We need a bigger gun...

I got this one in the old mailbag...

The downloaded pictures are of a man who works for the US Forest Service in Alaska and his trophy bear.  He was out deer hunting last week when a large grizzly bear charged him from about 50 yards away.  The guy emptied his 7mm Magnum semi-automatic rifle into the bear and it dropped a few feet from him. The big bear was still alive so he reloaded and shot it several times in the head.  The bear was just over one thousand six hundred pounds. It stood 12' 6" high at the shoulder, 14' to the top of his head. It's the largest grizzly bear ever recorded in the world.  Of course, the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Commission did not let him keep it as a trophy, but the bear will be stuffed and mounted, and placed on display at the Anchorage airport to remind tourists of the risks involved when in the wild.  Based on the contents of the bears stomach, the Fish and Wildlife Commission established the bear had killed at least two humans in the past 72 hours including a missing hiker. The US Forest Service, backtracking from where the bear had originated, found the hiker's 38-caliber pistol emptied.  Not far from the pistol was the remains of the hiker.  The other body has not been found.  Although the hiker fired six shots and managed to hit the grizzly with four shots (the Service ultimately found four 38 caliber slugs along with twelve 7mm slugs inside the bear's dead body), it only wounded the bear and probably angered it immensely.  The bear killed the hiker an estimated two days prior to the bear's own death by the gun of the Forest Service worker.  Think about this: If you are an average size man; You would be level with the bear's navel when he stood upright.. The bear would look you in the eye when it walked on all fours! To give additional perspective, consider that this particular bear, standing on its hind legs, could walk up to an average single story house and look over the roof, or walk up to a two story house and look in the bedroom windows.

Being a naturally suspicious person, I was skeptical.  A few things in the text stood out as less-than-Kosher:

First off, the notion of deer hunting in Alaska with a 7mm Magnum sounded... odd.  While Alaska is full of big critters (moose and elk, as well as these bears), the deer of Alaska are known for being rather small and delicate.  A 7mm Magnum is overkill.  But... in a land where giant bears like this come out of nowhere, a 7mm Magnum is certainly too light considering you may need to fall back on it as a defensive weapon.  If I were deer hunting Alaska, I'd be carrying a .243 Winchester rifle, with a .454 Casull for backup.  And I'd do my darnedest to stay out of any area where bears had been spotted recently!  If I were hunting the larger members of the deer family, like moose, then the minimum rifle I'd choose would be a big .300 Magnum with 200 gr. bullets.  That is about the smallest I would want to have with me, for moose hunting, or a bear emergency.  But ideally, I'd go bigger: anything between a .338 Winchester and a .375 H&H.  And the final word on the gun is this: were I out seeking a trophy Alaskan brown bear, seeking to come face to face with a creature like the one in the photo, a .375 H&H would be my minimum choice.  These are creatures than can rip you in half with one swipe.  There is no room for error when hunting these monsters.  African game hunters choose weapons starting at .375 H&H and going up to the .460 Weatherby (and beyond!) to hunt lions.  Brown bears average twice the size of African lions!

Next is the size.  Now, I didn't doubt that the bear in the photo could be the size in the text.  But would that make a record?  I'm sure you have seen Bart the Bear, a "pet" bear that appeared in countless movies and TV shows.  I remember reading that at one time, Bart topped 1,700 pounds.  Well, a quick Google check found the Bart page.  According to the page, Bart only hit 1,500.  So maybe this bear really could be record size...

Now then, there is the part about putting the bear in the Anchorage airport.  This is believable, as anyone who has been to the Anchorage airport (my family calls it "the hall of dead things") can attest.  It would outdo the Kodiak airport, which is home to what is labeled there as the world's largest brown bear (about 14' feet tall, but I don't remember the exact height).  Maybe this story is legit?

