"IN THE LOUISIANA CANEBRAKES"
From January 1908 issue of Scribner’s Magazine (Vol. 43,
No. 1, pp. 47-60)
By Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States
Illustrations from photographs by Alexander Lambert, M.D.
Copyright, 1907
The Bear Hunters
(taken on north end of Bear Lake)
In
October, 1907, I spent a fortnight in the canebrakes of northern Louisiana, my
hosts being Messrs. John M. Parker and John A. McIlhenny. Surgeon-General
Rixey, of the United States Navy, and Doctor Alexander Lambert were with me. I
was especially anxious to kill a bear in these canebrakes after the fashion of
the old Southern planters, who for a century past have followed the bear with
horse and hound and horn in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
Louisiana
canebrake
Our
first camp was on Tensas Bayou. This is in the heart of the great alluvial
bottom-land created during the countless ages through which the mighty
Mississippi has poured out of the heart of the continent. It is in the black
belt of the South, in which the negroes outnumber the whites four or five to
one, the disproportion in the region in which I was actually hunting being far
greater. There is no richer soil in all the earth; and when, as will soon be
the case, the chances of disaster from flood are over, I believe the whole land
will be cultivated and densely peopled. At present the possibility of such
flood is a terrible deterrent to settlement, for when the Father of Waters
breaks his boundaries he turns the country for a breadth of eighty miles into
one broad river, the plantations throughout all this vast extent being from
five to twenty feet under water. Cotton is the staple industry, corn also being
grown, while there are a few rice fields and occasional small patches of sugar
cane. The plantations are for the most part of large size and tilled by negro
tenants for the white owners. Conditions are still in some respects like those
of the pioneer days. The magnificent forest growth which covers the land is of
little value because of the difficulty in getting the trees to market, and the
land is actually worth more after the timber has been removed than before. In
consequence, the larger trees are often killed by girdling, where the work of
felling them would entail disproportionate cost and labor. At dusk, with the
sunset glimmering in the west, or in the brilliant moonlight when the moon is
full, the cottonfields have a strange spectral look, with the dead trees
raising aloft their naked branches. The cottonfields themselves, when the bolls
burst open, seem almost as if whitened by snow; and the red and white flowers,
interspersed among the burst-open pods, make the whole field beautiful. The
rambling one-story houses, surrounded by outbuildings, have a picturesqueness
all their own; their very looks betoken the lavish, whole-hearted, generous
hospitality of the planters who dwell therein.
Beyond
the end of cultivation towers the great forest. Wherever the water stands in
pools, and by the edges of the lakes and bayous, the giant cypress loom aloft,
rivalled in size by some of the red gums and white oaks. In stature, in
towering majesty, they are unsurpassed by any trees of our eastern forests;
lordlier kings of the green-leaved world are not to be found until we reach the
sequoias and redwoods of the Sierras. Among them grow many other
trees--hackberry, thorn, honeylocust, tupelo, pecan, and ash. In the cypress
sloughs the singular knees of the trees stand two or three feet above the black
ooze. Palmettos grow thickly in places. The canebrakes stretch along the slight
rises of ground, often extending for miles, forming one of the most striking
and interesting features of the country. They choke out other growths, the
feathery, graceful canes standing in ranks, tall, slender, serried, each but a
few inches from his brother, and springing to a height of fifteen or twenty
feet. They look like bamboos; they are well-nigh impenetrable to a man on
horseback; even on foot they make difficult walking unless free use is made of
the heavy bush-knife. It is impossible to see through them for more than
fifteen or twenty paces, and often for not half that distance. Bears make their
lairs in them, and they are the refuge for hunted things. Outside of them, in
the swamp, bushes of many kinds grow thick among the tall trees, and vines and
creepers climb the trunks and hang in trailing festoons from the branches.
Here, likewise, the bush-knife is in constant play, as the skilled horsemen
thread their way, often at a gallop, in and out among the great tree trunks,
and through the dense, tangled, thorny undergrowth.
In
the lakes and larger bayous we saw alligators and garfish; and monstrous
snapping turtles, fearsome brutes of the slime, as heavy as a man, and with
huge horny beaks that with a single snap could take off a man's hand or foot.
