At his summer cabin in Glacier Park, Russell liked to collect pieces of gnarled pine roots in distinctive shapes, then add figures of animals to them. Occasionally he received a visit from the New York artist Philip Goodwin, who became a close friend. Goodwin later recalled that Russell had “a remarkable affinity for seizing upon the instantaneous movement of animals in action and nailing it down, and he gets character in everything he touches.” The two artists were of like mind when it came to creating representations of wildlife, and they sometimes worked on models together. After Goodwin returned to his studio in New York after one of his visits, Russell sent him a few choice tree roots with the challenge to create something. Goodwin responded soon afterward that he had made small models of bears in various poses to put on each of them. Russell made the humorous characterization of the bear shown here on the fragment of a tree root, inscribing it to his friend Bill Rance, the owner of the Silver Dollar Saloon in Great Falls. The bear’s claws are made from small pieces of cut sheet metal.