore, but his legs buckled and he went down. One arrow killed him before he’d moved twice his own length from the place where he stood when it hit him. 

We got ropes on him and towed him ashore. When we dressed him we found that my arrow had entered between two ribs, sliced through the lungs, cut off big blood vessels, and stopped when the head sheared off a rib on the opposite side. The moose was dead a minute after he was shot. That’s how a hunting arrow is supposed to kill. 

The Indian and his wife and the little boy turned up at camp about noon next day. Maybe they smelled meat. Anyway, they heard of our luck—perhaps via the moccasin telegraph. The kid was quiet, but both he and the old ones looked hungry. 

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We had two moose tenderloins hanging in front of our tent. I took one down and gave it to the old fellow. He grinned from ear to ear, and the woman started to paw through the duffel piled under a tarp in the middle of their canoe. She came up with a faded sugar bag full of wild rice, and handed it to us. When they were making ready to leave the man saw my bow propped against a tree. He looked from it to the moose quarters hanging near by. “String-gun plenty big!” he grunted. 

It was Bill, the once-skeptical guide, who whooped a hearty “I’ll tell the world” back at him. Across the fire that night Vic put an interesting question to me. “How much would it cost me,” he asked, “to get a bow like yours?”

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It’s easy to forget that many of the people whom we consider legends were indeed just that: people. Iconic stories from the likes of Fred Bear have been told and retold, but much of the pith gets lost over time—and our heroes become more myth than human.

This particular story is one I’d heard many times. I’d even seen a small excerpt in a 100-year anniversary book published by Outdoor Life that I received as a Christmas present when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I picked up the April 1960 issue of Outdoor Life that the story really came to life. The printed words and the sweet smell of aged magazine paper transported me back in time then, and so does rereading it again here.

The story of Fred Bear’s world-record stone sheep is an amazing tale, but it also allows the reader to connect to the humanity of Fred. He was a legendary bowhunter, but he also had worries and doubts like the rest of us. He was also a salesman, who made sure to mention his then-new Bear Razorhead broadheads.

Product mentions aside, Bear still had a code of ethics in a time when such things were often looked at very differently. Some of the shots he took and things he advocated for would have him tarred and feathered by his self-proclaimed followers on the internet today. In fact, the shot that’s the subject of this story was reckless, and based on how he described the wound, Bear was extremely lucky to recover his sheep. He talks about his misgivings about taking that shot, and that he’d had to make a choice—fast. It seems to me that doing so bothered him, even though everything worked out. And that says a lot about the man, and how he became a legend. —Tyler Freel

Best Shot I’ll Ever Make

By Fred Bear, as told to Bryon W. Dalrymple

KNICK WAS MAKING his stalk below us, and it looked as if he’d get a goat. I grabbed my camera gear and told my Indian guide, Charles Quock, to stay here on top of the mountain with the horses. Then I hurriedly started picking my way toward the action. When I reached the spot I was aiming for, I couldn’t see Knick, but the goats were in plain sight. The two of them were bedded in a draw far down the steep mountainside, and one appeared to be an excellent trophy. To cover the scene, I set up a tripod for the camera with its telephoto lens. 

Now I waited, watching, and presently Knick emerged below me. He was doing a beautiful job. The goats lay placidly dreaming as he stalked closer and closer. They were just below a big rock-a perfect set-up. 

Now he was within 35 yards. A gunner might have shot from atop the mountain. But for Knick and the three others of us in our party, getting close to the target was a must. We were all archers. Our party included Elisha (Bud) Gray, a Michigan archer of wide experience and chairman of the board of R.C.A. Whirlpool; Ed Henkel, a bowman of similar experience and one of several owners of Lamina Tool & Die, Detroit, and Kenneth K. Knickerbocker (otherwise known as Knick), who has hunted with a bow for years and is chairman of the board of Acme Visible Records, Crozet, Virginia. I’m in the business of manufacturing archery equipment. To all of us, the stalk to within bow range was at least half the sport. 

Suddenly the goats were aware of their peril. As they rose, Knick drew the bow and let fly. It was a beautiful hit, dead center. I forgot to keep track of the other animal, but I saw this one run as I operated the camera. It covered possibly 200 yards. Then it fell, got up again, and disappeared into some buckbrush. 

Knick didn’t follow. He came back up and we talked excitedly, rehashing the incident, giving the animal plenty of time. We ate our lunch, and finally we worked down to the thicket. Knick’s trophy was waiting. It had died quickly-a fine specimen with 10-inch horns. 

I stood looking at it and thinking what a shake-of-the-dice business hunting is, especially big-game hunting. And particularly, right then, sheep hunting. I’d come several thousand miles after a Stone ram, and I wanted a good one so badly I could fairly smell the chops cooking and see the mounted head on my office wall. We were in an area of northern British Columbia that without question was one of the best spots on the continent for Stone sheep. But, though Charles and I had seen every other imaginable creature from ptarmigan to grizzly and caribou to moose, we hadn’t spotted a sheep. We had not seen so much as a single toothless and rheumatic old ewe. But instead of bemoaning my fate, I should have been remembering the axiom that patience is the hunter’s most valuable asset. 

THE STONE RAM, as most hunters know, is one of the truly great trophies among North American game. The horns are unusually long and graceful. In fact, the longest sheep horns ever taken were those of a Stone, and each measured over 50 inches. The Stone sheep is also intriguing because color patterns vary widely among individual animals. They vary so widely, in fact, that for many years there was-and still is in some quarters-much scientific uncertainty about just how many sheep species there are on the continent. 

Sportsmen, particularly for purposes of record keeping, recognize four species of North American sheep: 1. Bighorn. 2. Desert. 3. White (or Dall). 4. Stone. Scientists, on the other hand, tend to regard the bighorn and the desert sheep as parts of one super-species, and the Dall and Stone sheep as parts of another super-species. Some scientists even go so far as to lump all North American sheep under one super-species. 

