Picacho Peak Elk

[billrquimby]

I would bet the blue. That country has alot of brown faze bears in it.

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I still can't find my reference books to find the last grizzly kill site but the color phase of black bears in the Blue today would have no relevence.

 

I have shot brown phase black bears on Doyle Peak above Flagstaff and on Mount Graham -- the only kill of a black-color black bear I've been in on was in the Blue east of Strayhorse.

 

The big difference is that a grizzly bear is one species and a black bear is another.

 

The offspring produced by breeding similar but separate species are virtually almost never ever fertile, such as what happens when horses and asses, mule deer and whitetails, red deer and sika deer, and black and brown (grizzly) bears are crossed.

 

Sure, there have been a few exceptions, such as when a mule got pregnant and bore young, but those instances are so very rare they can be ignored.

[billrquimby]

According to my books by Brown/Murray and Housholder, the last confirmed grizzly bear in Arizona was killed by a government trapper on Escudilla Peak in 1935. However, I also found on the internet a New Mexico Game and Fish Department reference citing AGFD as saying in 1996 that another grizzly bear was killed on Mount Baldy four years later. Take your pick. The Brown/Murray and Housholder books came out before 1996 so there may have been new evidence found.

 

If anyone is interested in learning more about grizzly bears in the Southwest I recommend :

 

?The Last Grizzly and Other Southwestern Bear Stories?

David E. Brown and John A. Murray, eds.

University of Arizona Press

184 pp. / 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 / 1988 Cloth, $22.85

 

A collection of true stories about grizzly and black bears in the Greater Southwest?Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, southern California, Chihuahua, and Sonora?from the 1820s to the present.

 

I also recommend you read Aldo Leopold?s ?Sand Country Almanac? for a sentimental essay on the Escudilla kill.

[COUESAZ]

Bill I know I was just trying to throw a monkey wrench in there again. You know kind of like the interbreading thing. More a joke than anything. I like this thread if you ask me it is good to hear from you guys that passed this fine tradition on to us young folks. My Grandfather Emmett Leroy Waite , and my uncles Clarence and Clinton Bigelow. spent some good time with me and my Father on the old Escudilla mountain. In fact it is not far from there I was shown a wolf by my Grandfather.

[billrquimby]

it is good to hear from you guys that passed this fine tradition on to us young folks.

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Thanks. I've reached the age I envy youth and the physical ability that goes with it.