Odd, Old News: Old Clubfoot And Reelfoot—Grizzly Marauders of Northern California

(Illustration of man fighting bear)

Nuggets of old news are served up by David Heller, one of our local historians.

This week, Odd Old News will share more stories of brutal encounters with California’s apex predator and flag totem animal, the grizzly bear. Its various scientific names captured its character… Ursus ferox, Ursus horriaeus, and Ursus horribilis. Rapacious predators upon the stock of early homesteaders, some of the most powerful of the grizzlies took on legendary status before being slain.

What follows is a sampling of the many reports of encounters with some of the most feared and long-lived grizzlies to have tormented Northern California settlers and Native Americans, “Old Clubfoot” and “Reelfoot”. These two names were often interchangeable. Old Clubfoot’s name came from its having a bear-trap mutilated paw that gave its tracks a signature paw print. As we will see, nearly every county had a grizzly so named, and battles with it. As 19th century naturalist Henry Henshaw wrote, “Perhaps few animals have suffered more from persistent and relentless warfare waged by man than this formidable bear”.

Our stories begin in the mid-1800’s:

In the fifties there was a certain bear called Reelfoot that was the terror of three counties. He tramped straight across them, Sonoma, Marin, and directly over Mount St. Helena into Napa. We knew him by his crooked tracks, for many a rancher had shot at him. But it seemed as if he could not die. Superstitions grew about his name. Some said he was a sort of witch bear. We could almost date his arrival at different ranches, when he taxed the owner certain sheep, hogs and calves, but no amount of laying for him seemed to do any good. Reelfoot was finally shot in Napa County, and the three counties rejoiced over the fall of the bear bandit. Four or five pounds of lead were found in his tough old body.”(San Francisco Call, 7/3/1920).

Another Old Clubfoot first appeared in Nevada county in 1857 and ate all but the foot of a man in Plumas county a few years later. He roamed the high Sierras for decades, predating upon stock, and appearing and disappearing in a number of locations from Markleeville to Nevada. He was estimated to weigh 3000 pounds and be sixty years old when seen again in 1891 in Mono County.

Crop of 1911 Denny map showing the Beaumont Ranch

In Humboldt County Reelfoot’s regular raids on livestock along the Eel River provoked area ranchers to place a $150 bounty on his life. This Reelfoot/Clubfoot was killed on the Beaumont ranch near Island Mountain. A graphic and gruesome account of his death is found in the out of print classic Genocide and Vendetta:

Probably the most popular grizzly tale that has survived is that of Reelfoot, sometimes called Clubfoot or Old Brin, a bear that, according to bear chroniclers, seems to have met many deaths. This huge grizzly roamed the Coast Range from the Oregon border to the San Francisco area. It probably had once gotten caught but had escaped by leaving part of its foot in a trap. Reelfoot’s peculiar tracks made him a marked bear on his trips through the mountains. The grizzly especially like to kill cows or steers and killed many bear hounds that had attacked him. The settlers enjoyed tracking Reelfoot because it was said that ‘they could get enough grease out’er his tracks ter grease thay fan’ pan fer flapjacks’. The Indians had used Reelfoot as a shooting target, and many men had shot at him with all types of guns. But the grizzly was just too tough to bring down.

In 1883, John Beaumont had a ranch south of Chamise Creek between Beaumont Creek and Pine Creek on Island Mountain, which was northwest of Round Valley. There, Beaumont and Pierce Asbill, who had recently purchased a nearby ranch, decided that they would kill Reelfoot. They knew that it was time for his annual trip through that particular part of the country, and he had always taken the same route nearby. The two men mixed strychnine and two gallons of molasses in a small tub and placed it near the trail. In about two weeks, the huge grizzly came by and drank all the contents. When convulsions hit him, he tore up all the young growth in the nearby vicinity before he died. The two men had difficult time skinning him because he was supposed to have weighed about fifteen hundred pounds, and his front foot measured nineteen inches across. The huge head was nailed to one of the logs on the Beaumont bunkhouse for all to see. (Genocide and Vendetta, by Lynn Carranco and Estle Beard, pg. 161,164).

As dangerous as it was for a man to hunt a grizzly, it was terribly lethal for many good hunting dogs. In 1885, in Siskiyou county:

’Old ‘Clubfoot’, an immense grizzly bear that has devoured hundreds of dollars worth of stock and long been the terror of Siskiyou was slain some days ago by three hunters who were induced to go after him on the strength of a liberal reward. In the fight the bear made mince meat of a herd of dogs and only gave up the ghost after a pound or two of lead had been pumped into him from Winchesters at short range”(Chico Weekly, 8/14/1885).

