With today's modern bullets they aren't too hard to kill. That could have been a factor, poor bullets in his day. The guy I guided for shot lots of bears over the years and he didn't like shoulder shots since he saw many bears run off with broken shoulders. Another factor is the chest of a bear is quite small compared to the rest of his body so some guys may be hitting them around the edges somewhere. The guy I guided for did also say most of his hunters were poor shots. I guided his European hunters which generally are better shots than the guys from North America.

Gerry.