Then there is the man-eater aspect.  The information here sounds plausible: bears can and do kill people in the wild.  But, bears are most likely to kill people when startled, then ignore the corpse once it stops moving.  Bears don't tend to like to actually eat people (although sometimes they do).  So this sounds a little fishy.  Plus, the details about the victims are vague.  You would think that whoever sent the e-mail would copy and paste the details from a news article.  News articles tend to sensationalize, and would give details like, for example, "a college student from New Jersey, visiting Alaska on his summer vacation, who will now never complete his degree in environmental science..."  You get the idea.  Back to skeptical...

The bullet report.  This makes me want to fact check.  The supposed autopsy revealed TWELVE bullets from the hunter.  Hunting guns are limited to 5 round capacity.  Many hold only 3 or 4 in the magazine, especially in guns made for the fatter magnum rounds.  That means this guy reloaded TWICE.  So... he empties his gun and drops the bear.  Believable.  The bear is down, but still alive.  Believable.  The hunter reloads, and approaches to fire the killing shot into the bear's head at point-blank range.  Believable.  Then, he empties the whole magazine, reloads, and fires again... Not so believable.  Maybe if he was just some dumb hick out to shoot stuff.  But the story says he is a forest service worker... we'd hope he would be a more responsible hunter!

But... the pictures look pretty convincing... what's the real story?

So... time to dig...

And digging found this:

The Giant Grizzly Bear

In real life, the big grizzly in the first two photographs measured 10' 6" from nose to tail and weighed an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 pounds — unusually large for the vicinity in which it was found, says the USDA Forest Service, but not quite a world record, nor even a record for Alaska.  It was killed on October 14, 2001 by U.S. Air Force Airman Theodore Winnen on Hinchinbrook Island, Prince William Sound. The photos were taken by his hunting partner, Staff Sgt. James Urban. Both were stationed at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks at the time.

Though the bear was within 10 yards of the hunters' position and moving towards them when he fired the first shot, Winnen says, it did not charge them, contrary to what the email claims. "I don't know if the wind was in our favor or what," he told the Anchorage Daily News.  "We were dressed in camouflage.  He might not have seen us."  Winnen's weapon was a 338-caliber Winchester Magnum, not a 7mm semi-automatic as alleged.  The first bullet pierced the bear's brain but left it standing; five more in the chest brought it down.

So... I was right about the choice of weapon: no one would be in bear country with a 7mm Magnum.  And the number of shots fired: five, plus one in the chamber... The size: big.  Really big.  But short of a record.

So... in response to the end of the e-mail, asking you to think about the size of the bear... yes, a record bear would have been as tall as the letter stated.  But more importantly, look at the pictures, and consider that the record bears, bears that are out there in the wild right now, are significantly larger than the one in the photos!   YIKES!

What about the victims?

Was the bear a man-eater, as claimed in the email?  No, says the Forest Service, there is no evidence of that.

Well, it's a less interesting story without the victims.  But at the same time, it's good to know that two people didn't die.  It's ironic that people being eating by bears seems newsworthy, but people not being eaten bears isn't.

There you have it.  The real story is: these are real photos of a real bear.  It's a big bear.  It's an impressive bear.  The sad thing, though, is that urban legends and exaggerated e-mails have reduced the experience of Airmen Winnen.  What should have been his once-in-a-lifetime trophy hunt will, to the end of his hunting days, be an exercise in rumor-squelching and explanation.

Airmen Winnen didn't kill a world record bear.  He didn't bring down a dangerous man-eater.  But he did have a successful hunt; he did bring down a very, very respectable bear.  That's what we should remember.

Airmen Winnen: wherever you are, God Bless you for serving your Country, and good job on a good hunt.

Comments

[gunner]

Whenever I get something like this I go google a few words from it and the word "snopes".

Found this
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/bearhunt.asp

They have let me stop several letters running through the family grape vine.

[Gullyborg]

I stopped using Snopes. While they had been useful, I learned about some of their political biases. Now I choose not to support them.

[Scott]

That article had been passed around in email which came to me from Washington source. It is a very large bear and I would not like to come across it while on a stroll in the woods. It is good to hear the true story though, I had felt very bad for the people that were said to have died after a being malled by this giant of a bear. Thanks for letting us in on the truth.
Sincerely,
Scott
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