Alaska.com: Alaska's Travel Website

Tina in Louisiana wanted to know if the photographs were real. So did Martin, a pastor from Michigan, who wrote, "Are you able to verify for us that they are indeed genuine and true?"

Click to enlarge

Theodore Winnen holds a paw with 3- to 4-inch claws.

Both Tina and Martin, sending separate e-mail messages to the U.S. Forest Service in Juneau with attached photos of a grizzly killed in Prince William Sound in the fall of 2001, had written their heart-felt wonderment atop a message string that included this text, from a previous e-mail writer:

"Think about it. This thing on its hind legs could walk up to the average single-story house and could look on the roof at eye level." There was never a question that the brown bear that 22-year-old airman Ted Winnen shot to death in October 2001 on Hinchinbrook Island was huge.

The grizzly measured 10 feet, 6 inches from nose to tail. Its front claws were 3 to 4 inches long. An Alaska master guide estimated the bear's weight at up to 1,200 pounds. (The average brown bear weight for Hinchinbrook is less than half that.)

One photo shows Winnen holding the bear's paw as it obscures almost all of his chest. A second photo shows Winnen crouched looking like a child behind the bear's massive, bloody head.

But the "legend" e-mail, as Forest Service spokesman Ray Massey calls the tale that's been making the Internet rounds all this time, has converted the bear into a monster of impossible proportions.

It's now "over one thousand six hundred pounds . . . 12'6" high at the shoulder," reads one message Massey has received.

E-mail exaggerations about the animal began to circulate little more than a month after Winnen, stationed at the time at Eielson Air Force Base, shot it while deer hunting with several partners.

Some of the early e-mails reached the Anchorage Daily News, and the paper published a story about the kill in December 2001 accompanied by the two photos taken by one of Winnen's partners, Eielson Staff Sgt. Jim Urban.

Despite the newspaper story, the e-mails did not stop. Nor did calls to the agency from print and TV reporters wanting to know if the e-mail version was true.

"I've gotten calls from media all over the world," Massey said one day last week. "I got a call from London today."

The Forest Service, which manages the Chugach National Forest encompassing Prince William Sound, gets three or four e-mails about the bear every week that have to be answered, Massey said.

Many of the messages are from people who are skeptical and want confirmation of their doubts from the agency. About 30 percent of the messages come from hunters who are all but certain the tale is a tall one.

What's got Massey somewhat concerned, however, is that the circumstances of the bear's death morphed some time ago into what he terms an urban myth -- about a killer beast taken down by a Forest Service employee.

"He was out deer hunting when a large world class Griz charged him from about 50 yards away," according to one e-mail tale that has been circulating. "The guy unloaded a 7mm Mag Semi-auto into the bear and it dropped a few feet from him. This thing was still alive, so he reloaded and capped it in the head. ... It's a world record. This bear had killed a couple of other people."

The bear was not a record, and it didn't kill anyone, as far as is known. It was coming toward Winnen and Urban from about 10 yards away, but it may not have seen them. And Winnen used a .338-caliber Winchester Magnum.

Hoping to debunk the myths, Massey answers the e-mails with plenty of details about the actual size of the bear and the hunt. The Forest Service's Web site provides a news release about the hunt and the rumors.

But now a third photo is making the rounds, a picture that supposedly shows a person's body, the bear's victim.

Massey never opened that attachment, he said.

"I didn't want to see a photo of the body. I know it's bogus."

Massey says there's no way to know how many people are reading the false stuff as the message travels the globe. He just scratches his head and says that, 19 months after the hunt, the story is still going.

"It's like the Energizer bunny," he said. "I have no doubt the Internet is keeping it moving. Otherwise it would have died a long time ago."

(Anchorage Daily News reporter Peter Porco can be reached at pporco@adn.com or 907-257-4582. This story was published May 7, 2003.)