In
fact, it was the acme of our hunting desires.
We read the biography of John Capen Adams and his adventures with the
California grizzlies, and Roosevelt's admirable descriptions of these
animals. They filled out our dreams with detail. And after killing
black bears we needed only the opportunity to make our wish become an
exploit.
The opportunity to do this arrived unexpectedly, as many opportunities
seem to, when the want and the preparedness coincide.
The California Academy of Sciences has in its museum in Golden Gate
Park, San Francisco, a collection of very fine animal habitat groups,
among which are deer, antelope, mountain sheep, cougars, and brown
bear. While an elk group was being installed, it happened that the
taxidermist, Mr. Paul Fair, said to me that the next and final setting
would be one of grizzly bears. In surprise, I asked him if it were not
a fact that the California grizzly was extinct. He said this was true,
but the silver-tip bear of Wyoming was a grizzly and its range extended
westward to the Sierra Nevada Mountains; so it could properly be
classified as a Pacific Coast variety.
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