The Forrest City times. [volume] (Forrest City, Ark.) 1871-1919, 1895-03-29
WHITE MOUNTAIN BEARS.
And an Ex-Clergyman Who Makes
a Living Killing Them.
ut-Heaith and Love of Nature Canssd
Him to forsake the Pulpit for
the Forests and tho
Hills.

The only man at present in the White
mountain region whose sole OCCUPATION
is hunting bears lives in the Peoualxet
lntervale. Do not picture a grizzly,
picturesque character, fond of relating
adventures and hairbreadth escapes.
Perhaps you will lift your incredulous
eyebrows when it is said that he is a
gentleman and scholar and has been
a clergyman! Yet it is true. He is a
tall, thin man, with bright, intelligent
eyes, dignitied bearing and gentle man
ner, says Portsmouth On. HI CORE
spondent of the New York Sun.
1t is not necessary to enter into de-
tails of how he happened to abandon
his profession beyond saying that i'll
health was the chief cause; and it NAV
be added that he has always been pos
sessed with an intense fondness for ma
ture, more especially the wild and sol
itary Businesses of mountains, only to
be found in following the trail of such
game as bears, whose haunts they are.
He has also limited that, brought up on
farm in n region where game was
abundant, his earliest sports and joys
were trapping and cunning; and later
in life, when settled in more serious oc-
cupations, an unconquerable longing
for the free life of woods and fields
often overeame him, and at length the
time arrived when he could not resist
it, and his health seemed also to re-
quire an open-air life.
But though not now a clergyman he
is still scholar, especially in all that
pertains to woodcraft, hunting and
trapping. For he knows, for instance,
not only the habits aud traits of the
bear, but has also a scientific knowl-
edge of its anatomy In this he is self
taught, chiefly by dissecting the ami
mails which he captures. OF course the
principal money value of the bear to
him is in the pelts and the state bounty.
In addition he does quite business in
selling the skeletons to museums, pri-
vate students and sculptors, and he
keeps on hand an assortment of the
different bones, so that he can supply
any particular bone required.
This hunter is also an expert me-
chanic. He designs, forges and puts
together all his own traps, and has
made various improvements in them
They never lose him bear, once
sprung upon him, and the country
people, mountain climbers and anna
teur sportsmen are more afraid of
them than they are of the beasts them
selves. They are terrible to look at,
and make one think of the torturing
implements of the inquisition. There
is really very little danger to travel
ers, however, from the hunters traps,
for the ways of the bear are not those
of men. He haunts the most inacces-
sible, rocky and rugged portions of the
White mountains, coming down rarely
to the lakes, cornfields and sheep pas
lures. In the summer one occasionally
meets stray cub, usually pair, In
the roads, as yet ignorant of the dan
gers of civilization.
Mr.. M, to give him at least an
initial, hunts and traps over about
fifty miles of mountain territory ex-
tending from the southwest to the
north of Pequaket Intervale, but most
ly over the Chocorua range, in which
may be included the Chocorua noun
tain itself and its various spurs, Pau
gus sometimes called, in consequence
of it's humpy character and its imme-
diate proximity to an inevitable COM
parison with the splendid peak of Cho-
corua, "the Mountain that Failed,")
Passaconanoy, White Face, and the
Southwest Dome. He knows the most
secret and untrod recesses of all this
district probably as no other man knows
or ever has known them, but precisely as
the bear and other wild animals know