Last Texas Grizzly

2,749 Views | 17 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by Bighunter43
KoolHandLuke
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Davis Mountains "Silvertip" Grizzly Bear - 1899 - Wild Texas History - Pretty neat historical article about a Silvertip grizzly taken in the heart of the Davis Mountains. The mountains are still rugged and wild, but this kind of excitement and adventure is gone for good.
BQ78
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It's crazy to think of some of the lost habitat in Texas. When the Santa Fe expedition was forming up at Kinney's Fort in today's Round Rock, they were killing gators in Brushy Creek and the San Gabriel River.
Rabid Cougar
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Or 14 foot tall male Mammoths running through my front yard in McLennan County 65,000 years ago.


1872-1874 3.5 Million buffalo in the southern herd were slaughtered by professional buffalo hunters...

1887 the last buffalos were exterminated in Texas.
Took place 100 north of Tascosa, Texas, when two hunting parties attacked the only band of buffalos left alive in the Southwest which at that time numbered about two hundred head.


There are more white tail deer in Texas today than any time in history... found in every county in Texas but two..
Tyrannosaurus Ross
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I'm surprised there are two counties in the state that do not have white-tail deer. Do you know which two do not?

I read a book on the history of Bell County years ago and it talked about pioneers riding horses through tall grass prairies in which the grass was up to the backs of horses - all you could see were the riders and the horses' heads. Mentioned there were antelope and bear.

I've often thought that area around Goliad looks like antelope country and have wondered when the antelope were pushed out of south and central Texas. That area seems like a spot that could be restocked with antelope, but I don't know what the challenges might be. Pretty open country with motts of trees.
tmaggies
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El Paso, Loving and Hudspeth would be my guess. Two from those three counties. Hell I don't think anything lives in Loving!
BrazosBendHorn
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Major props to Charles and Mary Goodnight for preserving a remnant of the southern bison herd more than a century ago ...

https://tpwmagazine.com/archive/2011/mar/ed_2/

And it's BISON ...

https://www.codyyellowstone.org/blog/is-that-a-bison-or-a-buffalo/
CanyonAg77
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Quote:

Or 14 foot tall male Mammoths running through my front yard in McLennan County 65,000 years ago.
Some folks claim that the last mammoths (or mastodons, not sure which) may have survived to as recently as 1000-2000 years ago.
CanyonAg77
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Quote:

I'm surprised there are two counties in the state that do not have white-tail deer.
We have both white tail and mule deer in Randall County. I've been told that is not common.

In the PPH Museum in Canyon, they have stuffed the last wolf killed in the Panhandle, approximately 1909, IIRC.
dcbowers
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In "A Journey Through Texas", Frederick Law Olmsted tells of entering a cave to kill black bears in the Hill County in 1854. Doesn't make it seem to be a big deal back then.
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Belton Ag
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Quote:

I'm surprised there are two counties in the state that do not have white-tail deer. Do you know which two do not?
Whichever counties I happen to be hunting in.
Rabid Cougar
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tmaggies said:

El Paso, Loving and Hudspeth would be my guess. Two from those three counties. Hell I don't think anything lives in Loving!
El Paso and Hudspeth.

64 humans and a couple of crows....
Rabid Cougar
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CanyonAg77 said:

Quote:

Or 14 foot tall male Mammoths running through my front yard in McLennan County 65,000 years ago.
Some folks claim that the last mammoths (or mastodons, not sure which) may have survived to as recently as 1000-2000 years ago
3,700 years ago on Wrangle Island.

Wrangle Island Mammoths

I found a female Mammoth in Bosque County eroded out of the lakeshore on Lake Whitney/Brazos River near the Lakeside Village community. Had the Strecker Museum from Baylor (former owners of the Waco Mammoth National Historic site) come look at it. They confirmed what it was and but didn't want it because they had plenty of nicer, more complete specimens. It was in bad shape. Most of the bone was fragmented but the teeth. The ivory was also badly segmented. Being on Federal property, I collected as much material as I could and reburied it away from the shoreline.
Ag_B_10
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dcbowers said:

In "A Journey Through Texas", Frederick Law Olmsted tells of entering a cave to kill black bears in the Hill County in 1854. Doesn't make it seem to be a big deal back then.


