Bella Twin, Little Woman with a Little Gun, a Big Bear, and a Cold Front

Gun Watch ^ | 10 June, 2017 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

On 10 May, 1953, a front was passing through Slave Lake, a village on the South shore of Lesser Slave Lake in  Alberta, Canada.  It was cool, cloudy, and windy. A 63-year-old Cree grandmother and her partner were hunting small game near Florida Lake.  The wind was from the NE, at 12 to 24 mph. At dawn, the temperature had been 40 degrees F. On the morning of the 11th it would be 35 degrees F.  The high for the 10th was 58 degrees. Bella Twin and her partner Dave Auger were going to make hunting history.

They were about 7 miles South of Slave Lake, near Florida lake.  Several accounts have been offered for what happened. The most plausible is that they were hunting small game along a cutline for oil exploration. They were not picking berries. There are no berries available on 10 May in the vicinity of Slave Lake. It was too early.

They saw a large grizzly walking the cutline toward them. They moved to the side of the cutline and hid, hoping the bear would not discover them.

Bella Twin had her beat up .22 single shot Cooey Ace 1 with her.  She had used it for many years on her trap line.  She was known to be a deadly shot with the small rifle.  Dave Auger appears to have been unarmed.

The bear kept getting closer and closer. It came within a few yards of them. This is entirely believable on a day with strong winds. Winds make a lot of noise in the woods, and they can blow your scent away from game.  Wooded terrain, especially on the edge of a cut, is complex, and wind eddies are unpredictable.  As the huge grizzly came even with their position, it might have caught a whiff of their scent.  Animals will often stop and sniff to try to identify a scent.  That may have happened here.

Bella Twin thought it was less risk to shoot rather than not shoot. The bear was very close, only a few yards away.  All accounts agree on that. I suspect that she was tracking the bear in her sights.  There was a lot of movement from branches with the wind, so that slight movement would not be very noticeable. She was probably behind a brush pile from the cut, or a tree. Experienced hunters will take advantage of concealment if it is available.

Bella knew animal anatomy very well. She had been a trapper and a hunter for decades.  She aimed at the weakest point in the side of the skull and fired her Cooey, loaded with a single round of .22 Long.  The bear dropped like a rock.

Bella made sure.  She walked up to the bear and fired another six or seven rounds of .22 long into its brain, in the same spot. It was all the ammunition she had on her. She "paid the insurance". Don't assume a large animal is dead. Make sure.  My father taught me that when I was 13.

You can see from the picture that the bullets entered the skull at very close to a right angle.  That makes it unlikely the bear was standing on its hind legs when it was shot.

Bella Twin's grandson became an award winning author. He described Bella as a "tiny woman", and he was not a large man. She was probably  under five feet tall.  If the bear had stood up near her, its head would have been nine feet in the air. I believe the bear was on all fours when it was shot.

Family picture from Larry Loyie, Bella Twin's grandson.  Probably taken a decade after the bear was shot.

One of the bullets made its way completely through the skull and exited the other side.  You can see the exit hole on the right side.

The huge grizzly was a world record in 1953. Bella sold the hide and her rifle to a museum.  Another collector purchased the bear skull and had it sent in for measurement, which is how it made the record books.  In the top picture by Engler, the rifle is missing the bolt. The hide has been tanned. We do not know what year the picture was taken.

 You can see the measurements written on the skull.  This closeup shows the penciled score.


 Bear records are based on skull size. This bear's skull was 16 9/16 long and 9 14/16 wide, for a total score of 26 7/16.

Bella Twin's bear lost the top spot the next year, in 1954, to F. Nygaard, a commercial salmon fisherman, who shot his bear on the coast of British Columbia.  That bear scored 26 10/16, 3/16 higher.

The current rank in the Boone and Crockett records would be number 21, along with other bears measured at 26 7/16:

People have estimated that the bear weighed 1,000 pounds. I have not found any record of weight measurement or a measure of the hide. Engler's photo, above, cuts off the bottom and sides of the hide, but we can estimate what the bear hide measurement would be.

How to square a hide.

An educated guess is a square size between 9 and 10 feet, considering shrinkage of tanned hides, and estimating the position of the tail from the picture. The Cooey Ace 1 is 33 inches long. It was used to scale the estimate.

The Bear was reported to be shot with a .22 Long. The holes in the Skull verify that it was a .22.

I recall buying longs in the middle 1960's from a gas station. Longs cost less than Long Rifle cartridges. 

In 1953 Shorts were the least expensive, and Long Rifles cost more.  CIL or Dominion in Canada had near identical .22 Short, Long and Long Rifle listings as early as 1937 (the prices were lower then).  Bella Twin probably used C.I.L. or Dominion High Velocity cartridges.

The long would have fired a 29 grain bullet at 1240 feet per second. A High Velocity short fired the same bullet at 1125 feet per second.   A current CCI Standard Velocity Long Rifle, at 1070 feet per second has 3 percent more energy than the 1953 High Velocity long. The CCI Standard Velocity generates 102 foot pounds. The 1953 High Velocity Long generates 99 foot pounds.

 Processing an enormous bear is a lot of work, even for experienced hunters and trappers.  Perhaps Bella Twin and/or Dave Auger went for help. It was good that the weather was cool. It explains the condition of the hide.  We do not know what time of day the bear was shot.  The day was close to 16 hours long at Slave Lake on 10 May.

