Written by Dastem
On April 30, 1904, the most terrifying grizzly bear in American history stepped into a grove of quaking aspens near his home at the base of Black Mountain, in the Colorado Rockies. A dusting of freshly fallen snow the night before left his gargantuan tracks visible on the ground. Having two missing toes on his left hind paw, the signature print served as a harbinger of death to anyone who might stumble upon his trail. For renowned bear hunter, J.W. Anthony, it was just the omen he was looking for… There, in that aspen grove, the “King of the Grizzlies” would make his last stand.
“Old Mose,” as he would come to be known, was a man-killer, pure and simple. Standing nine feet tall, and weighing well over a thousand pounds, he’d earned a reputation for being abnormally brutal. Not only that, but he was just as smart as he was calculating – qualities that had no place in the inevitable path of development where his kind had lived for millennia. That’s why, over the course of nearly thirty years, many men tried to kill him.
Among them was Jacob Radcliff, a seasoned hunter with decades of experience. It took ten days, but eventually, he and a party of fellow hunters tracked the behemoth to his lair. Yet, wanting sole credit for the kill, the overly-confident Radcliff ended up going the last leg of the journey alone. In the end, he discovered why the infamous bear was so feared.
Unlike the typical brown bear, Old Mose didn’t growl, roar, or charge his victims if they got too close. Rather, he would simply “mosey” toward them, calm and quiet, almost like he enjoyed the smell of their fear. Not only that, but he didn’t stick to a predictable territory. Instead, this apex predator would wander around, almost aimlessly. It was a trait that not only made him extraordinarily difficult to track, but also endowed him with the human-like quality of knowing his enemy. Indeed, the King of the Grizzlies had learned how to evade human hunters, just as well as he’d learned to stalk the ones who dared to enter his domain.
Needless to say, Radcliff’s heart was racing as he followed the bear’s fresh tracks into a narrow ravine. When he reached the end of the line, he found a darkened cavern, where he knew his quarry was hiding. Despite knowing what to expect, he still stumbled backwards, in shock, when he saw the monster’s colossal face slowly emerge from the darkness, like a phantom of the underworld. In a panic, Radcliff tripped over a rock and fell to the ground; a mistake that ended up costing him his life.
The hunter was able to get one shot off before Mose started charging, oblivious as to whether or not he’d been hit with the errant bullet. With one swipe, he tore off Radcliff’s entire scalp, and with another, he left five deep gashes in his back, leaving his bones exposed to open air. Then, true to his namesake, the bear moseyed away while his victim lay wriggling on the ground, dead, but still alive. It wasn’t until Radcliff began calling for help that Old Mose returned to continue his assault.
By the time Radcliff’s friends found him, the grizzly had disappeared, and Radcliff was a bloody, mutilated mess, though somehow, he was still breathing. They immediately rushed him off to the nearest hospital, in Fairplay, CO., but it was too late. Mr. Radcliff died along the way. Just before passing into oblivion, he uttered his final words, “Boys, don’t hunt that bear.”
As time went on, more bodies were discovered near Black Mountain, or at least their skeletons were. Some were found still clutching their rifles, while others were strewn about the forest, the result of scavengers feeding on their remains. Meanwhile, ranchers, farmers and homesteaders alike continued to grapple with their losses, as the big predator kept slaughtering their livestock. One rancher in particular said he saw the cinnamon-colored grizzly kill his prized bull with the ease of an axe lopping off a chicken’s head. With each new report, the legend of “Old Mose” grew bigger, stronger, and more insidious.
Word of his viciousness soon spread across the country, capturing the imaginations of “civilized” folks, enamoring them with stories about life on the wild frontier. One man in particular chose to answer the call to glory; a man who by all accounts was an expert hunter, marksman and outdoorsman. The aptly named Wharton Pigg took it upon himself to exterminate the lumbering giant. He moved to Colorado, and built his ranch right in the heart of bear county.
Pigg went searching for the mighty Mose every chance he got over the course of the next twenty years. Sometimes, he would get so close that he could smell his musk, though he never actually laid eyes on him. He even lost one of his own heifers to the grizzly, in a humiliating affront to his reputation as a hunter. Thinking he had the bear’s number, Pigg poisoned the carcass in an attempt to vanquish his nemesis by deceptive means. Yet, Old Mose never returned to the scene, as if he knew exactly what the wily rancher had done.
In another instance, Pigg went to a pond, where he knew Old Mose frequently caught fish. There, he set a trap in the water, about a foot beneath the surface. Two weeks passed before a scout returned, claiming to have seen the big bear thrashing around, caught in the trap. By the time Pigg got there, however, Mose had gotten free. The only evidence that he’d been there at all were the two bloody toes found stuck in the trap. After that, Pigg became even more hell-bent on his quest to kill the dreaded grizzly.
