In September 1891, Beebe began attending East Orange High School. Although Beebe did not formally drop his first name "Charles" until 1915, before attending high school he was already commonly known as "William Beebe", as he would be known from this point onward. During his high school years Beebe developed an interest in collecting animals, particularly after receiving his first gun at the age of sixteen, and trained himself in taxidermy to preserve them. When he was unable to collect a specimen for himself, he often obtained it from a supply house known as Lattin's, or by trading with other collectors. Beebe's first article was published while he was still in high school, a description of a bird called a brown creeper, which appeared in the January 1895 issue of the magazine "Harper's Young People".