One of the planters with us had lost part of his hand by the bite of an
alligator; and had seen a companion seized by the foot by a huge garfish from
which he was rescued with the utmost difficulty by his fellow swimmers. There
were black bass in the waters, too, and they gave us many a good meal. Thick-bodied
water moccasins, foul and dangerous, kept near the water; and farther back in
the swamp we found and killed rattlesnakes and copperheads. Coon and 'possum
were very plentiful, and in the streams there were minks and a few otters.
Black squirrels barked in the tops of the tall trees or descended to the ground
to gather nuts or gnaw the shed deer antlers--the latter a habit they shared
with the wood rats. To me the most interesting of the smaller mammals, however,
were the swamp rabbits, which are thoroughly amphibious in their habits, not
only swimming but diving, and taking to the water almost as freely as if they
were muskrats. They lived in the depths of the woods and beside the lonely
bayous.
Birds
were plentiful. Mocking-birds abounded in the clearings, where, among many
sparrows of more common kind, I saw the painted finch, the gaudily colored
brother of our little indigo bunting, though at this season his plumage was
faded and dim. In the thick woods where we hunted there were many cardinal
birds and winter wrens, both in full song. Thrashers were even more common; but
so cautious that it was rather difficult to see them, in spite of their
incessant clucking and calling and their occasional bursts of song. There were
crowds of warblers and vireos of many different kinds, evidently migrants from
the North, and generally silent. The most characteristic birds, however, were
the woodpeckers, of which there were seven or eight species, the commonest
around our camp being the handsome red-bellied, the brother of the red-head
which we saw in the clearings. The most notable birds and those which most
interested me were the great ivory-billed woodpeckers. Of these I saw three,
all of them in groves of giant cypress; their brilliant white bills contrasted
finely with the black of their general plumage. They were noisy but wary, and
they seemed to me to set off the wildness of the swamp as much as any of the
beasts of the chase. Among the birds of prey the commonest were the barred
owls, which I have never elsewhere found so plentiful. Their hooting and
yelling were heard all around us throughout the night, and once one of them
hooted at intervals for several minutes at mid-day. One of these owls had
caught and was devouring a snake in the late afternoon, while it was still
daylight. In the dark nights and still mornings and evenings their cries seemed
strange and unearthly, the long hoots varied by screeches, and by all kinds of
uncanny noises.
At
our first camp our tents were pitched by the bayou. For four days the weather
was hot, with steaming rains; after that it grew cool and clear. Huge biting
flies, bigger than bees, attacked our horses, but the insect plagues, so
veritable a scourge in this country during the months of warm weather, had
well-nigh vanished in the first few weeks of the fall.
Planning the
Campaign
The
morning after we reached camp we were joined by Ben Lilley[1],
the hunter, a spare, full-bearded man, with mild, gentle, blue eyes and a frame
of steel and whipcord. I never met any other man so indifferent to fatigue and
hardship. He equalled Cooper's Deerslayer in woodcraft, in hardihood, in
simplicity--and also in loquacity. The morning he joined us in camp, he had
come on foot through the thick woods, followed by his two dogs, and had neither
eaten nor drunk for twenty-four hours; for he did not like to drink the swamp
water. It had rained hard throughout the night and he had no shelter, no rubber
coat, nothing but the clothes he was wearing, and the ground was too wet for
him to lie on; so he perched in a crooked tree in the beating rain, much as if
he had been a wild turkey. But he was not in the least tired when he struck
camp; and, though he slept an hour after breakfast, it was chiefly because he
had nothing else to do, inasmuch as it was Sunday, on which day he never hunted
nor labored. He could run through the woods like a buck, was far more enduring,
and quite as indifferent to weather, though he was over fifty years old. He had
trapped and hunted throughout almost all the half century of his life, and on
trail of game he was as sure as his own hounds. His observations on wild
creatures were singularly close and accurate. He was particularly fond of the
chase of the bear, which he followed by himself, with one or two dogs; often he
would be on the trail of his quarry for days at a time, lying down to sleep
wherever night overtook him; and he had killed over a hundred and twenty bears.
