LOL...I read the book on the Lewis and Clark expedition, and when they met the Indians, those Indians tried to warn them about the grizzly bears, which the white guys had never encountered before.
Apparently, Lewis, Clark and the rest of the team said something along the lines of “We ain’t concerned about no stinkin’ bears! We got Guns!” and immediately began actively looking for these special bears, much to the horror and astonishment of the Indians, who couldn’t understand these suicidal white guys.
Someone made a famous crude painting of one of their first encounters, which shows a whole bunch of guys firing wildly into a grizzly, which in the picture looks as if it was painted 25 feet tall...
If I recall the account, they shot it something like twenty times, it ate their guns and chased them across a river or something like that.
They drily stated in their account they they would not seek any encounters with those bears in the future.
I had to laugh. That was before the Grizzlys were cut down to size, and I’ll bet those were some HUGE, mean, wild bears!
I read someplace that Lewis & Clark carried "state of the art" Air Rifles.
I think I’ve seen that painting too.
Yeah, there was a lot of soiled buckskin around the campfire that night, I’m betting.
I’d love to have seen a pre westward expansion grizzly, before all of the real “trophy” animals were killed off.(from a distance and with binoculars of course.)