The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1905-02-09

hand to hand fight, and I have never
felt the least bit Of fear Of them. There
Is no animal that Will face man; even
the grizzly will leave part Of the
country that be has habited in for
long while when be finds out that
man has come into it, and while have
seen their tracks many times I have
never seen a single one Of them. Noun
tain lions and cougars and panthers
are quite plenty. The cougar Is the lar
gest Of any Of them and the worst beast
that I have ever seen In that country.
The mountain lion Is next In size and
Is very ferocious. I had an opportun-
ty once Of seeing a mountain lion kill a
deer, and It Is the only time that have
ever heard Of any one having like ex-
perience. was lying hid waiting for
deer to come up a gorge close enough
for me to get shot, and as I lay mo-
tionless could see it gradually work
Ing closer and closer.
when it got under place where
there was an o~erhanging ledge saw
a streak Of dun colored lightning shoot
out, and the mountain lion made
clear leap of at least twenty feet and
Lit on the deers back and bore him
down to the ground. The thing that
struck me as the most wonderful was
that the lion held on with bis fore
paws and teeth and literally ripped the
deer to pieces with the claws on his
hind feet. needed that deer for meat,
so took a long shot at the lion, but
must have missed him, for when the
gun cracked he disappeared.
"When I got to the deer found that
one side Of it was torn to pieces where
the mountain lion had held on and
scratched it with his hind claws. But I
got the deer. This mountain lion that I
brought with me isn't the first one I've
trapped, by any means. I've caught
many Of them, but this one Is the first
one that I've ever tried to capture
alive. The others killed on the spot,
for all I wanted was their hide.
knew this fellow was around my traps,
for now and then he'd steal something
out Of them, SO I made up my mind to
trap him. I drove stake into the
ground and baited. it. Around the stake
I set four double spring steel traps,
each one clogged with chunk Of wood
that would weigh $50 pounds, and one
morning I went there I found that I
had made catch. The trap was gone,
and followed the trail Of the clog
couple Of hundred yards until I came
on to the lion sitting on his launches
In the snow.
''The moment he saw me he screamed
and made q leap for me, but the trap
was fast on one paw, and the clog held
him. It took me four hours to get him
tied so could get him back to my tent.
I had lassos with me and got him
wrapped up so that he couldn't move
muscle and then made sledge from
the fork Of tree and dragged him
over the frozen snow, screaming, for
four miles. The first two days he lay
in my tent tied up, while I went forty
miles to Vermont, where there was a
blacksmith shop, and had a cage made.
I drew the iron cage back home the
forty miles on a sled and got the Lon
In it after much work, then dragged
his paw out and loosed the trap, but his
foot had partly frozen when he was IN
the trap, for the thermometer was 40
degrees below zero on Feb. 2, the Gay
caught him, and part Of the paw
sloughed away.
"When the ice broke up at Fort Ben
ton on May l.. was ready to go with