A challenge this week indeed! The prompt image for Sepia Saturday (shown below) featured a butcher shop and I knew right off the bat that I had absolutely nothing like it. Luckily, we get a preview a few weeks in advance and I managed to remember the photo above. Picutred is a man who I believe is Waldo Orvis “Jack” Powis (1905-1981), brother to my great grandmother Olga Powis. He’s standing with a dead bear who was probably hunted in Pennsylvania. Jack didn’t live in PA at the time, but he may have been out visiting his family in central Pennsylvania and posed with the bear for a photo. It’s not often that a person can safely get within any distance of a bear like that, so I’m sure it was quite the novelty! It’s not a butcher shop, but I have to imagine that the hunters used the bear meat for food since the presumed area where it was shot wasn’t in great shape economically (and still isn’t). There’s no date or inscription on the photo, but I’d guess it was taken to be somewhere between 1950 to 1960.
A new angle on “Where’s Waldo.” Wonderful photo.
That’s a trophy bear for sure! This year has produced a spike in the bear population here in Western North Carolina. On July 4th we had one stalking around our downtown neighborhood in search of bird feeders and bee hives. I didn’t see it but my dog did and several neighbors took photos from about 30 ft away.
Where I grew up in Northern NJ, it’s odd to go a year without seeing a bear in my parents’ backyard nowadays – it wasn’t like that when I was a kid, but there was more open land then (just 20 some odd years ago!). NJ actually even opens up a bear hunt annually and will relocate or euthanize bears who are a documented nuisance (cause property damage or harm people/pets/livestock)