“Uncle” Ben Lilly
Late
in the evening of the same day we were joined by two gentlemen, to whom we owed
the success of our hunt. They were Messrs. Clive and Harley Metcalf, planters
from Mississippi, men in the prime of life, thorough woodsmen and hunters,
skilled marksmen, and utterly fearless horsemen. For a quarter of a century
they had hunted bear and deer with horse and hound, and were masters of the
art. They brought with them their pack of bearhounds, only one, however, being
a thoroughly stanch and seasoned veteran. The pack was under the immediate
control of a negro hunter, Holt Collier, in his own way as remarkable a
character as Ben Lilley. He was a man of sixty and could neither read nor
write, but he had all the dignity of an African chief, and for half a century
he had been a bear hunter, having killed or assisted in killing over three
thousand bears. He had been born a slave on the Hinds plantation, his father,
an old man when he was born, having been the body-servant and cook of "old
General Hinds," as he called him, when the latter fought under Jackson at
New Orleans. When ten years old Holt had been taken on the horse behind his
young master, the Hinds of that day, on a bear hunt, when he killed his first
bear. In the Civil War he had not only followed his master to battle as his
body-servant, but had acted under him as sharpshooter against the Union soldiers.
After the war he continued to stay with his master until the latter died, and
had then been adopted by the Metcalfs; and he felt that he had brought them up,
and treated them with that mixture of affection and grumbling respect which an
old nurse shows toward the lad who has ceased being a child. The two Metcalfs
and Holt understood one another thoroughly, and understood their hounds and the
game their hounds followed almost as thoroughly.
Holt Collier and
his hounds
They
had killed many deer and wild-cat, and now and then a panther; but their
favorite game was the black bear, which, until within a very few years, was
extraordinarily plentiful in the swamps and canebrakes on both sides of the
lower Mississippi, and which is still found here and there, although in greatly
diminished numbers. In Louisiana and Mississippi the bears go into their dens
toward the end of January, usually in hollow trees, often very high up in
living trees, but often also in great logs that lie rotting on the ground. They
come forth toward the end of April, the cubs having been born in the interval.
At this time the bears are nearly as fat, so my informants said, as when they
enter their dens in January; but they lose their fat very rapidly. On first
coming out in the spring they usually eat ash buds and the tender young cane
called mutton cane, and at that season they generally refuse to eat the acorns
even when they are plentiful. According to my informants it is at this season
that they are most apt to take to killing stock, almost always the hogs which
run wild or semi-wild in the woods. They are very individual in their habits,
however; many of them never touch stock, while others, usually old he-bears,
may kill numbers of hogs; in one case an old he-bear began this hog killing
just as soon as he left his den. In the summer months they find but little to
eat, and it is at this season that they are most industrious in hunting for
grubs, insects, frogs, and small mammals. In some neighborhoods they do not eat
fish, while in other places, perhaps not far away, they not only greedily eat
dead fish, but will themselves kill fish if they can find them in shallow pools
left by the receding waters. As soon as the mast is on the ground they begin to
feed upon it, and when the acorns and pecans are plentiful they eat nothing
else, though at first berries of all kinds and grapes are eaten also. When in
November they have begun only to eat the acorns they put on fat as no other
wild animal does, and by the end of December a full-grown bear may weigh at
least twice as much as it does in August, the difference being as great as
between a very fat and a lean hog. Old he-bears which in August weigh three
hundred pounds and upward will toward the end of December weigh six hundred
pounds, and even more in exceptional cases.
On the way
Bears
vary greatly in their habits in different localities, in addition to the
individual variation among those of the same neighborhood. Around Avery Island,
John McIlhenny's plantation, the bears only appear from June to November; there
they never kill hogs, but feed at first on corn and then on sugar-cane, doing
immense damage in the fields, quite as much as hogs would do. But when we were
on the Tensas we visited a family of settlers who lived right in the midst of
the forest ten miles from any neighbors; and although bears were plentiful
around them they never molested their corn-fields--in which the coons, however,
did great damage.
