Reply To: ghost grizzlies DP

[David Petersen]

#9156

Glad you enjoyed GG, Wahoo. It was easily the most fun book I’ve ever taken on because it kept me out in real wilderness — in CO, MT, WY, AK and Canada — for the better part of two summers and I got to know some top grizzly researchers and learned a huge amount. Because the book continues to sell as “local legend” if nothing else, every few years I update it. The current third edition is less than a year old and there have been no verified grizzly sightings in this state since the original book came out in ’95. I fear the historical local subspecies grizz is gone forever, the last one killed in hand-to-hand combat by a bowhunter in ’79. However, the possibility of one wandering down from the north, like Wyoming’s Wind River Range, is very real. Already, wolves and wolverines are doing it. I think I’m still sufficiently plugged in to the CO “grizzly network” that if anything real ever came up I’d be among the first to know about it. But you know, just hunting and hiking and camping on dark nights in the places we know the last grizz around here to have survived, and a tiny chance still survive, lends a special excitement to being outdoors and defines true wilderness. In my books, if there’s not something out there that is bigger and meaner than you, it ain’t wilderness. Dave