Dall sheep are found mainly in Alaska and the Yukon, and the very dark Stones from central British Columbia north into the Yukon. Where the two colors overlap, most of the sheep are varying shades of gray, sometimes with dark saddles. Years ago these “saddle backs” were thought to be a full-fledged species, and were called the Fannin sheep. But now, in this section of the continent, all but the pure white ones are called Stone sheep by sportsmen. I was hoping to get a fairly dark animal, but I was concerned mostly with trying to get a very respectable head. And while I wasn’t dead set on a record, no hunter can help hoping one will come his way. 

I had come out from my home at Grayling, Michigan, by United Airlines to Seattle, thence via Canadian Pacific Airline to Vancouver and far on north to Prince George, about 400 miles above the Washington-British Columbia border. The last leg of our journey was a four-hour flight northward from Prince George in a chartered Norseman. Finally our pilot eased us down upon the mirrorlike surface of Coldfish Lake. What a fabulous sweep of wilderness!

Coldfish Lake is about 150 miles east of Telegraph Creek, which has long been an outfitting area for big game hunting in northern British Columbia. Before there was much flying, the only way to enter the area was out of Telegraph. It took seven or eight days by packtrain, and few hunters got in. Most of those who did were interested in caribou; the region is noted for its big heads. 

When the plane taxied to the dock, all of us were pleased to see that base camp was really a solid-looking haven in this far wilderness. By the looks of the crowd on the camp dock, we were having a regular homecoming. Out there to welcome us were Tommy Walker, our outfitter, his partner, Rusty Russell, their wives, and help galore-wranglers and guides, both Indian and white. 

On the brink of the hill above the well-built camp was a corral, its fence lined with the wives and children of the Indian men. Behind them was their small “village,” and from back beyond it could be heard the defiant barking of sled dogs. Now that we were down and looking at the surrounding country from the dock, it was even more awe-inspiring than it had been from above. Here were towering peaks as far as we could see. We were only about 200 miles south of the Yukon border, and roughly halfway between the Pacific and the Alberta line. 

Every irregularity of the high mountains seemed to be filled by glaciers, and in these were born cascading streams that tumbled down through the spruce and jackpine of the valleys. Here we would hunt in thousands of square miles inhabited only by Stone sheep, goats, grizzlies, moose, and caribou. I could hardly get unpacked fast enough and ready for tomorrow’s start. 

Shortly after daylight Ed Henkel, Knick, and I went with Tommy Walker down to the east end of Coldfish Lake to do some fishing. I’d brought tackle along at Tommy’s urging, and I wanted to give it a try before starting the hunt. Otherwise, I knew, I’d likely not take time. It was arranged that we would fish while the pack outfit was made up and got under way. It would pass us later, on the way to our first outpost camp. Saddle horses would be dropped off for us for our trip to camp later. 

I unraveled a cast and laid a small dry fly on the calm, frigid water. Instantly there was a swirl, and I was tied to one of the most wild-eyed rainbows I’ve ever seen. It came out in a long leap, fell back, tried again, then bored down and fought stubbornly. It wasn’t large, by wilderness standards. In fact, we found that most of these trout averaged between one and two pounds. But they were beautiful specimens, fat and hard-fleshed, their meat brilliant red and delicious. It was hard to lay down a cast and not get a strike. Time passed quickly, and in my excitement over the fishing I even forgot about sheep. We caught many rainbows, kept all we thought we could eat, and that night the cook heaped our plates with them. I turned in full and content, certain that tomorrow I’d see sheep galore. 

Charles Quock and I set off at daylight, riding slowly and glassing the mountainsides carefully. The weather was far from congenial, but right then my spirits were high and it didn’t seem to matter. Presently we spotted a good moose. 

“You want this moose?” Charles asked. 

I shook my head. “Sheep,” I said, grinning. 

Charles grinned, too, and nodded. “Sheep.” 

Not long after that we spotted another moose. And later, my horse shied as a small flock of ptarmigan flushed. But stare as I would at the peaks, I could see nothing that remotely resembled a sheep. 

During the afternoon it seemed that everywhere we looked there were white patches high on the steep mountainsides. Goats. Charles and I would pause to have a look. I had already taken a goat with my bow on a previous hunt, so I wasn’t anxious to try for another. When Charles looked at me and grinned questioningly after we’d spotted an especially good one, I just shook my head again. I felt this pleased Charles. And I was anxious to please him, for often a bowhunter is a bit handicapped with a wilderness guide. Many of them have never guided archers. Some guides are inclined to take bowhunting as something of a joke, or to be disturbed for fear an arrow can’t do the required job. I had purposely given Charles some instructions about the bow, and I’d let him shoot it to prove what it could do. He was, I felt, an excellent hunter, and I knew he’d hunt all the better if he respected my singleness of purpose and my weapon. 

But none of it did any good that day. After many hours in the saddle, Charles and I came in bushed. We had spotted numerous goats, four moose, six caribou—and no sheep. I didn’t want to be discouraged after just one day at it, but I felt that my guide was also a bit disturbed at no sign of sheep. I crawled into my bag that night with a little bit of the buoyancy worn off. 

ON THE MORNING of Friday, September 13, I came close to putting sheep in No. 2 place. I was looking absently across to the mountain opposite camp when I realized something was moving there. It was a grizzly, and a beauty. He was a big, black one with much silver up his back, neck, and head, and with black rings around his eyes. If there is one animal that gives me a thrill, it’s the grizzly. The previous year I’d shot a grizzly in the Yukon with my bow, the second one ever taken by an archer. That one had given me a few bad moments (“Arrow for a Grizzly,” Outdoor Life, October 1957) for I had stalked it very close. I was not sure I wanted to crowd my luck too far on this superstition-clouded date. But the more I looked. the more I itched. 

“Tommy,” I said to Walker, who was also glassing the bear, “I’ve just got to try him.” 

It was 10 a.m. by the time we were ready to leave camp. We rode part way, then left the horses and climbed to a spot well above where we had last seen him. But it was no good. He was nowhere to be seen. We stuck with it until 3:30 p.m. and then gave up and went back to camp. I took a careful look but still couldn’t find him. We ate a bite and I tried again—and there he was, on the next mountain. I got out the spotting scope and began watching him. He was stuffing himself with berries—blueberries, cranberries, mossberries. 