A
big bear is cunning, and is a dangerous fighter to the dogs. It is only in
exceptional cases, however, that these black bears, even when wounded and at
bay, are dangerous to men, in spite of their formidable strength. Each of the
hunters with whom I was camped had been charged by one or two among the scores
or hundreds of bears he had slain, but no one of them had ever been injured,
although they knew other men who had been injured. Their immunity was due to
their own skill and coolness; for when the dogs were around the bear the hunter
invariably ran close in so as to kill the bear at once and save the pack. Each
of the Metcalfs had on one occasion killed a large bear with a knife, when the
hounds had seized it and the man dared not fire for fear of shooting one of
them. They had in their younger days hunted with a General Hamberlin, a
Mississippi planter whom they well knew, who was then already an old man. He
was passionately addicted to the chase of the bear, not only because of the
sport it afforded, but also in a certain way as a matter of vengeance; for his
father, also a keen bear-hunter, had been killed by a bear. It was an old he,
which he had wounded and which had been bayed by the dogs; it attacked him,
throwing him down and biting him so severely that he died a couple of days
later. This was in 1847. Mr. W. H. Lambeth sends the following account of the
fatal encounter:
“I send you an extract from the 'Brother Jonathan,' published in
New York in 1847:
" 'Dr. Monroe Hamberlin, Robert Wilson, Joe Brazeil, and
others left Satartia, Miss., and in going up Big Sunflower River, met Mr.
Leiser and his party of hunters returning to Vicksburg. Mr. Leiser told Dr.
Hamberlin that he saw the largest bear track at the big Mound on Lake George
that he ever saw, and was afraid to tackle him. Dr. Hamberlin said, "I
never saw one that I was afraid to tackle." Dr. Hamberlin landed his skiff
at the Mound and his dogs soon bayed the bear. Dr. Hamberlin fired and the ball
glanced on the bear's head. The bear caught him by the right thigh and tore all
the flesh off. He drew his knife and the bear crushed his right arm. He cheered
the dogs and they pulled the bear off. The bear whipped the dogs and attacked
him the third time, biting him in the hollow back of his neck. Mr. Wilson came
up and shot the bear dead on Dr. Hamberlin. The party returned to Satartia, but
Dr. Hamberlin told them to put the bear in the skiff, that he would not leave
without his antagonist. The bear weighed 640 pounds.' \
"Dr. Hamberlin lived three days. I knew all the parties. His
son John and myself hunted with them in 1843 and 1844, when we were too small
to carry a gun."
A Stop
A
large bear is not afraid of dogs, and an old he, or a she with cubs, is always on
the lookout for a chance to catch and kill any dog that comes near enough.
While lean and in good running condition it is not an easy matter to bring a
bear to bay; but as they grow fat they become steadily less able to run, and
the young ones, and even occasionally a full-grown she, will then readily tree.
If a man is not near by, a big bear that has become tired will treat the pack
with whimsical indifference. The Metcalfs recounted to me how they had once
seen a bear, which had been chased quite a time, evidently make up its mind
that it needed a rest and could afford to take it without much regard for the
hounds. The bear accordingly selected a small opening and lay flat on its back
with its nose and all its four legs extended. The dogs surrounded it in frantic
excitement, barking and baying, and gradually coming in a ring very close up.
The bear was watching, however, and suddenly sat up with a jerk, frightening
the dogs nearly into fits. Half of them turned back-somersaults in their panic,
and all promptly gave the bear ample room. The bear having looked about, lay
flat on its back again, and the pack gradually regaining courage once more
closed in. At first the bear, which was evidently reluctant to arise, kept them
at a distance by now and then thrusting an unexpected paw toward them; and when
they became too bold it sat up with a jump and once more put them all to
flight.
For
several days we hunted perseveringly around this camp on the Tensas Bayou, but
without success. Deer abounded, but we could find no bear; and of the deer we
killed only what we actually needed for use in camp. I killed one myself by a
good shot, in which, however, I fear that the element of luck played a
considerable part. We had started as usual by sunrise, to be gone all day; for
we never counted upon returning to camp before sunset. For an hour or two we
threaded our way, first along an indistinct trail, and then on an old disused
road, the hardy woods horses keeping on a running walk without much regard to
the difficulties of the ground. The disused road lay right across a great
canebrake, and while some of the party went around the cane with the dogs, the
rest of us strung out along the road so as to get a shot at any bear that might
come across it. I was following Harley Metcalf, with John McIlhenny and Doctor
Rixey behind on the way to their posts, when we heard in the far-off distance
two of the younger hounds, evidently on the trail of a deer. Almost immediately
afterward a crash in the bushes at our right hand and behind us made me turn
around, and I saw a deer running across the few feet of open space; and as I
leaped from my horse it disappeared in the cane.
