Editor’s Note: In the spring of 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt traveled by train to hunt bears and big cats in Colorado. The account of his hunt was published in the July, August, and September 1905 issues of Outdoor Life. The original story, simply titled “The President’s Bear Hunt,” began with an introduction by J.A. McGuire, the Colorado-based founder and editor-in-chief of Outdoor Life, who spoke at length with Roosevelt when he hunted Colorado as vice president and again on this trip. The story itself was written by one of TR’s guides, John Goff, who kept a diary during their weeks in camp. “[This] story is the only official account of the hunt furnished in any sportsman’s publication,” wrote McGuire. “Mr. Goff carried his own camera, from which several of the photographs here published were reproduced.” Goff’s original account spans dozens of pages and three issues; we have excerpted most of it below. This hunt occurred while unregulated predator hunting was taking place in much of the American West; for a history of how the president’s trophy hunts like this one turned into the hunting and conservation legacy he’s known for today, read about it here.
