Newsletter, typeset, duo-tone (pink and red, on white), with illustrated letterhead and six accompanying photos with lettered captions.
Reprint from 1943 strip sequences (solely as per copyright year and N.E.A. Service, first panel; dates/type not given), one ending, one beginning, modified for format.
Art identification by Steinar Ådland December 2010. Reprnts 1941 strip sequence (solely as per copyright year and King Features Syndicate, first panel; dates/type not given), adjusted for format.
Writer credit as per Du Bois Account Books.
Typical of Du Bois are:
1) The horses as characters, and their behavior as plot-pivotal.
2) The grizzlies as plot-pivotal characters.
3) The protagonists' use of clever subterfuge to outwit and overcome the human antagonists.
Episode 4. First appearance since New Funnies #67 (September 1942). Next appearance in The Lone Ranger #11 (May 1949).
Gaylord Du Bois writer identification by David Porta, August 2018:
•As in the preceding sequence (by Gaylord Du Bois), the Ameican boy feature title character "changes his skin" wearing the skin of a freshly killed predator to escape detection by the enemy.
•As in the preceding sequence, and as in Young Hawk episode 6 (also by Du Bois) in The Lone Ranger #12, the protagonist's horse reacts in fear at scent of a predator ("The wolf smell [off the fresh pelt] makes Medicine Horse rear and snort in fright").
•Little Buck obsesses over food (a wild goose). Eating and food were recurring plot elements and characterizations in Du Bois's earlier juvenile characters, and this food obsession became a running gag of the Little Buck character throughout the Young Hawk feature written by Du Bois.
•Animals abound in, and are integral to, the plot. The animals' behavior personalizes them as characters (as when "Suddenly Tumbleweed bounds forward barking shrilly" with his own word balloons "Yap-yap-yap!" and "Yi-yip-yip-yip!" alerting the boys to the coyote carrying its catch, a wild goose). The animal plotting, the animal personalization, the prose narration and its style, the giving voice to an animal, and doing so with a word balloon: These are identifying characteristics of Du Bois's writing.
•While this story does not appear in the surviving Du Bois Account Books, neither do the next two episodes in the feature, which appear in The Lone Ranger #11,12. His writer credit for those is established as documented by 1949 Copyright Entries, listed among his writer credit for each Young Hawk episode of that year. And while he is not credited as the writer of this story in the 1946 Copyright Entries (the "author of the work" is entered as K.K. Publications), neither are most of the other stories of his that were published that year, e.g. the Little Beaver story which precedes this one, the which are established as his by the Account Books. (The 1946 Copyright Entries list Du Bois as writer only for his work on Roy Rogers Comics, copyright Roy Rogers; and his Uncle Wiggily stories, copyright Howard Garis, which all appeared in Animal Comics.) Why are there no entries in the surviving Account Books of Younk Hawk episodes 4,5,6? They are "surviving" Account Books because his earlier Account Books dating from before about June 1943 were destroyed in a 1950s house fire. The Young Hawk feature began in the revamp (to juvenile characters) of The Funnies #63,64 into New Funnies #65 around the time the Dell Comics line saw a major revamp to juvenile material, both licensed and original, under editor Oskar Lebeck, whose chief writer was friend and collaborator Gaylord Du Bois. The surviving Account Books pick up New Funnies about issue #85, which show he was writing four features for the title at that time (Andy Panda, Oswald the Rabbit, Raggedy Ann, and Andy Panda text stories); and both convention and Copyright Entry corroboration of other titles (Loony Tunes; Our Gang) lead us to extrapolate backwards from the surviving Account Books: Du Bois was the principal contributor of the revamp of The Funnies. Young Hawk was part of that revamp to juvenile characters: it was about two children, but in a reality-based setting, just as Du Bois's Andy Panda episodes were reality-based (with one suspension of disbelief: he was a little boy talking panda). The Young Hawk strip was killed after three episodes. What if Du Bois created Young Hawk, and episodes 4,5,6 were written and even drawn, but remained unpublished in "stock"? It would explain why episodes 5,6 are credited to Du Bois in Copyright Entries but do not appear as entries in the Account Books contemporary to their publication, and why this episode contains so many Du Bois earmarks but likewise does not appear as a 1945 entry. It wasn't! It was an entry recorded in his account books of 1941 or 1942 (along with the entries for the other 5 of those first 6 episodes), the which were consumed by fire! One may reasonably and emphatically declare that this story was written by Gaylord Du Bois.