Driving me crazy...

[Larry McK]

For years whenever someone has tried to take credit for something another family member has done (something good that is) the family member who did the good thing will laughingly say "yeah, and we killed a bear". Which for some reason for decades has meant to us "you know you didn't do a thing to help". When asked where this saying came from no one has any idea. Could it just be a saying some vwery,vwery skwewy ancestor came up we? Please help.

[Quizmonster]

Some investors are called 'bulls' and others 'bears'. An old Stock Exchange phrase spoke of a 'bearskin jobber', a jobber being basically a stock-broker. The phrase referred to the old proverb about selling the bearskin before you'd succeeded in killing the bear! That's what a bearskin jobber hoped to do.
I wonder, therefore, whether your family phrase is also a reference to something that the person hasn't actually done.