One point he talks about traveling a road with tall grass on both sides of the road for miles. He comes a cross two black bear just hanging out in the road. He slowly crept around them and went on.
Thought it was cool thinking about how we had bear way south of San Antonio and Houston at one point.
BQ78
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Olmstead is a very interesting guy. Great writer and instrumental in making the US Sanitary Commission during the Civil War a huge success. Their efforts saved lives and did more for the comfort of the wounded soldiers than the medical corps did. The Sanitary Commission became the model on which Clara Barton based the Red Cross. Olmstead is definitely one of the unsung heroes of history.
Apache
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You're leaving out that Olmstead designed Central Park in NYC! Considered the father of landscape architecture.
Animal Eight 84
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If you haven't already, treat yourself to read the exploits of Ben Lilly.

Staggering to read how many bears and mountain lions he killed in Texas and New Mexico.
He even took Teddy Roosevelt bear hunting.

Southern Brazoria and Northern Matagorda County had a plethora of black bears, they used to run excursion trains to Sweeny to hunt them. Last bear in northern Matagorda County was killed in 1932, I knew a man that saw it when he was a boy.
war hymn aggie
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BQ78 said:

It's crazy to think of some of the lost habitat in Texas. When the Santa Fe expedition was forming up at Kinney's Fort in today's Round Rock, they were killing gators in Brushy Creek and the San Gabriel River.
My grandparents had a ranch in Burnet County (Joppa) that had a tributary of the San Gabriel running thru it. They sold it back in the 70's for pennies on the dollar of what it is worth now. My grandpa never spoke of any gators in it but told us grandkids stories of Indians camped out along the creek beds when he was a kid. In one of these stories, he told us that he allowed the Univ of Texas to dig up some areas for archaeological purposes back in the late 60's-early 70's. I remembered these stories & upon one visit to see my grandparents back in the mid 70's, I talked my grandpa into showing me where they had dug. It was right near the "haunted" Joppa Bridge & I unearthed several Indian arrowheads that had gone unnoticed in the hour that I was there. As a young teenager, It was the equivalent to finding a buried treasure.

Found a few good fossil's along the limestone creekbeds on his property over the years, as well.
Such fond memories of days gone by. Wish that my grandparents or my parents had the foresight to save at least a small parcel of this land for the family.....
Bighunter43
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war hymn aggie said:

BQ78 said:

It's crazy to think of some of the lost habitat in Texas. When the Santa Fe expedition was forming up at Kinney's Fort in today's Round Rock, they were killing gators in Brushy Creek and the San Gabriel River.
My grandparents had a ranch in Burnet County (Joppa) that had a tributary of the San Gabriel running thru it. They sold it back in the 70's for pennies on the dollar of what it is worth now. My grandpa never spoke of any gators in it but told us grandkids stories of Indians camped out along the creek beds when he was a kid. In one of these stories, he told us that he allowed the Univ of Texas to dig up some areas for archaeological purposes back in the late 60's-early 70's. I remembered these stories & upon one visit to see my grandparents back in the mid 70's, I talked my grandpa into showing me where they had dug. It was right near the "haunted" Joppa Bridge & I unearthed several Indian arrowheads that had gone unnoticed in the hour that I was there. As a young teenager, It was the equivalent to finding a buried treasure.

Found a few good fossil's along the limestone creekbeds on his property over the years, as well.
Such fond memories of days gone by. Wish that my grandparents or my parents had the foresight to save at least a small parcel of this land for the family.....
Wow....that's interesting. My grandfather used to take me fishing on the San Gabriel at Joppa when I was a kid back in the '70's.... We walked all up and down (on a relative's property) fishing the clear waters for perch/bass, especially at the waterfall hole. My grandmother used to teach school there back in the 1920's....they were from Bertram. The shallow waters and climate of the San Gabriel in that area don't really seem conducive to gators (although we occasionally ran into water moccasins)......However, further down the Gabriel between Georgetown and Taylor (in the area where the Santa Fe Expedition camped) the the water is much deeper and I could see gators in that area.
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