A halt in the
swamp
I
am a rather deliberate shot, and under any circumstances a rifle is not the
best weapon for snap shooting, while there is no kind of shooting more
difficult than on running game in a canebrake. Luck favored me in this
instance, however, for there was a spot a little ahead of where the deer
entered in which the cane was thinner, and I kept my rifle on its indistinct,
shadowy outline until it reached this spot; it then ran quartering away from
me, which made my shot much easier, although I could only catch its general
outline through the cane. But the 45-70 which I was using is a powerful gun and
shoots right through cane or bushes; and as soon as I pulled the trigger the
deer, with a bleat, turned a tremendous somersault and was dead when we reached
it. I was not a little pleased that my bullet should have sped so true when I
was making my first shot in company with my hard-riding, straight-shooting
planter friends.
But
no bear were to be found. We waited long hours on likely stands. We rode around
the canebrakes through the swampy jungle, or threaded our way across them on
trails cut by the heavy wood-knives of my companions; but we found nothing.
Until the trails were cut the canebrakes were impenetrable to a horse and were
difficult enough to a man on foot. On going through them it seemed as if we
must be in the tropics; the silence, the stillness, the heat, and the
obscurity, all combining to give a certain eeriness to the task, as we chopped
our winding way slowly through the dense mass of close-growing, feather-fronded
stalks. Each of the hunters prided himself on his skill with the horn, which
was an essential adjunct of the hunt, used both to summon and control the
hounds, and for signalling among the hunters themselves. The tones of many of
the horns were full and musical; and it was pleasant to hear them as they
wailed to one another, backward and forward, across the great stretches of
lonely swamp and forest.
A
few days convinced us that it was a waste of time to stay longer where we were.
Accordingly, early one morning we hunters started for a new camp fifteen or
twenty miles to the southward, on Bear Lake. We took the hounds with us,
and each man carried what he chose or could in his saddle-pockets, while his
slicker was on his horse's back behind him. Otherwise we took absolutely
nothing in the way of supplies, and the negroes with the tents and camp
equipage were three days before they overtook us. On our way down we were
joined by Major Amacker and Doctor Miller, with a small pack of cathounds.
These were good deer dogs and they ran down and killed on the ground a
goodsized bob-cat--a wildcat, as it is called in the South. It was a male and
weighed twenty-three and a half pounds. It had just killed and eaten a large
rabbit. The stomachs of the deer we killed, by the way, contained acorns and
leaves.
Bear Lake
Our
new camp was beautifully situated on the bold, steep bank of Bear Lake--a
tranquil stretch of water, part of an old river-bed, a couple of hundred yards
broad, with a winding length of several miles. Giant cypress grew at the edge
of the water, the singular cypress knees rising in every direction round about,
while at the bottoms of the trunks themselves were often cavernous hollows
opening beneath the surface of the water, some of them serving as dens for
alligators. There was a waxing moon, so that the nights were as beautiful as
the days.
From
our new camp we hunted as steadily as from the old. We saw bear sign, but not
much of it, and only one or two fresh tracks. One day the hounds jumped a bear,
probably a yearling from the way it ran; for at this season a yearling or a
two-year-old will run almost like a deer, keeping to the thick cane as long as
it can and then bolting across through the bushes of the ordinary swamp land
until it can reach another canebrake. After a three hours' run this particular
animal managed to get clear away without one of the hunters ever seeing it, and
it ran until all the dogs were tired out. A day or two afterward one of the
other members of the party shot a small yearling--that is, a bear which would
have been two years old in the following February. It was very lean, weighing
but fifty-five pounds. The finely-chewed acorns in its stomach showed that it
was already beginning to find mast.
We
had seen the tracks of an old she in the neighborhood, and the next morning we
started to hunt her out. I went with Clive Metcalf. We had been joined
overnight by Mr. Ichabod Osborn and his son Tom, two Louisiana planters, with
six or eight hounds--or rather bear dogs, for in these packs most of the
animals are of mixed blood, and, as with all packs that are used in the genuine
hunting of the wilderness, pedigree counts for nothing as compared with
steadiness, courage, and intelligence. There were only two of the new dogs that
were really stanch bear dogs. The father of Ichabod Osborn had taken up the
plantation upon which they were living in 1811, only a few years after
Louisiana became part of the United States, and young Osborn was now the third
in line from father to son who had steadily hunted bears in this immediate
neighborhood.
