Russell was familiar with stories of violent encounters between a grizzly bear and a buffalo bull, and he illustrated one such incident for a hunter’s memoir published in 1902. Russell’s subject in this bronze seems to show the two potential adversaries sizing each other up, but one suspects (as indicated by the title) that the face-off will result in a graceful retreat for both animals. George Bird Grinnell, the editor of Forest and Stream and an acquaintance of Russell’s, also reported confrontations between these two animals as a Blackfoot eyewitness had related them to him. Grinnell observed that the buffalo had few natural enemies, save the wolf and the bear, until man arrived on the scene. Like Russell, he believed this natural rivalry represented only things as they once were, but could never be again. The bronze of The Bluffers was first exhibited in New York in January 1925, where a copy was sold for $400. Evidence suggests that few, if any, additional casts were sold prior to Russell’s death in October 1926. In 1927 Nancy Russell transferred her casting activity to the newly opened California Bronze Foundry in Los Angeles, where at least two casts bearing that foundry’s mark were made under her supervision. One of these, the example shown here, formed part of the inventory of her estate; another cast with the same mark was purchased by Will Rogers for his home in Pacific Palisades, California, where it resides today. Unfortunately, despite the fact that there were three other bronzes of this subject in Mrs. Russell’s estate at the time of her death, the plaster master models (of which there were three) were used by others to make a large number of unauthorized casts as late as the 1970s.