Arrow for a Grizzly: A Classic Fred Bear Tale from the Archives

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

I never intended to tackle a grizzly with just a bow. Alex and I had a clear understanding. While I have confidence in the killing power of an arrow, I also know that it is unlikely to kill a bear instantly.

What I faced was more than I expected. I had made sure that Alex, a skilled rifleman, would be behind me with his .30/06 whenever I got close to a grizzly. But now he was sitting on the other side of the creek.

I didn’t want to be in this situation without a handgun either. I bought a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver and practiced with it all summer. I had a permit to carry it on the hunt, just as Alex had permission to carry a rifle. We had taken precautions to avoid any accidents.

But my Smith & Wesson was heavy and interfered with the use of the bow, so I carried it on my saddle. It was back there now, with Alex and my horse. I was on my own, no matter what happened.

It was a tough challenge but also the chance of a lifetime, so I didn’t back out. If the grizzly charged me, I planned to dodge and get a second arrow into him. But things didn’t go as I imagined.

Still crouched behind a boulder, I shot the arrow. Don Redinger had come up behind me within 150 yards and recorded everything with his camera. The film later showed exactly what happened.

The bear heard the twang of the bowstring and his head jerked around. Before he could locate me, the arrow hit his rib section.

He growled and whipped sidewise, snapping at his side where the arrow came out. It had sliced through him, cutting through vital organs. The grizzly bit at his side for a moment, then hesitated and came for me.

Then he did something I’ll never understand. Maybe he changed his mind in mid-charge or simply failed to locate the cause of his trouble. Maybe it was because bears are nearsighted. I can think of no other 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 later measured it. 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 his movie camera, I was ecstatic. As things turned out, Bill Mastrangel of Phoenix, Arizona reported killing a grizzly with a bow in British Columbia in September, shortly after my hunt.

My bear was not enormous, but he satisfied me. Gaunt and thin, but with a 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 removed his pelt, we uncovered a streamlined carcass that was all muscle and sinew.

Most of the time, it’s these medium-size ones, not the big ones, that cause trouble for a hunter. The big ones know better. Bears like mine are 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 inspected the arrow wound, we found a large hole in his diaphragm. His stomach had jostled into the lung cavity as he ran. He had bled internally from the cuts made by the razorhead.

The bad weather continued, with 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 any successful kills. 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 think a goat and a grizzly on one trip are plenty for a bowman, and on top of that, I’d witnessed the capabilities of the razorhead.

Since the hunt, I’ve been asked whether I would tackle a grizzly single-handed with just a bow, if given the chance again. That’s a tough question.

Certainly, I wouldn’t recommend it for any hunter. 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 cover to duck behind after releasing my arrow—I would make the same decision. I guess that’s the way it is when you’re after trophy game.

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