After a while, someone set up another scope and said, “There’s a billy goat over this way.” But I kept watching the bear and thinking about all the game we were seeing, yet no sheep. This grizzly was one of several that had tempted me so far. It was ironic. The previous year, in the Yukon. I had set my heart on a grizzly and a goat, and finally got both. On that hunt I was almost always in sight of Dall sheep, yet never took time out to hunt one. And, that time, the grizzly was tough to locate. This year I could see grizzlies and goats all over the place, but no sheep. I began to wonder if possibly I should just hunt each animal as it came along, rather than lose out on everything by singleness of purpose. 

Then came the day that I think would have been worth the trip, just because of what we saw. Charles and I rode over a modest range, and suddenly there across a valley were rams—Stone rams. Nine of them! 

I was hypnotized by what we were witnessing. I don’t believe I even thought about my bow. We were much too far off for a shot, anyway, and a stalk at this moment would have been impossible. But we were compensated by seeing a sequence that very few persons have ever been privileged to watch. 

The rams were hurrying head-to-tail along a shale slide. They were moving up toward a sheer cliff of what appeared to be an insurmountable outcropping of rimrock. We swung down and got our glasses on them and were amazed to see the lead ram, followed by the rest of the band, enter a crevice. In the distant past a glacier-fed stream had cut a vertical slit in the face of the cliff. The slit was about eight feet wide, 60 feet high, and jagged all the way up. 

These jagged edges made only the smallest protrusions on each side of the vertical slit. Obviously neither side could be climbed, and I was puzzled about what the sheep would do. They didn’t pause, or even slow down, and suddenly I saw the lead ram bounce from one small foothold on the right side of the slit across and upward. He hit the tiniest outcrop on the opposite side, finding a precarious foothold for only a split second. From an off-balance position, he bounced again, back across and up. 

Behind him came the others, bouncing back and forth across the eight-foot-wide cut, up, up, up, until one at a time they topped out on the flat rim above. The great naturalist Seton described this breathtaking ability of mountain sheep. He called such crevices habitually used in this fashion “sheep stairways” or “sheep ladders.” I do not believe any other animal except the goat could have followed those rams. 

We examined this area further with a scope, and we discovered a well-beaten trail along the slide to the bottom of the “stairway.” The trail picked up again at the top of the “stairway” and ran along the top of the rimrock to the safety of the peaks beyond. There was no possible way for us to follow. Nonetheless, I somehow had a hunch that this was going to change our luck. 

Next day Charles and I rode a long way up a creek, intending to work up into the higher elevations. We saw a moose, and on impulse decided to try for it. All we got for the effort was a lot of lost time. It was now noon. We stopped on another small creek where we’d abandoned the moose chase, and ate our lunch. As we were eating, we saw a white spot on the mountain above. It was a mile away. 

“Goat,” I said. But I got out the scope anyway. It was not a goat. It was a rock. 

But now something happened that was totally unexpected. As we examined the whitish rock with the sun reflecting from it, we saw something beside it—a Stone ram! What a fluke. 

Charles studied it intently through the scope, and there was subdued excitement in his voice when he said, “Full curl.” 

Neither of us said another word. We simply forgot lunch and got going. 

With utmost care and patience and an agony of hard climbing, we came at last to a spot where we thought we might be in position. The ram had been turned away from us. But now, when we eased our heads over the ridge, he was lying there facing us about 50 yards away. My heart almost stopped. He was a beautiful specimen. 

He didn’t take time to study us. He simply bounded up, whirled, and raced away over the shale. I rose and drew as swiftly as I could, and let off the arrow. By then he was at least 60 yards off—a long shot in this game. The arrow never caught up with him, and he disappeared around the mountain. 

We took off in hot pursuit, desperately hoping for another chance. The ram must have climbed straight up the rocky peak, for when we next glimpsed him he was at the top, about 400 yards above us, standing and looking our way. I think any rifle hunter can understand how frustrating it is to an archer to get within easy range and then have something like this happen. We continued swiftly along the slant, planning to circle over the top to see if we could find him on the other side. 

After crossing the shale, we came to a grassy, rolling, steep hillside. Charles was ahead and I was following as swiftly as I could, panting from such vigorous exertion in this altitude. As I loped along, I happened to look back, and was startled to see that we’d passed three more rams in a depression. One was lying down; the other two were feeding, unaware of all this. For a moment I was undecided, but Charles beckoned insistently. The first ram was far larger than any of these. 

Just before we reached the top, I glimpsed the big fellow crossing the next draw. I signaled to Charles, who was still ahead. He came back and we watched the ram go over the next ridge. Then we moved over the top and right into a group of seven rams. They scattered like quail. We were as startled as they were, but we had no time for them. Both of us were now doggedly determined to somehow catch up to Mr. Big. 

We circled back and peeked over a ridge. With a sick feeling, I saw our ram at a full 150 yards below. just going over yet another ridge. My heart was hammering, and I couldn’t get enough air. For a moment I wondered why a man will punish himself this way. But I also knew I was going to keep following that ram until I either killed it or had to quit from exhaustion. 

The successful hunting of both sheep and goats, as most hunters realize, requires a tremendous amount of grueling work. Before previous hunts, I had usually been able to train for several weeks so I could look at a mountain without dread. This time, however, I had flown straight from my office chair, and even after having been here a bit, I still wasn’t in very good shape. 

Many people have asked me if bowhunting for sheep doesn’t make the job doubly severe. The longer I hunt and the more experience I gain, the more evident it becomes to me that the species of animal hunted is of little consequence. The big problem is always to come within bow range. Any deviation of tactics or any extra labor comes about because of the terrain, with little emphasis on the type of game. 

Sheep of course spend a great deal of time in the roughest of country. The more broken the terrain, obviously, the better chance a hunter has of getting close. Some sheep, because of their location, simply can’t be approached closer than rifle range. Sheep have very good eyes, and take alarm at seeing a man, even from long distances. But patience and work, together with the law of averages, will sometimes present the proper situation. 