The Old Clubfoot of Tehama county was slain in 1889:

Hundreds of cattle, sheep, hogs and human beings have fallen victims to his appetite during that period and many parties organized for his destruction have returned thinned in ranks and ‘with hair turned white in a single night, by a passing sight of the dreadful fright’, which they vainly sought to destroy. The beast weighed, when dressed, 2,300 pounds, which we believe is the largest animal of its species ever seen on the American continent. Mr. Hendrix feels justly proud of his achievement, and a purse of $500 has been made up for his benefit by the residents of Eastern Tehama county”(Sacramento Daily Union, 6/21/1889).

The press, having apparently heard many such stories, put the new report in context:

’Old Clubfoot” the ursine terror of the Sierras, the bear that ‘bears a charmed life,’ but has been killed at intervals, by various persons and in divers places, for a score of years, was killed again the other day” (Merced County Sun, 7/27/1889).

In 1890, the New York Sun shared the story of a New York fur buyer who had come to Battle Creek in Tehama county to purchase Old Clubfoot’s hide. His account was considered “a gorgeous yarn”:

The head had been cut from the skin which reduced its length by two feet, but it was as mentioned nearly twelve feet in length. From tip to tip of the outstretched paws, the width was fifteen feet. Standing erect on his hind feet the bear must have been at least seventeen feet high, and walking on all fours he was almost five feet tall”( Marysville Daily Appeal 4/9/1890).

The feature article this week is the story of John Copsey’s slaying of one of the legendary grizzlies of Lake County in 1898. The Copsey family arrived in Lake County in 1856 with the “Copsey Wagon Train” from Dade county, Missouri, and took up homesteads to the south and south-east of the present town of Lower Lake. John and his brother Theodore gained Lake County notoriety for helping to build the tiny Little Lake Stone jail in 1876. After they had over-celebrated the conclusion of their project at a local saloon, they became its first occupants. Once they realized that they hadn’t attached the wooden roof to the stone walls, they also enacted the jail’s first jailbreak. Some have suggested that it was planned. In 1962 the Little Lake Stone jail became California Historical Landmark No. 429, it is located one-tenth of a mile south of Highways 29 and 53.

(DEATH OF OLD REEL FOOT, A GRIZZLY WHO TERRORIZED FOUR COUNTIES BANNER INSERT)

KILLED MEN, CARRIED OFF BABIES AND WAS AT LAST STABBED TO DEATH BY A HUNTER WHOSE COMRADE HE HAD EATEN.

San Francisco Call

October 2, 1898

Old “Reel Foot,” the big grizzly, is dead. He carried forty-five bullets with him to his grave. Reel Foot was the most noted bear that ever made foot prints across the trails of Northern California. When he meets the St. Peter of the animal heaven he will have more lives, both of men and beasts, to account for than did Bill Hickman.

For twenty years Reel Foot tended strictly to warfare, and was the terror of stockmen, hunters and small children. That he is dead is due to the nerve of John Copsey, the tallest man in Lake County and. the best shot. But death came only after one of the toughest fights that Reel Foot ever gave in his protracted life as a marauder and outlaw.

(Four panel illustration insert)

THE HUNTER ESCAPED BY GOING UP A TREE, BUT THE BEAR KILLED AND ATE HIS HORSE, KILLING CRADDOCK’S HOUNDS, RAIDING A PIG STY, CARRYING OFF AN INDIAN PAPPOOSE

When it is known that the old bear thought nothing of going into a rancheria and packing off a young Indian, that he killed a man’s horse and ate him while the man hung in the tree overhead, that he seemed to be able to beat Hermann catching rifle balls and afterward devouring his assailant, the fact that Copsey, after years of watching and waiting, laid out the old giant is greatly to the rancher’s credit

The known history of Reel Foot dates back many years ago, to the time when Ed Craddock shot him in the foot while he was on one of his marauding expeditions in Childs Valley in Napa County. How long prior to that he had been levying tribute on stock and human beings Reel  Foot alone knows, and he is too dead now to tell. Craddock had a terrible fight with the old bruin. It cost him the loss of two best hounds that Childs Valley ever boasted of. Prior to the fight, the big bear, who, up to this time, had no other name, had cost Craddock enough young mutton and sheep to keep the family. Craddock started out on horse-back after the destructive animal. His weapon was an old breech-loading rifle, a wicked weapon when loaded, but no better than a stick when empty. The fact that it would get empty and require time to be refilled played an important part in the big fight.

