Your TR Source

Bear hunting

212 Results

The bear “Teddy” got

The bear “Teddy” got

Leather postcard featuring a drawing of Theodore Roosevelt with a gun walking and showing off a bear on a leash with a muzzle. Text on the front of the postcard indicates Roosevelt is showing off the bear he recently captured. A handwritten note on the reverse says “I Will Put your name on here next week.”

Collection

Marple Collection

Creation Date

Unknown

Letter from Ben Lilly to Theodore Roosevelt

Letter from Ben Lilly to Theodore Roosevelt

Ben Lilly describes his hunting adventures to Theodore Roosevelt, noting the names of mountains, valleys, rivers, and canyons in Mexico and New Mexico where he hunts and kills bears and lions. Lilly lists the measurements of the front and hind paws which he uses to track the bears. Lilly is planning to go to Alaska in April and asks if Roosevelt knows of a magazine or paper who would pay for Lilly’s expertise for hunting game in Mexico.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-09-05

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Willis

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Willis

President Roosevelt is very glad to hear from John Willis, and while it is impossible for him to travel west at the present moment, he promises to go bear hunting with him whenever the opportunity arises. In the meantime, he invites Willis to dine at the White House if he ever travels to Washington, D.C.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-09-28

Letter from Charles Sheldon to Theodore Roosevelt

Letter from Charles Sheldon to Theodore Roosevelt

Charles Sheldon thanks Theodore Roosevelt for his letter. Sheldon describes his second book Scribner will publish next spring including several hunting experiences on Pacific Coast Islands and Alaska. Sheldon shares his opinions on Roosevelt’s Concealing Coloration pamphlet and what other’s have written to him about it.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-10-03

Bear stories

Bear stories

A political cartoon depicting President Theodore Roosevelt and lawyer Francis Heney comparing hunting kills. Roosevelt’s two dead bears identify him as a boodler and a land thief, and Heney’s bears are labeled grafter and U.S. Senator.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-03-25

Letter from Alexander Lambert to Theodore Roosevelt

Letter from Alexander Lambert to Theodore Roosevelt

Dr. Alexander Lambert writes to President Roosevelt about a patient he treats by the name of Thomas Lyons, from Silver City. Lambert recognized that the man was the hunter whom Secretary of Commerce Metcalf was working with to set up a bear hunt. Lambert described in detail how Lyons was successful in capturing the bears. Lambert asked the president if there was anything that Roosevelt wanted him to ask Lyons.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-12-27

A modern White House dinner

A modern White House dinner

President Roosevelt eats dinner with several men dressed in country attire with knives and pistols. The main course is a bear, placed at the center of the table. In the background, another bear peers into the room, “Gee! No faking there.” William Loeb hides underneath the table. A picture frame with the words “Dr. Long” is hung on the wall.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Under President Roosevelt, more than any other president including Thomas Jefferson, there was a catholicity of interests, experiences, and professions at White House social events and dinners. The president was not catering to diverse interest groups, but rather his meetings, receptions, and dinners reflected the polymath that he was.

Financial panic

Financial panic

Uncle Sam eyes “Wall St.,” J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller holding up a large “financial panic” rock. The man labeled Wall St. says, “It’s o.k. We have it safe.” President Roosevelt also looks on, holding a bear under his right arm and a rifle in his left hand.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-10-24

“De-lighted” in the canebrakes

“De-lighted” in the canebrakes

President Roosevelt stands on the back of a train as he is sent off by several men at the train station and a group of four bears in the canebrakes. The bears say, “Dey-dey. You’re all right,” “You’re a jolly good fellow–but–we’re glad we’re not in the trusts,” “Tra-la. We’ll play tag again,” and “Bye-bye. Come again.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

On the very day that President Roosevelt departed Stamboul, in Louisiana’s “Cajun Prairie” in East Carroll Parish, where he had hunted black bears for two weeks, cartoonist Joseph H. Cunningham imagined the event. A small group of men waving from across the tracks; a small sleuth of bears waving their good-byes from the tall and thorny canebrakes.

Preparing for the president’s Louisiana bear hunt

Preparing for the president’s Louisiana bear hunt

Several men drag bears to be tied to stakes as reporters wait in the canebrakes for President Roosevelt to arrive at his tent.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon was published before or during President Roosevelt’s descent into the dark, dangerous and almost mysterious canebrakes of Louisiana in October of 1907. In the two middle weeks of an extensive speaking tour through the Midwest and South, Roosevelt hunted black bears, not so much for a vacation (his summer vacation in Oyster Bay that year had been longer than most of his presidency) as a quest to fulfill his frustrated goal in the same general area of bayous, swamps, dense growth, snakes, panthers, wild boars, and several varieties of black bears. That 1902 trip resulted, at least, in a legend that inspired the teddy bear. But in 1907 Roosevelt would not be put off.

The issue in the canebrakes

The issue in the canebrakes

A group of bears march toward President Roosevelt holding a rifle on his right shoulder in the canebrakes. The bear in the front holds a sign, “We want federal regulation of bear hunters.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

President Roosevelt’s two-week hunting trip after black bear in the Louisiana canebrakes in October of 1907 inspired many cartoonists to explore the obvious themes presented by the inveterate hunter engaging in a Golden Fleece, if not a hide, since he failed to bag more than a legend (the teddy bear) in the region several years earlier.

President Roosevelt’s dogs are completely exhausted

President Roosevelt’s dogs are completely exhausted

The first vignette depicts President Roosevelt and his dogs marching into the canebrakes to find a bear. The second vignette shows a lot of downed trees and the sun high in the sky. The third vignette shows Roosevelt in his tent and a tired dog outside the tent with the moon in the background.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Ralph Wilder quotes a newspaper headline, or plausible rumor, about President Roosevelt’s hunting dogs being exhausted during the two-week tracking of black bears in the Louisiana canebrakes. In fact the bayous and canebrakes — tall and dense, rather like bamboo — and the boggy bayous were inhospitable to hunters and their hounds alike.