When you come upon a sheep suddenly at close range, for instance, he is apt to be confused, like the goat, and to just stand and stare in amazement while you shoot. 

There’s another important factor that should be considered by the sheep hunter whether he’s an archer or a rifleman. Although a sheep is likely to take off fast when he spots a hunter at a distance, dogged pursuit will sometimes turn the trick. And dogged ours was, as we skidded down over fine shale, then up to the ridge the great prize had disappeared over. Still it was no use—he was then just going over still another rise. 

We ran. It seemed crazy, but we hurled ourselves down the slope. Charles knew that sometime, somewhere, that ram was going to pause to look back, to make sure if he’d shaken us. The question was-where? And could I make it that far? 

We were gasping for breath as we came up toward the top of the next ridge, and we slowed down. Just as we could barely see across the ridge top, we spotted the ram. He was standing about 40 yards away, and from where we were, we could see only his head. He was looking at us; he knew we were after him. 

I never like a head-on shot, for just a few inches either way will only wound the animal. The hole down into the chest cavity at the entrance to the rib cage is no larger than a baseball. Not only that, but if I now made a full draw and shot high enough to clear the ridge, the only place I could hit the ram was in the head, which wasn’t good. Had I been alone, I know I would not have shot. But Charles barked, “Shoot! Quick!” 

In that split second, the realization flashed through my mind that if I hesitated—after all this agonizing labor—Charles would be disgusted. I’d lose face with him and probably my hunt would be ruined from there on. There was only one course: I drew the 67-pound bow short, and let fly, trying to lob the arrow over the ridge and drop it below our line of sight into the brisket of the ram. 

The shaft with its vicious razorhead—carrying an insert blade at right angles to the main one—left the string and went up and over the ridge. It disappeared in its downward flight, continuing the lobbed arc. All of this sequence, from the moment we’d sighted the ram’s head to the instant the arrow vanished, had taken no more than a second or two. As the head of the sheep disappeared, I got the sick feeling that the arrow had dropped too low after clearing the ridge. That would put it harmlessly between the ram’s forelegs. I knew that a shot of the kind I had tried wasn’t possible. 

I was still gasping for breath, and I didn’t want to go to the ridge top to look. But Charles bounded up there, and then I saw him look back with a wide grin. 

“Blood,” he said. Red trail ahead, too.” down the other side. “Blood all over.” He waved a hand down the other side.

I forgot I was bushed and winded. I raced up the ridge and looked; Charles was right. Looking down more carefully, we saw the ram. He had run about 60 yards, and had died on his feet. He was jammed against a rock halfway down the shale slide. He had rolled until he hit the rock. 

We hurried down to him. What a beautiful animal! He would dress out well over 250 pounds, and his horns were not broomed. They had a 41-inch curl (40 inches after shrinkage), and a 27-inch spread. I was a very lucky fellow to get a ram this big, and would have been happy with a smaller one. It’s believed to be the first Stone ram ever taken by a white man with a bow. 

I examined the arrow wound. It was a gaping hole right in the middle of the brisket. I had never seen a more devastating wound. The arrow had cut one or more large neck veins, skidded between the rib cage and the shoulder blade, shed its insert blade, and passed out through a slit behind the front leg. We looked but never did find the 28- inch fiberglass arrow. 

Undoubtedly I was lucky in bringing off this shot. But lucky know this was probably the best shot I’ll ever make. 

We had left our hats back some distance, with rocks on them to keep them from blowing away. Charles went back after them. 

As he left he said, “Roll him down the mountain.” 

I was most reluctant. “That’ll break the horns,” I said. 

Charles chuckled. “Goat horns brittle, sheep not,” he said. 

He left, and I rolled the ram, fearing the worst as it tumbled about 400 yards down the slope and finally came to rest on a bench. Presently Charles returned and we worked our way down. Sure enough, the horns were undamaged. I was greatly relieved. Charles grinned and gave it another nudge. This time it rolled a quarter of a mile, down to where we could get it with the horses. 

Charles dressed out the ram, and we took some pictures. It was 4 :30 p.m. and had started raining. We went back to our saddle horses and headed for camp-four hours away. We’d come up next day with a pack animal to take the sheep out. 

Next morning, shortly after the sun was up, I looked across from camp and saw a good grizzly on the mountainside. I got the scope and watched him. 

Charles came up beside me and said, “You want to hunt grizzly bear?” 

“Just want to look, Charles,” I said. “Sheep is enough. I know I’ll never be able to repeat that shot of yesterday.” 

Read more stories from the Outdoor Life archives

• Frozen Terror: One of the Greatest Survival Stories from Our Archives
• Arrow for a Grizzly: A Classic Fred Bear Tale from the Archives
• Will Wolves Attack a Man? A Frank Glaser Story from the Archives

The post The Best Shot I’ll Ever Make: Fred Bear’s World-Record Stone Sheep, From the Archives appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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Incredible stories have been told in the pages of Outdoor Life and, every now and then, we dust one off to be republished online. This story comes from one of my favorite vintage issues of OL: October 1957. “Arrow for a Grizzly” is a historic story, and not just because it’s by Fred Bear or because it was about a true safari-style horseback expedition into the Yukon, although those certainly don’t hurt. It’s a look into a key time when Bear was developing the now-legendary Razorhead broadhead. This was the first grizzly Fred Bear killed, and the hunt was also captured on film (which is embedded below).

This story is transcribed as it appeared in the original issue of Outdoor Life. There’s certainly a little embellishment here and there, and it’s interesting to compare the written story to the video. But more than anything, it’s fun to simply read, watch, and enjoy this adventure for what it is. —Tyler Freel

Arrow for a Grizzly

By Fred Bear, as told to Ben East

THE MOOSE was standing shoulder-deep in frost-yellowed willows. Though he was on a slope nearly a mile away across the valley, we could make out with the glasses that he was big as a horse and had a rack as wide as a barn door. We’d seen plenty of moose on the trip, but nothing like this fellow.