The bear was encountered by Craddock’s hounds in an open glade at the foot of Sugar-Loaf hill. There was a good mix-up in progress between the hounds and the bear, when Craddock arrived. Two of the hounds, both of which died shortly after, were stretched out, torn and covered with blood from the effect of bruin’s claws. The sight of his suffering dogs incensed Craddock and he fired–probably too quickly. Anyhow, the shot went somewhat amiss and struck the bear in the foot, or rather in the ankle joint. Before Craddock could reload the bear sprang toward the horse, and with a swipe of his injured foot struck the weapon from Craddock’s hands, at the same time grabbing it in his teeth and leaving scars in the stock that remain there to this day.

There was no alternative but for Craddock to jump and run for his life. Lack of more good hounds and the formidable risk of going after the brute without them deterred the Childs Valley settlers from following up the advantage gained by Craddock. Bruin, therefore, had time to get well of his wound and to inaugurate a campaign of revenge. Bear though he was, he seems to have had a little Machiavelli in him. At least the death list of the sheep cotes of the district during the next few months tells such a story.

About three months after the fight with Craddock the bruin turned loose on a Pope Valley hogpen. The size and strength of the pen made no difference to him. The pickets of the enclosure were from four to six inches thick and were nailed on with bridge-timber spikes. Bruin swept these away as if they were the flesh on a man’s shoulder and sat him down in the midst of the squealing porkers until his belly was made full and his lust of retaliation for the Childs Valley outrage on his foot was fully satisfied.

It so happened that the owner of this pen, Jurd Walters, was a veteran “bar” hunter. He took the depredator’s trail quickly and with a gang of men followed bruin north for three days until he dropped out of sight in the neighborhood of Bartlett Springs in Lake County, probably hiding in an old cave. A cave which apparently had been the bear’s headquarters for many years was subsequently located in that vicinity by a man named Thorp, the discoverer of Bartlett Springs.

Tracking bruin was easy on this occasion. The wound from Craddock’s gun had not only lamed him, but had given a peculiar outward twist to his right foot so that the toes turned almost at a right angle to those of the left foot. This unusual mark gave the big brute the name of “Reel Foot,” and by that name he was known throughout the balance of his extraordinary career. During the chase Reel Foot took his course directly across the Guenoc ranch, which has since become famous as the stock farm of Fred Gebhard. Lily Langtry owns the next ranch. Here the bear seized one of the papooses of the tribe of the Lake County Indian chief, Chappo, which had been left on the bank of Putah Creek while the mother was washing clothes in the stream.

Chappo’s tribe was in a state of wild excitement by the time Walters’ gang arrived, and the aged and grizzled chief (who still lives at the advanced age of 120 years) offered six of his choicest squaws and two ponies to any white man who would kill the bear. Chappo and his tribe, of course, joined in the chase.

But Reel Foot evidently had been in that part of the country before. He disappeared in the brush back of the Copsey ranch, brush which nothing but a snake or a bear could penetrate. Nevertheless Walters pressed the escaped criminal pretty hard, keeping the tracks warm all the time. Walters stopped overnight at the Copsey ranch, and there was joined by a man by the name of Church and by the then youthful John Copsey. Church was a noted and fearless bear-hunter.

About noon the next day the trackers, with their reinforcements, overtook Reel Foot. He had worked into some dense brush not far from a upring. The Pope Valley posse, remembering the experience of  Craddock, were a little shy of going too deep into the brush after the bear, but Church and young Copsey had Lake County’s reputation to maintain, and plunged straight ahead.

Church never came back.

Copsey was only a boy at that time, but he understood the nature of an oath, as do most Lake County boys to this day. When finally the mangled remains of Church were drawn out, which was after Reel Foot   had finished his meal and had abandoned the body, Copsey swore that if he had to have twenty years to do it he would make an end of Reel  Foot as Reel Foot had made an end of Church.

Thereafter Reel Foot’s history was written in the blood of Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino and lower Trinity counties. He had fights, he ate sheep, pork, dogs and men and children in all these counties, and usually got away from the Sheriff as adroitly as Chris Evans or the notorious sneak thief of Middletown, George Coburn. The hunting annals of all these four counties are full of the pursuit of Reel Foot. His peculiar footprint gave him distinction, and his reputation as a man-eater made him a good subject for barroom stories.

KILLING THE FOREMAN ON WHITE’S RANCH, KILLING SHEEPHERDER JOHN ADAMS, WHILE HIS SON ESCAPES UP A TREE

In Round Valley, where White’s notorious band of vaqueros held out for many years, Reel Foot made a great record in absorbing bullets fired at him and fighting back all the while.

