Gordon Wimsatt and His Famous Bear Grease

G. Gordon Wimsatt, who was born on September 6th, 1915, came to the Sacramento Mountains with his parents, George and Johnnie Wimsatt, from Santa Rita, New Mexico [USA], in 1927.

A few years after his arrival, in the early 1930s, Gordon met George Hightower, who was part Apache. George worked for the State Game and Fish Department, and was also a hunter and trapper. He had killed a bear and gave some of the grease to Gordon, telling him the Indians predicted the weather by observing the changes in the grease, which they placed in scraped bladders of deer—thin enough to see through. Gordon started watching the grease, which had been put into a clear glass jar. At first, he considered it a joke, but the more he watched the changes in the grease and the changes in the weather that accompanied them, bear grease weather predicting became a hobby of his that lasted until his death more than 60 years later.

Over the years, friends gave him some of the fat whenever they killed a bear. After he had accumulated many samples of grease and was able to compare the different specimens, his weather predictions became more and more accurate. He could predict moisture close at hand and also temperature changes. In the beginning, he generally kept the information to himself, but one time he informed a friend that on the next day, February 17th, there would be significant moisture. The friend pointed to the clear skies and laughed at Gordon. Overnight and by noon the next day, more than 8” of snow fell.

On another occasion, quoting Gordon, “We had a long dry spell of weather. A logging company was moving logs from the woods to the sawmill in Alamogordo. The foreman was in my store about seven o’clock one morning. The sky was as blue as it could be, without a cloud in sight. I said, ‘Archie, you better have your trucks out of the woods by about ten o’clock, or they’ll be stuck in the mud so deep you might not get them out.’ ‘I bet your bear grease told you that,’ Archie said, laughing as he and a couple of his workers went on their way. Before 10 pm, a downpour of more than 2” soaked the woods, and the logging trucks could not get out that day. Afterwards, for as long as his trucks came by my store, the foreman checked the weather with me every day.” Read Article

By Pat Rand