“There’s what I came to the Yukon for,” Judd sighed, “and now we see him too late in the day to do anything about it.”

“Moose stay all night. Kill ’em in the morning,” said George John, Judd’s Indian guide, backing his prediction with a confident grin.

We’d intended to move camp right after daylight next day, but if that big bull was still there in the morning camp moving could wait. Somewhat to our surprise, he was. In the first good light, while the autumn-cured grass in front of our valley camp was still white with frost, we spotted him browsing in thick willows on the slope less than a quarter of a mile from where we’d seen him the night before.

The overnight wait had given us plenty of time to map our campaign. Judd would ride across the river with George John and Alex Van Bibber, who was our outfitter and my guide, then up to a bench about half a mile below the moose. There Judd would leave the guides and make the stalk alone. That was the way he wanted it. Don Redinger and I would stay in camp and signal Judd with a white towel pinned to a forked stick. At a distance, the mountain looked free of heavy cover. But we’d been on it and knew it was a jungle of tall thickets. Judd would need help to find the moose.

With the spotting scope set up and our binoculars handy, we were ready when Judd left the guides and started his stalk. Most of the day the moose browse for half an hour at a time, then lay down. Watching our signals, Jud sat tight when the moose was down, then resumed his stalk every time the bull got up to feed.

It was an exciting game of hide-and-seek to watch, and it went on for hours before Judd got where he wanted to be—just 25 yards from the moose. The bull was in the open, and our scope showed us he was staring down at us, possibly puzzled by the white flash of our signal towel. Don and I waited for Judd to shoot. Then suddenly the moose slewed around and vanished in the willows. That was that.

Judd came in alone after dark, disappointed but not dejected. It must have looked easy from where we sat, he agreed, but it wasn’t so simple over there on the mountainside. He’d been close enough a dozen times to nail the bull with a rifle of almost any caliber. But this was a bowhunt, and Judd was armed with one of the bows I make, a Kodiak model with a pull of 65 to 70 pounds.

Judd had used every precaution, even kicking his boots off and walking in his socks part of the time. But when we saw him close in to 25 yards, Judd could see only the bull’s neck. So he waited for a sure chance to put an arrow into the rib cage. While he waited, he felt a stray puff of wind catch him from behind and chill the sweat on the back of his neck. That was all the warning the moose needed.

“Never mind,” Judd said cheerfully. “I’ll do better at Devils Lake.”

WE WERE AFTER moose, goats, Dall sheep, and grizzlies. We’d left our take-off point on Haines Highway, 93 miles from Haines Junction, on Sunday morning, August 26, 1956. It was now the 31^st, and our camp was set up on Blanchard Lake in Yukon Territory, a few miles north of the British Columbia border and about 50 miles east of Alaska. This area is good for goats and moose, fair for sheep and bears.

There were seven in our party, not counting Tiger, the young husky that Alex had brought along to keep grizzlies out of the cook tent. Judd (Dr. Judd Grindell, a bowhunter of vast experience from Siren, Wisconsin) and I were the hunters. Don Redinger, Pittsburgh photographer, had come along in the hope of doing something I’d wanted to do for 17 years—take good action pictures of a big-game bowhunt. Don was using a movie camera with a series of telephoto lenses and had his hands too full to do any hunting. (Don is the cameraman who, a few months later, went to Africa with the Texas sportsman, Bill Negley, to film the shooting of two elephants with a bow, the hunt that won a $10,000 bet.)

In addition to guides Alex Van Bibber and George John, we had a wrangler and a cook. Ed Merriam, the cook, came originally from some place in Virginia but like the Yukon better. Joe House, the wrangler, had quit a $2-an-hour job in town to shag horses, at considerably less pay, for the same reason. He liked it.

About the only time Joe had ever regretted the deal, he said, was on the hunt before ours, when he went out for the horses at dawn one frosty morning and blundered into a sow grizzly with two cubs. She jumped him, and Joe lit out with his hair standing up. Coming to a steep bank, he saw one of the horses at the bottom of it—directly below him—and made a flying leap stride, only to find the horse was one he’d hobbled the night before. Luckily for both Joe and the horse, the bear gave up at the top of the bank. Joe bought himself a rifle the next time he got to town, and now carried it faithfully.

We had 21 horses in our string and they were about as entertaining and companionable as so many humans. Each horse had a buddy, and we had to be careful not to separate pals in choosing animals for a side trip.

Alex has the best horses of any outfitter I ever hunted with. He keeps around 60, building up his stock from time to time from the wild-horse herds that still roam the Yukon. In spite of that, plus the fact that Alex pulls their shoes after the last hunt in the fall and turns the whole bunch out to shift for themselves until early summer, the horses are unusually gentle. The one I rode, Buck, used to stand over me half asleep while I sat on the ground and leaned against his front legs while writing notes on the day’s hunt.

Besides the fun that goes with every big-game hunt, this trip had a twofold purpose for me. Most of all I hoped to kill a grizzly bear with an arrow, something I’d dreamed of for years. If I succeeded I’d be the first man, so far as I knew, to take a full-grown silvertip that way since Art Young and Saxton Pope did it in Yellowstone in the early 1920’s while hunting down a big trouble-making bear under permit.

On top of wanting to take a grizzly this way, I wanted to test a new type of hunting point I’d recently developed for my arrows—a razorhead, a single-bladed broadhead that mounts and extra removable two-edged razor blade, very thin and hard, to do its cutting. We’d experimented with it for three years at my archery plant at Grayling, Michigan, and I’d killed antelope and other thin-skinned game with it in Africa. I was eager to test it on something bigger and tougher. That’s why my bow quiver now held three hollow-glass shafts mounted with these new heads, and I also had a reserve supply. Given the chance, I intended to find out just what the razorhead would do.

My bow was a Kodiak model,  like Judd’s, with a draw weight of 65 pounds. Made with a hard-maple core, faced and backed with Fiberglas, these bows shrug off heat, cold, or moisture, and cast an arrow with great power and speed. So far as equipment was concerned, I was ready for business. The rest would be up to the grizzlies and to me, if the right time came.