He killed a foreman on White’s ranch in an encounter in a cabin, where the latter had gone to seek a supply of bacon. It was in the winter season and foraging was poor. Reel Foot broke open the door at night, and while the foreman was asleep on the floor began pillaging the place. The foreman awoke startled, and reached for his gun. What else he did is not known. Reel Foot never gave him a chance to tell. The poor fellow’s torn carcass was found by some of White’s men several days later.

From Round Valley, Reel Foot seems to have wandered back and forth to his old hunting grounds in Pope Valley. It was only a few years ago that he made an assault on a sheep herder employed by John Adams of Pope Valley, who happened to be out in the field with his young son. The son climbed up a tree while the father remained below to give battle to the fierce bear. Probably if the man had known he was to fight with the colossal Reel Foot he would have thought better of his bargain. Suffice it to say that the boy had to remain in the tree and see his own father killed and partly devoured by the ferocious beast.

Much of this history reads like the yellow-back literature that starts the youth of New York westward to grow up with the country, but there are plenty of people in the four or five counties herein mentioned to verify it. For example, there is Charlie Sapp, who, unmindful of the Craddock incident in Reel Foot’s early biography, still lingers among the woods of Lake County and hunts bears with a breech-loading rifle. He has probably killed more bears than any man in Northern California, and lost more portions of his anatomy in doing so. He is minus half of his right leg, a third of his right hand and his scalp. All of these mementos he left with Reel Foot, he declares that of all the grizzly bears that ever the devil put on earthy; there was never any like the one of which John Copsey has just rid the community.

The death of Reel Foot at last may be attributed to the recent big forest fires that devastated many sections of Lake County, burning up the lairs of deer, panthers and all other wild animals. It happened that the fire’s reached the hiding place of old Reel Foot and smoked him out. He had been comparatively quiet for several seasons, perhaps on account of age. Being disturbed in his quietness may have aggravated his old-time fierce spirit.

However that may be, it is a fact that a few days ago John Copsey, now grown from a youth to the tallest man in Lake County, discovered the. familiar tracks of the veteran Reel Foot on his ranch. It was the work of an instant for Copsey to secure, his rifle and set out on the trail in pursuit. Reel Foot was found in one of his old, sullen, dangerous humors, but Copsey this time was not dependent on that muzzle loader of the earlier days. Reel Foot, on the contrary, had growth aged; his teeth, as Copsey subsequently ascertained, had lost their edge, but the vicious legs, which never lose their quick cunning while a bear exists, were as strong and active as ever.

(Illustration of man fighting bear)

HE THOUGHT HIS TIME HAD COME, BUT A PROVIDENTIAL STROKE BETWEEN THE RIBS ENDED THE FIGHT AND OLD REEL FOOT.

The recognition between the two seemed to be mutual, at least so says Copsey. John dropped his rifle to his shoulder and fired. But that sort of thing did not phase Reel Foot. He had been through it before and he didn’t mind lead in the least. The bullet might as well have gone into a sponge. Reel Foot kept coming on. Copsey pulled the lever for another shot, but the mechanism stuck and Reel Foot closed on him. It looked like a death struggle for awhile. Copsey says he thought his end had come and that he was going the same way as poor Church had gone years before. But by some means he managed to draw his knife, and with a last effort planted it in a mellow patch between two of Reel Foot’s ribs.

It was a providential blow and ended Reel Foot.

When placed on the scales the huge fellow weighed 1350 pounds. Copsey found forty-five bullets in various parts of his body, and his thick hide was a crazy quilt of scars. The entire community visited the Copsey ranch to get a sight of the famous old scourge. And now Lake County is talking of nothing but the death of this noted animal, perhaps the last big grizzly that will terrorize the ranchers of Northern California.

Earlier Odd and Old News:

There are many, but here are the most recent:

• The Big War on Marijuana–100 Years Ago
• Eager Businessmen, Big Talk, and Railroad Progress–Round Valley Coal Fields, Part Two
• The Sad Saga of Big Diamond, Humboldt County’s First Elephant Fatality
• Dog Tales…
• Early Plans for an East West Railroad to Humboldt County
• Northern California in the Seventies
• The Pioneer Philanthropist
• The Horrible History of Round Valley, Part One
• The Horrible History of Round Valley (Part 2)
• A Time When Humboldt County Was Known For Its Spuds, Not Buds
• The ‘Million Dollar Mill that Never Milled’