Then, in March, 1904, he met J.W. Anthony, a kindred spirit. Anthony was a hunter from Idaho who boasted dozens of grizzly bear trophies throughout his career. He’d been reading about the legend of “Old Mose” for years, and ultimately decided to venture to Colorado to try his luck against the man-killer himself. Together, he and Pigg mounted an expedition to take down the leviathan once and for all.
While Old Mose may have been adept at evading men – enemies he’d been fighting for decades – this time was different. This time, the hunters had a pack of thirty well-trained hunting dogs with them. The tactic presented a new challenge for the battle-tested warrior; one he wasn’t sure how to face. After days on the trail, the dogs picked up his scent…
Mr. Anthony followed the dogs while Mr. Pigg broke off to take a short-cut, hoping to get to Mose first. Naturally, he wanted to be the one to get the kill after building his entire life around his dream of slaying the legend. To his dismay, however, he soon heard the sound of Anthony’s .30-40 Krag rifle ringing out in the distance. By the time he got there, the dust was already settling into a pool of blood beneath the giant bear.
“What happened?” Pigg asked. “I counted six shots!”
Anthony slowly nodded his head, his face still white as a ghost from the encounter. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he replied. “He didn’t even notice me until the end… I swear, the bullets didn’t even hurt him! All he cared about was the dogs.”
“The dogs?”
“Yeah. He was sitting there, tryin’ to figure ’em out, watching what they did. He didn’t even take a swipe at ’em! I’ve never seen a bear act like that – so indifferent towards a pack of dogs. He seemed curious about ’em more than anything else.”
Anthony went on to claim that he hit Old Mose three times while he was surrounded by the dogs, but the bear never even looked up. When he finally did, Anthony said that his own heart stopped beating for a few seconds.
“He looked at me with murder in eyes,” he recounted, “then he got up, and started toward me like nothing had happened. I fired my last two rounds, but missed both times. I think he knew I was out, though, because as soon as I fired that last shot, he started charging me. I was barely able to get the last round chambered before he closed the gap… I’m just lucky it was a hit.”
“Yeah… lucky,” Pigg said, obviously disappointed that he wasn’t the shooter.
It’s true, Anthony’s bullet, which was aimed right between the bear’s eyes, ended up striking high. Since Old Mose had his head down, charging forward, the slug entered the back of his neck, travelled down his spinal column, and brought the massive animal skidding to a halt just before he was on top of the hunter.
“You know what the scariest part was?” Anthony asked.
“What?”
“He didn’t make a sound the whole time… Not even when the dogs were nipping. It’s like he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. Have you ever heard of a bear that didn’t bellow when being attacked?”
Wharton Pigg shook his head in awe, a cold shiver running down his spine. “Just one,” he replied.
The men field dressed the bear. and took him back to Canyon City, where they were greeted as heroes. Indeed, when one slays a legend, one becomes a legend themselves. When they skinned him, they quickly realized why Old Mose had shown no signs of fear toward the men’s rifles.
As it turned out, there were countless bullet holes in his body, where an unknown number of hunters had tried and failed to bring him down. Having men take shots at him was nothing new to the great grizzly. Were it not for the dogs, the shrewdness of their trainers, and their unrelenting desire to tame to the wild, Old Mose might have passed peacefully into the mist of time, near his home, at the base of Black Mountain.
Friends, I’ll tell you, I see myself in that bear, and the ferocity with which he stood his ground against intruders in his home. If you feel the same, then rest assured, we’re not alone. As early Denver settler, and suspiciously nicknamed “Uncle Dick” Whootton put it:
“He (the grizzly) is not a professional man-killer. That he has been guilty now and then of staining his chops with human gore is true, but it was usually under circumstances which would have made ‘justifiable homicide’ a proper verdict, if the affair had been between man and man.”
In the end, I find solace in the fact that the bear J.W. Anthony and Wharton Pigg brought back to town that day was dark brown in color, whereas Old Mose was always described as being “cinnamon”. Could it be they got the wrong bear? Maybe. Regardless, whether it was Old Mose, or a twelve-year-old sow in the prime of her life, one thing is certain; both animals were among the last of their kind in Colorado.
The truth is that every grizzly bear was “Old Mose” in 1904. For, the “King of the Grizzlies” is, was, and always will be, a spirit living in the raw, untamed forests of the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes, when the wind is just right, and a fresh dusting of snow blankets the mountain peaks, those with that same spirit living in the core of their being will see him in their dreams… The most majestic, cinnamon-colored grizzly who has ever lived, moseying into a dying sunset, calm, curious, and as silent as the grave. The only question is if you’re brave enough to follow his tracks into the unknown.
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