THE HUNT was off to a good start. Before we left the highway we’d had some first-rate fun with grayling at Aishihik Lake, and I’d put in a lively morning shooting 30 to 40-pound salmon with harpoon arrows. That’s fishing to write home about. 

Though neither Judd nor I had had a shot at big game in the six days we’d been out, we had seen plenty of sheep, moose, and goats (just couldn’t get close enough) and enough grizzly tracks to put any hunter in a hopeful frame of mind. Alex had wound up a successful hunt with another party a few days before, and everything looked rosy for us.

There was just one small fly in the ointment. I knew from the outset that Alex Van Bibber didn’t relish the idea of guiding a bowman, and he cared even less for guiding a bowman followed by a photographer. He had made that clear in advance.

Alex had his reasons, and I admitted they were sound. The average Yukon and Alaska guide figures to put his hunter within 200 yards of a grizzly or brown bear, and the rest is up to the client. If he can’t connect with a modern rifle at that range, he doesn’t deserve the trophy. If conditions warrant, the guide will move him in to, say, 100 yards. That’s about the limit.

Alex understood before we left Champagne that he’d have to get me a lot closer than that. I stopped killing game with rifles 25 years ago; the bow has been my sole hunting weapon since. Whatever I nailed on this trip, grizzly included, would be put down with an arrow. I had no intention of risking a bad shot at a range of more than 50 yards, and 25 or 30 would be more to my liking. The bow, however good it is, is not a long-range weapon. At 25 yards, a hurt grizzly can spell bad trouble if he’s not killed in his tracks, and that’s something no arrow—however well placed—can be expected to do.

He knew this and didn’t like it. It wasn’t a question of physical courage with him. He’s anything but short on that. His father was a mountain man from Virginia who went to the Yukon many years ago and cut enough of a swath that his name is still legendary up there. Alex is one of 12 children raised in the bush and schooled in the business of living off the land with whatever equipment they could put together. He was brought up to be afraid of nothing.

It wasn’t fear of bears that was bothering Alex. It was worry that his reputation as a guide might suffer if things went wrong. For one thing, when you have to stalk as close as you do in bowhunting, there’s always a chance of spooking game and losing the best trophy of the hunt, maybe after weeks of waiting and working for it. For another, Alex felt he’d be in a bad spot if he should lose a hunter—even a crazy bowman—to a wounded bear.

I didn’t much blame him when he said to me while sipping a screwdriver—an odd drink for a leather-faced Yukon guide, but his favorite—before the hunt started, “I’ll see it through and do the best I can for you, but I wish you were using rifles instead.” There was no chance of that.

The day after Judd missed getting the big moose, we broke camp for a two-day ride to Devils Lake. Ten days of rain and snow had soaked the mountain tundra like a sponge. The alders and scrub willow dripped as we rode through them, and the weather wasn’t getting any better. In five weeks we were to see just five days of sunshine.

Base camp at Devils Lake turned into little more than a place to pick up supplies. With good rain gear and dry bedrolls, we roamed the country in the saddle. My rainsuit is a two-piece outfit of coated nylon, so tough it’s almost indestructible and so waterproof I can sit in a pool for hours without getting damp.

Good rain gear came in mighty handy hunting the Devils Lake area. We made side camps and stayed in them for a day or two at a time, hunting in rain, snow, and fog. Many days when we rode high we could see clear weather in the distance, but all of Alaska to the west seemed to be funneling wind and water our way. We saw no bears.

Now and then we saw a moose, but never close enough for a shot, and though goats were fairly plentiful we had no luck stalking them. Except for the lower lakes and valleys, the country was all above timberline.

We hunted canyons, climbed vertical cliffs, waded glacier-fed rivers. We stalked one good billy to within 100 yards on an open plateau, then ran out of cover. He might as well have been on the moon.

But we were finding plenty of small game, getting enough shooting for practice, and having a fine time. Ptarmigan were plentiful and made a welcome addition to our grub list, but were hard on arrows because of their habit of squatting among rocks.

Shooting a bow hunting-style is done instinctively, without sights or mechanical aids, and daily practice is necessary to keep in form. We were using blunt arrows for small game and target work, and after a week I’d broken so many heads that my supply ran out. We found a way to repair them by filing off the necks of empty .30/06 cases so they fitted over the broken shafts. Spruce gum in the cases, heated over a fire, made a fine bonding agent.

The big blue grouse down in the scrub timber were tame enough to be a bowman’s delight, and fine eating too. A couple times we even varied our menu with fresh grayling.

Our only contact with the rest of the world was a bush plane that dropped supplies and mail, including a letter for Alex from his wife, with the latest news from Champagne. A native had lost his entire dog team to a grizzly that wandered into his cabin while he was away for the day. When he came home after dark and went to look after his dogs, the bear came within an inch of clobbering him. Wolves had all but killed a mare and colt belonging to Alex, but Mrs. Van Bibber had sewed them up and through they’d recover. It seems there are plenty of things to worry about, even up in the Yukon.

At the end of two tough and weary days out of base camp, we finally got a day of blue sky and sunshine. From our side camp on Upper Hendon Lake, right after breakfast that morning, Alex and I spotted three goats—two billies and a nanny—high on the mountain above camp. One billy looked very good, and we voted to make the hike.

It took us three hours to climb to them. By then they were bedded on a bench in the open, so we holed up behind a rock 500 yards away to wait them out. Below us, the Hendon River snaked through a long, narrow willow flat.

We stayed hidden, peering over the rock from time to time, until late afternoon. Finally the goats moved off to feed, and as soon as they were out of sight we started after them. A steep side canyon was in our way. We clambered down into it, waded a brawling snow-melt creek in the bottom, and started up again. Suddenly Alex grabbed my arm and pointed ahead. Above a shelf 30 yards away, I saw the black tips of a goat’s horns. I laid an arrow on the string and inched my way up toward the shelf, walking as light-footed as a cat.

Most men who knock over a mountain goat with a rifle feel they’ve taken one of the toughest-to-get trophies in North America, and nine times out of 10 they’ve good cause to think so. Mr. Whiskers rarely comes easy. I’d certainly worked hard for this one, but the wind was right at last and the footing good.

