Some days the headline chooses you. This was one of those.

It’s May 15th, 1926. Jim McCann and his brother William were headed to their mountain cabin near the Salmon River in Idaho when Jim spotted bear tracks on the trail. He told his brother to go on ahead. The woodsman in him wanted to follow the tracks... alone.

What happened next made the papers from Toronto to Washington D.C.

Jim wasn’t following the grizzly anymore. The grizzly was following him. It came from behind. Knocked him down. His rifle flew from his hands. His right arm was nearly torn from its socket. His scalp was torn half off. His revolver was out of reach.

So he grabbed his hunting knife and drove it into the bear near the heart.

Then he crawled. As far as he could before blood loss stopped him. Somewhere in the desolate wilderness near the Salmon River, alone, certain he was dying, Jim McCann pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a note to his brother William.

The incident is one thing. The note is another thing entirely. He was dying — or believed he was — and what he chose to do with whatever time was left of him was make sure his brother knew he hadn't lost. He wanted William to find him and know, before anything else, that the bear was dead too. That Jim McCann had gone down swinging. That the score was settled.

Other papers had fun with it. ANOTHER WILD BILL. FIT FOR THE FILMS.

Campers found him unconscious. The bear was dead several hundred yards away. A trail of blood connecting the two of them across the wilderness.

Jim McCann survived. His body torn and bruised, his right arm barely attached, but alive. By May 17th the papers were already running the follow-up: "Jim McCann Fought Grizzly and Still Lives."

His note simply turned out to be wrong about one thing.

-Chris

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