The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1902-11-20


game. We reprint below, chapter on the
r Black bear, reproduced from his book,
'.Hunting the Grisly.' This book we offer
for sale in another column, together with
the Presidents other works.
THE BLACK BEAR.
Next to the Whitehall deer the black bear
Is the commonest and most widely dis
tributed of American big game. 1t is still
found quite plentifully in northern New
England. in the Adirondacks, CatSkills,
and along the entire length of the Ale
ghanies, as we'll as in the swamps and
canebrakes of the southern States. 1t is
also common in the great forests of north
ern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota,
and throughout the Rocky Mountains and
the timbered ranges of the Pacific coast.
In the East il has always ranked second
only to the deer among the beasts of chase.
The bear and the buck were the staple
objects of pursuit of all the old hunters.
They were more plentiful than the bison
and elk even in the long vanished days
when these two great monarchs of the
forest still ranged eastward to Virginia
and PENNSYLVANIA. The wolf and the
cougar were always too scarce and too
shy to yield much profit to the hunter.
The black bear is 4 timid, cowardly ami
NAL, and usually a vegetarian, though it
sometimes preys on the sheep, hogs, and
even cattle of the settler, and is very fond
of raiding his corn and melons. It's meat
is good and its fur often valuable; and
in its chase there is much excitement. and
occasionally slight spice of danger. just
enough to render it attractive; so ii has
always been eagerly followed. Yet it still
holds its own, though in greatly diminish
ed numbers, in the more thinly settled por-
tons of the country. One of the standing
riddles of American zoology is the fact
that the black bear, which is easier killed
and less prolific than the wolf. should
hold its own in the land better than the
latter this being directly the reverse of
what occurs in Europe, where the brown
bear is generally extermnated before the
wolf.
THE WILDERNESS HUNTERS.
In few wild spots in the East in north
ern Maine for instance, here and there in
the neighborhood of the upper Great
Lakes, in the east Tennessee and Ken
tucky mountains and the swamps of
Florida and Mississippi, there still fingers
an occasional representative of the old
wilderness hunters. These men live i'll log
cabins in the wilderness. They do their
hunting Oh foot, occasionally with the help
of single trailing dog. In Maine they
are as apt to kill moose and caribou as
bear and deer; but elsewhere the two last,
with an occasional cougar or wolf, are the
beasts of chase which they follow.
Nowadays as these old hunters die there
IS no one to take their places. though there
are still plenty of backwoods settlers in
all the regions named who do a great deal
of hunting and trapping. Such an old
hunter rarely makes his appearance at the
settlements except to dispose of his peltry
and hides in exchange for cartridges and
provisions. and he leads life of such lone
1y isolation as to insure his individual
characteristics developing into pecuiarities.
Most of the wilder districts in the Eastern
States still preserve memories of some
such old hunter who lived his long life
alone, wasing ceaseless warfare in the
vanishing game, whose oddities, as well
as his courage, hardhood, and wOodcraft,
are laughingly remembered by the older
settlers, and who is usually best known as
having killed the last wolf or bear or
cougar ever seen in the locality.
Generally the weapon mainly relied on
by these old hunters is the rifle: and oc-
casionally some old hunter will be found
even to this day who uses a muzzle loader
such as Kit Carson carried in the middle
of the century. There are exceptions to
this rule of the rife, however. In the
years after the civil war one of the many
noted hunters of southwest Virginia and
east Tennessee was WILDER Waters, some
times called The Hunter of White Top.
He often killed black bear with a knife
and dogs. He spent all his life in hunting
and was very successful. killing the last
gang of wolves 10 be found in his neigh
borhood: and he slew innunIerable bears
with no worse results to him self than an
occasional bite or scratch.
PURSUIT OF GAME WITH HORSE AND
HOUND.
In the Southern States the planters liv
Ing in the wilder regions have always been
In the habit of following the black bear
with horse and hound many of them keep
ing regular packs of bear hounds. Such
a pack includes not only pure-bred hounds.
but also cross-bred animals, and some
sharp, agile, hard-biting fierce dogs and
terriers. They follow the bear and bring
him to bay but do not try to kill him, al
though there are dogs of the big fighting
breeds which can readily master a black
bear if loOsed at him three or four at a
time; but the dogs of these Southern bear
hound packs are not fitted for such work
and if they try to close with the bear &c
Is certain to play havoc with them, dis
embowelling them with blows of his paws
or Selling them in his arms and biting
through their spines or legs. The riders
follow the hounds through the canebrakes,
and also try to make cutoffs and station
themselves at open points where they
think the bear will pass, so that they may
get shot at him. The weapons used are
rifles, shotguns, and occasionally revolvers
GEN. WADE HAMPToN's METHOD.
Sometimes, however, the hunter uses tile
Knife. Gen. Wade Hampton. who has
probably killed more black bears than any
other man living i'll the United States. fire.
qnently used the knife, Staying so or 40
bears with this weapon. His plan was.
when lie found that the dogs had the bear
at bay, to walk up close and cheer them
on. They would instantly seize the bear
In body, and he would then rush in and
stab it behind the shoulder, reaching over
SO as 10 infiict the wound on the opposite
side from that where he stood. He es-
capped scathless from all these encounters
save one, in which he was rather severely
torn in the forearm. Many other hunters
have used the knife, but perhaps none so
frequently as he; for he was always fond
of steel, witness his feats with the
white arm during the civil war
Gen. Hampton always hunted with
large packs of hounds, managed some
times by himself and sometimes by his
negro hunters. He occasionally took out
40 dogs at time. He found that all his
dogs together could not kill big fat bear.
but they occasionally killed three year-olds.
or lean and poor bears During the course
of his life he has himself killed, or been
in at the death of, 800 bears, at least two
thirds of them falling by his own hand