Now, only 20 yards from the black-tipped horns, I was climbing slowly and warily, hoping to see the billy’s body before he saw me. Suddenly gravel crunched underfoot, and up on the shelf three goats came to their feet like big white jumping jacks. I’d caught the two billies and the nanny flat-footed—at closer range than I’d dared to hope.

They stood broadside, staring in amazement, as if not believing a man could get that close.

I didn’t give them time to collect their wits. Even while I was taking in the picture, I was pulling the bowstring back into the angle of jaw and throat. Before any of the three twitched a muscle, my arrow was on its way.

I’d picked the biggest billy, and my razorhead slashed into him diagonally—a little too far back for the lungs. It sliced all the way through, came out his flank, and sailed off down the canyon. The other two goats went out of sight in a couple of jumps. Mine flinched, pivoted, and started away, running over tumbled boulders. My second shot missed him at about 50 yards, but the third, released as fast as I could nock and draw, knifed up under a shoulder blade. The goat turned downhill, running heavily, and disappeared in a side canyon.

When we found him he was lying at the edge of a ledge. I put another arrow into his back to finish him. But there was no way we could get down to him without ropes, and it was too near dark for us to fool around on the mountain. Unless we got off immediately, we’d have to spend the night there. So we headed for camp.

It was pitch dark when we got there. The river had risen a foot or more during the day, as a result of the glaciers melting in the sun, and we got wet fording it. I was bone tired, but felt pretty good.

Right after breakfast next morning, we started back up the mountain with ropes. “Better take your handgun along,” Alex suggested. “If a grizzly found your goat, you might need it.” That sounded like good advice, so I followed it.

When we got to the goat we found he’d kicked himself off the ledge and was lying dead in thick alders in a draw below. Fortunately he hadn’t broken his horns. He was a good billy, around 200 pounds, with 9 ½-inch horns, just what I wanted for a full mount in my trophy room.

When we skinned him, we found that my first arrow had put him out of business. Striking too far back for either heart or lungs, it had gone through the diaphragm and stomach and cut him up enough to bleed him to death quickly.

We rolled the head, ribs, and a front quarter in the skin, stuffed it into a packsack, and started to hike to camp. With the camera gear, we had a sizable load. Alex and I traded packs from time to time. We got to the river past noon and edged across on stepping stones, bracing ourselves with stout poles against the rushing, milky current. By the time we reached camp it was too late to make another trip for meat that day. The following morning we climbed the mountain again and brought down the remaining quarters.

Two days later wer rode into base camp in wind and rain and got a warm welcome. Up to now our meat supply had depended mostly on what was left of a moose that had been killed on a hunt Alex handled earlier. That was about gone, and fresh goat looked good to everybody.

Judd and George John came in that night with the pelt of a good blond grizzly, but Judd wasn’t satisfied with his kill. They’d stalked the bear to within 150 yards, and then the guide flatly refused to go closer.

George John has a powerful phobia where grizzlies are concerned, and carries some bad scars on his neck, arm, and shoulder to prove its no idle whim. He had a tight shave on a hunt a few years back, when he tackled a grizzly at close range with a .30/30. The bear grabbed him by a shoulder and came close to killing him before his hunting partner got a shot into its head. George John simply won’t go near a grizzly now if he can help it, and he regarded my determination to take one with a bow as downright foolish. Nothing Judd said could make him go closer.

Judd’s time was running out (his hunt was shorter than mine by three weeks) and he figured this was the only chance he’d get. The thought of that blond bear pelt on the floor of his study was too much to resist, so he reluctantly asked George John for the loan of his rifle, a 6.5mm Mannlicher. When the guide handed it over, Judd asked how it shot at 150 yards.

“Dunno,” George John grunted. “Not my gun. Borrowed from cook.”

Apparently the sights were O.K., because Judd nailed the bear through the heart and anchored it almost in its tracks.

A COUPLE OF DAYS after Judd killed his bear, we stopped for lunch beside a small glacial stream in a pretty little valley. Cold rain was falling but Alex produced a stub of candle, flattened and dark from much carrying in his pocket. He lighted it and held it under a pyramid of wet twigs that dried slowly and finally crackled into a brisk, small fire that licked cheerfully up the blackened sides of our tea-water pail.

We ate cold goat and Yukon doughnuts for lunch, and the stop was pleasant in spite of the weather. The last drop of tea was gone and Alex was stamping out the fire when he happened to look toward a mountain half a mile up the valley, and spotted a bear working down a steep slope.

He lifted his glasses for a quick look. “Black,” he announced. Everybody looked and agreed. Nothing to get excited about, even though it was a big one. However we may feel about black bears in the States, in Alaska and the Yukon they’re regarded by guides and hunters with about the same contempt that trout fishermen feel for suckers.

We stood there for 20 minutes, watching this fellow amble down off the mountain. He took his time, stopping every now and then to dig, but finally he worked his way into a patch of willows and disappeared. We climbed into our saddles.

Our course upvalley led along the foot of the mountain, about a quarter of a mile from where we’d last seen the bear. As we rode, I kept turning the situation over in my mind. The more I thought about it, the more unwilling I was to pass him up. He was the first bear I had been close to on the hunt, and big enough to rate as a good trophy. And he’d given me a chance to try my razorheads on tough, thick-skinned game. I knew the guides wouldn’t bother with him unless I insisted. Alex hadn’t promised to hunt blacks. But I decided to insist.

Just at that point we topped a low rise and saw him again. He was on the side of a ridge across the creek, and while we watched he walked down into a draw, out of sight.

“What do you say?” I asked Judd. “A bear is a bear,” he replied. “Let’s go get him.”

We climbed out of our saddles, stripped off our rain gear and chaps, and started for the ridge. Don un-limbered his movie camera and trailed us. Alex and George John stayed on their horses, watching with tolerant grins.

Our position as we approached the ridge put Judd on my right. He’d climb that side and I’d circle around the opposite slope, about where we’d last seen the bear. I rounded the end of a low knoll, and there he was, digging out a marmot less than 100 yards away.