Bella Twin was a strong and competent woman, despite her tiny size. Her grandson wrote lovingly about her and her Cree ways. She was born in 1890. She and her grizzly will be talked about around campfires for many years to come.

©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

[marktwain]

Details about this event took quite a bit of digging. Most accounts do not have information, such as the date of the shooting, the model of the gun, placement of the shots, measurements, or age of Bella Twin.

I am in contact with an individual at Slave Lake, and hope to obtain even more information.

[Twotone]

We recently visited the National Oregon/California Trail Center in Montpelier in Idaho. They had a great bear story to tell. A wagon train had stopped for the night, & one woman’s husband rode off to do some hunting. The wife started a fire & got busy with fixing dinner. She pulled a piece of salt pork out of their stores & had it sitting on the back of the wagon. Suddenly she became aware of rustling sounds in the bushes. Yes, it was a bear. She’d heard that loud noises would sometimes scare them off, so she grabbed a frying pan & slammed it against the wagon. Unfortunately, the bear came out & headed for the salt pork. Not knowing what else to do, she slammed the frying pan over the bear’s head, knocking it unconscious. She poked it, realized it was still alive & hit it again. This went on until she finally killed it. She called over others from the train & they skinned the bear & divvied up the meat. When her husband finally returned (with a scrawny sage hen) he didn’t believe her until her story was confirmed by others.

Now that’s what I call a tough old gal!

[marktwain]

A cast iron fry pan is a deadly weapon.

Pro tip: Hit with the edge instead of the flat.

[RandallFlagg]

A cast iron fry pan is a deadly weapon.

Fry pans that can cook more than three eggs are, "Assault Fry Pans."
We need more, "Assault Fry Pan," legislation.
Think of the children!!!

/s

[Demanwideplan]

When you say partner I assume you are trying to tell us Dave and her were in business together. Do you know the name of their business?

[GOPJ]

This went on until she finally killed it. She called over others from the train & they skinned the bear & divvied up the meat.

Bear meat's filled with parasites - took me a day to get the taste out of my mouth after eating some. Better to starve to death.

[null and void]

Any relation of yours?

[marktwain]

When you say partner I assume you are trying to tell us Dave and her were in business together. Do you know the name of their business?

---

The nature of their relationship is a detail I am digging for. Sources have used the words friend, companion, and partner. They may have been married. The “partner” word comes from a member of the family, but that member seems biased against Western civilization and somewhat anti-Christian.

[marktwain]

Bear meat’s filled with parasites - took me a day to get the taste out of my mouth after eating some. Better to starve to death.

---

I have eaten a fair amount of bear. Usually prepared as a roast. Most of what I had was like a good cut of roast beef.

With game, so much depends on how it was processed, what the animal was eating when it was harvested, and whether is was running when shot or cleanly killed without an adrenaline buildup.

I have eaten a lot of venison as well. Most was good, but some I turned away from.

I am not a fussy eater. Poor processing and cooking can turn a good piece of meat into something you have a hard time choking down.

[Twotone]

Yea, I’ve never been big on game meat myself, venison or even duck. But that was the way they lived back then.

[Big Red Badger]

Keep digging

I love Bear Stories!

Davey Crockett...
Lewis and Clark.

I finally had some RANGE time with my
Favorite .22 ‘s yesterday and they are quite
The Efficient projectile!

[DaveA37]

I’ll pass on the grizzly meat but handled and prepared properly black bear is pretty good. In fact, I have a large piece of smoked bear meat in my freezer right now, It is very tasty.

[Bob434]

[[took me a day to get the taste out of my mouth after eating some.]]

Yup same here- same with moose meat- horrible after taste- maybe the meat was bad- i dunno- but wow it tasted awful- was ok as i was eating it, but after it just repeated terrible-

Wild turkey is kinda like that too- had some one T-Day and it was delicious- but later it repeated- I think what happened though was when cleaning the bird, the smell got to me- it was quite rank- The smell was akin to a dog who just rolled in smelly fish, deer guts, and rotten carcass— dunno why hte bird smelled so bad-

[Bob434]

great article btw- nice to read something that isn’t “Trump under federal investigation for refusing to hold wife’s hand for the cameras when he exited white house on tuesday’

[43north]

I harvested a Spring black bear in Prince William Sound one year. All it had to eat was beach grass. It was delicious prepared as a Yankee pot roast in a Dutch oven,

OTOH, I shot a Spring Black bear that was charging me in my yard in Wasilla, AK in May 1990. It had been feeding on a winter kill moose. That meat was so rank my two perpetually hungry Labradors wouldn’t touch it. Nice hide though.

I diagnosed a young man with trichinosis who had eaten undercooked grizzly bear meat. He damn near died. Cook bear meat until there is no pink!

[kanawa]

Wow, I’d certainly be proud to claim her as one.

[TexasGator]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search

[TexasGator]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;q=quick;s=Bella%20twin

[riverrunner]

I have killed and eaten a lot of wild game birds of all kinds moose, elk, deer, bear, antelope.

Good preparation in the field is the key.

Not that one could run into an animal that has some illness or some thing else.

Shot a Canadian bear once that the only thing that was salvage was the skull.

It had a huge wound on the side I couldn’t see maggots in the wound, flesh was filled with worms and the hide was in horrible shape.

But over all the wild game I have shot and eaten has been very good.

[2111USMC]

Seems odd to me that Dave would go out unarmed if they were hunting.

Maybe they only had one rifle?