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SIZE AND WEIGHT OF BEARS Rocky Mountain Animal of Eleven Feet Weighed 1300 Pounds The editor of Outdoor Life in answering a corre siKtndent about the size of bears as fitting into the nine foot threeinch skin of a brown Alaskan bear which the inquirer possessed writes You certainly got a big bear The proof of whether this is stretched or not would be in the width across the shoulders If the bear skin measures or measured from tip of left front claw to tip of right front claw across the shoulders about the same as it did in length then you may know and your friends may know that it was not stretched Sometimes however a bear skin that will measure nine feet three inches long from tip of nose to tip of tail will only measure seven or seven and onehalf feet cross the shoulders When we see a skin of that kind then we always know that it has been stretched in length and that the width has been sacrificed Sometimes a skin that lias laid out on the ground after skinning will measure a little more across the shoulders than it will in length and viceversa It is more often longer however than it is wider widerWe We have never heard of a sixteen foot bear skin We have often heard of genuine skins when we say genuine we mean ones whose width were not sacri ¬ ficed to give them length running as high as twelve or thirteen feet in length but we do not remember ever having seen one longer than eleven feet feetDr Dr J Wylie Anderson of Denver killed a bear 011 the Alaska peninsula nine years ago which weighed about 1300 pounds when killed and whose length was eleven feet The width of this bear across the shoulders was about ten feet feetII II B Mecch a Pennsylvania sportsman also killed a large bear on the Alaska iHninsula many years ago which measured eleven feet in length This however was not nearly as large a bear when killed nor as heavy a bear as Dr Andersons It is pretty hard to say just what is the largest Alaska brown bear or grizzly that was ever killed Probably the largest Colorado grizzly that was ever killed was killed in the Montrose country of this state about fifteen years ago This skin if we remember correctly measured twelve feet in length but its width was sacrificed much in order to give it length This skin was exhibited at the St Louis Worlds Fair The next largest Colorado grizzly that we ever knew of was a bear called Old Mose that was killed near Canon City by J W Anthony and W H 1igg This bear weighed hog dressed 74 iKiumls and we measured the skin winch went ten feet four inches in length by nine feet six inches across the shoulders This skin was not stretched at all when measured measuredWe We mention these two Colorado grizzlies to show you how large grizzlies will grow iu the Rocky Mountains