His front legs were down to the shoulders in a hole he’d excavated, and he was trying to watch all sides so the marmot wouldn’t pop out and get away. His rump was toward me, so it was easy to back off, crouch down, then creep up behind a small boulder just 25 yards behind him. I made it without attracting his attention, and with my arrow on the string, I rose in a half crouch on one knee. But before I could draw, the bear jerked his head around my way, still looking for the marmot.

Now, for the first time, I noticed a telltale sprinkle of gray hairs in his rain-wet pelt. I’d have seen them sooner in dry weather. This was no black bear. This was what I had come to the Yukon to kill—but the circumstances were anything but what I’d planned. I was all alone and looking into the grizzled, bulldog face of a silvertip just 75 feet away.

I’d never intended to tackle a grizzly with the bow alone, unbacked by a rifleman. Alex and I had a clear understanding on that. While I have complete confidence in the killing power of a well-placed arrow, I also know that an arrow-shot bear isn’t likely to die then and there.

What I faced now as a lot more than I’d bargained for. I’d even gone to considerable pains to make sure it didn’t happen. To begin with, Alex has a good reputation as a rifleman and it was agreed he’d be behind me with his .30/06 any time I got close to a grizzly. But now he was sitting in his saddle on the other side of the creek.

I hadn’t wanted to get into any such spot as this without a handgun either. When I started planning a grizzly hunt, I bought a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver and put in a whole summer of practice with it. The Canadian Government and the Mounties at Whitehorse had been co-operative about giving me a permit to carry it on the hunt, just as Them Kjar, Yukon game commissioner, had readily given Alex an O.K. for carrying a rifle while guiding bowmen. The Yukon authorities didn’t want an accident on this bear hunt any more than we did.

But my Smith & Wesson was heavy in its shoulder holster and interfered with the use of the bow, so I had formed the habit of carrying it in another holster on my saddle. It was back there now, with Alex and my horse. I was on my own all the way, no matter what happened.

It was a tough challenge but it was also the chance of a lifetime, and it seemed pretty late to back out. I don’t think I weighed it for more than three for four seconds—just long enough to tell myself that if the grizzly charged me, he’d be running downhill and I’d have time to dodge once and get a second arrow into him. Thirty seconds later I was doing some tall wondering on that score.

Still crouched behind the boulder that was barely big enough to break my outline, I brought the string back and let drive. I didn’t know it at the time, but Don Redinger had come up behind me within 150 yards and was covering the whole affair with his camera. The movie film later showed exactly what happened, in even clearer detail than I recalled.

The bear heard the twang of the bowstring and I saw his head jerk around in one of those lightning-quick moves any bear can make. But before he could locate me, the arrow slashed into his rib section.

He growled and whipped sidewise, snapping at his side where the arrow came out. It had knifed all the way through him, slicing off a rib and cutting through lungs, diaphragm, liver, and intestines, and still had drive enough to bury itself above the head in the hillside.

The grizzly bit at his side while I could have counted three. Then he swung around, hesitated a moment, and came for me, growling and bawling. I got ready to dodge. But the way he was barreling, I was no longer sure I’d have a chance to use a second arrow.

Then he did a thing I’ll never understand. Maybe he changed his mind in mid-charge or simply failed to locate the cause of his trouble. Bears are notoriously nearsighted, and maybe that was what turned him. I can think of no other good reason why he shouldn’t have kept coming.

But he didn’t. Halfway to me, he swerved up over the ridge. Judd saw him come down the other side. The grizzly spun around two or three times in tight circles, and went down to stay. We paced it off later. After the arrow hit him, the grizzly ran 80 yards before he dropped.

THIS WAS my 50th kill of big game with a bow, in the United States, Canada, Alaska, and Africa. I’d dreamed of a grizzly for years, and when I found that Don had photographed the whole thing with the six-inch lens on his movie camera, I was about as happy as a hunter can get. As things turned out, I was fated to share honors with Bill Mastrangel of Phoenix, Arizona. He reported killing a good grizzly with a bow in British Columbia in September, shortly after the hunt I’m telling you about.

My bear was no monster, but he was big enough to satisfy me. Gaunt and thin, but with massive head and shoulders, he had the powerful legs and typical long claws of the silvertip. These mountain grizzlies don’t grow as big as their fish-eating cousins at the seaside. But considering location and food supply, this was a good bear, and when we got his pelt off we uncovered a streamline carcass that was all muscle and sinew.

Most of the time it’s these medium-size ones, not the big bruisers, that make trouble for a hunter. The big ones know better. Bears like mine are the bad boys—the cocky young toughs. George John remarked that mine was almost exactly the size of the one that had mauled him, and Alex added that it was a bear in about the same class that had killed a hunter in the area only a year or so before.

When we opened this grizzly up to see what the arrow had done, we found a hole in his diaphragm so big that the stomach had jostled through it into the lung cavity as he ran. He had bled white inside from the cuts made when the razorhead slashed through his vitals.

Bad weather continued to pile in, winding up in a sharp temperature drop and an eight-inch snowfall. Judd left for home, flying out from Devils Lake. Alex and I rode a lot, hunted hard, and saw plenty of sheep and moose, but we couldn’t make connections. We could have filled my license many times with a rifle. However, I can’t say I was disappointed when we rode out to Champagne in the teeth of a bitterly cold wind the last day of September. I figure a goat and a grizzly on one trip are about all a bowman should ask for, and on top of that I’d had a couple of nice demonstrations of what the razorhead will do.

Quite a few times since the hunt, I’ve been asked whether I’d tackle the grizzly single-handed-with the bow alone, if I had to do it over again. That’s a tough question.

Certainly I wouldn’t recommend that any hunter try it deliberately. Remember, I didn’t do it intentionally. But if I had the same chance again, in the same circumstances—and especially if I was above the bear with a rock or cover of some kind to duck down behind after releasing my arrow—I’d have to make the same decision. I guess that’s the way it is when you’re after trophy game.

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