Davy Crockett and the Bears: The Story and What Is True

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Davy Crockett and the Bears is a Tennessee story with a documented core at Greene County birthplace; hunting in West Tennessee, Greene County. The sources are named below.

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Tri-Cities & NortheastRegion
Oct 30Checked, 2026

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Davy Crockett and The Bears

People say Davy Crockett was a bear hunter without equal, the king of the wild frontier. The tales grew until he could grin a bear out of a tree. The real man did hunt bears in West Tennessee, and he wrote about it himself.

What The Record Shows

The Tennessee Encyclopedia entry "Crockett, David 'Davy'" by Michael A. Lofaro (published October 8, 2017, updated March 7, 2018) gives his birth as August 17, 1786 in Greene County, says his autobiography A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee came out in 1834 with Thomas Chilton, and says Anonymous Eastern writers spun tall tales in the Crockett Almanacs (1835 to 1856). It says Walt Disney's productions starring Fess Parker set off a craze in the 1950s, and that Crockett partly invented his own myth. That entry does not discuss bear hunting. The University of Virginia's Twain at Large excerpt "Bear Hunting in Tennessee" from the 1834 Narrative has Crockett writing that in the fall of 1825 he went hunting near the lake and the Mississippi, that he killed fifty-eight bears in the fall and winter, then forty-seven more in about a month in spring, "one hundred and five" in less than a year. The same site describes the Narrative as the autobiography most likely to be Crockett's own work. So the documented core is that Crockett was a real hunter who wrote of killing 105 bears; that number is his own claim, not an independent count. The almanac and screen versions are legend. The Tennessee State Parks page says David Crockett Birthplace State Park in Limestone has a replica cabin, but we did not find a page on bear stories.

Sources

A Note

The bear numbers are Crockett's own claim in his 1834 narrative; no other record confirms them. The birthplace park page says it is closed after Hurricane Helene, so check its page before a visit.

Its home: David Crockett Birthplace State Park. Official page.

On this site: David Crockett Birthplace State Park.

Looked for and Not Found

Any bear-hunting text on the Tennessee Encyclopedia Crockett entry: it does not cover it.
An NPS page on Crockett bearsNone read.
The Disney 'killed him a b'ar' lyric as a documented source: not found on an allowed site.
The county of David Crockett Birthplace State Park: the park page gives Limestone, Tennessee; the birth county (Greene) comes from the Tennessee Encyclopedia.
The Project Gutenberg full text of the Narrative was seen in search but is not an allowed source, so we used the University of Virginia excerpt.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is the story of Davy Crockett and the Bears true?

The Tennessee Encyclopedia entry "Crockett, David 'Davy'" by Michael A.

Is this a legend?

It is a story with a documented core. The facts are listed on this page with their sources.

Where do these facts come from?

From the named sources listed on this page: Crockett, David "Davy", by Michael A. Lofaro (Tennessee Encyclopedia); Bear Hunting in Tennessee, from Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee (1834), edited by Angel Price (University of Virginia, Twain at Large); David Crockett (University of Virginia, Twain at Large).

Sources

Read on October 30, 2026. Stories are for fun; the facts come from these sources. How we check: editorial standards; spot a mistake? tell us.

Cite this page: It's Tennessee, “Davy Crockett and The Bears”, itstennessee.com/legends/davy-crockett-bear-tall-tales/ (updated 2026-11-01). By the It's Tennessee editorial team. Free to quote with attribution and a link to this page; data and tables are licensed CC BY 4.0.

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