On
reaching the cypress slough near which the tracks of the old she had been seen
the day before, Clive Metcalf and I separated from the others and rode off at a
lively pace between two of the canebrakes. After an hour or two's wait we
heard, very far off, the notes of one of the loudest-mouthed hounds, and
instantly rode toward it, until we could make out the babel of the pack. Some
hard galloping brought us opposite the point toward which they were
heading--for experienced hunters can often tell the probable line of a bear's
flight, and the spots at which it will break cover. But on this occasion the
bear shied off from leaving the thick cane and doubled back; and soon the
hounds were once more out of hearing, while we galloped desperately around the
edge of the cane. The tough woods-horses kept their feet like cats as they
leaped logs, plunged through bushes, and dodged in and out among the tree
trunks; and we had all we could do to prevent the vines from lifting us out of
the saddle, while the thorns tore our hands and faces. Hither and thither we
went, now at a trot, now at a run, now stopping to listen for the pack.
Occasionally we could hear the hounds, and then off we would go racing through
the forest toward the point for which we thought they were heading. Finally,
after a couple of hours of this, we came up on one side of a canebrake on the
other side of which we could hear not only the pack but the yelling and
cheering of Harley Metcalf and Tom Osborn and one or two of the negro hunters,
all of whom were trying to keep the dogs up to their work in the thick cane.
Again we rode ahead, and now in a few minutes were rewarded by hearing the
leading dogs come to bay in the thickest of the cover. Having galloped as near
to the spot as we could, we threw ourselves off the horses and plunged into the
cane, trying to cause as little disturbance as possible, but of course utterly
unable to avoid making some noise. Before we were within gunshot, however, we
could tell by the sounds that the bear had once again started, making what is
called a "walking bay." Clive Metcalf, a finished bear hunter, was
speedily able to determine what the bear's probable course would be, and we
stole through the cane until we came to a spot near which he thought the quarry
would pass. Then we crouched down, I with my rifle at the ready. Nor did we
have long to wait. Peering through the thick-growing stalks I suddenly made out
the dim outline of the bear coming straight toward us; and noiselessly I cocked
and half-raised my rifle, waiting for a clearer chance. In a few seconds it
came; the bear turned almost broadside to me, and walked forward very
stiff-legged, almost as if on tiptoe, now and then looking back at the nearest
dogs. These were two in number--Rowdy, a very deep-voiced hound, in the lead,
and Queen, a shrill-tongued brindled bitch, a little behind. Once or twice the
bear paused as she looked back at them, evidently hoping that they would come
so near that by a sudden race she could catch one of them. But they were too
wary.
Listening for
pack
All
of this took but a few moments, and as I saw the bear quite distinctly some twenty
yards off, I fired for behind the shoulder. Although I could see her outline,
yet the cane was so thick that my sight was on it and not on the bear itself.
But I knew my bullet would go true; and, sure enough, at the crack of the rifle
the bear stumbled and fell forward, the bullet having passed through both lungs
and out at the opposite side. Immediately the dogs came running forward at full
speed, and we raced forward likewise lest the pack should receive damage. The
bear had but a minute or two to live, yet even in that time more than one
valuable hound might lose its life; so when within half a dozen steps of the
black, angered beast, I fired again, breaking the spine at the root of the
neck; and down went the bear stark dead, slain in the canebrake in true hunter
fashion. One by one the hounds struggled up and fell on their dead quarry, the
noise of the worry filling the air. Then we dragged the bear out to the edge of
the cane, and my companion wound his horn to summon the other hunters.
This
was a big she-bear, very lean, and weighing two hundred and two pounds. In her
stomach were palmetto berries, beetles, and a little mutton cane, but chiefly
acorns chewed up in a fine brown mass.
John
McIlhenny had killed a she-bear about the size of this on his plantation at
Avery's Island the previous June. Several bear had been raiding his
corn-fields, and one evening he determined to try to waylay them. After dinner
he left the ladies of his party on the gallery of his house while he rode down
in a hollow and concealed himself on the lower side of the corn-field. Before
he had waited ten minutes a she-bear and her cub came into the field. The she
rose on her hind legs, tearing down an armful of ears of corn which she
seemingly gave to the cub, and then rose for another armful. McIlhenny shot
her; tried in vain to catch the cub; and rejoined the party on the veranda,
having been absent but one hour.
After
the death of my bear I had only a couple of days left. We spent them a long
distance from camp, having to cross two bayous before we got to the hunting
grounds. I missed a shot at a deer, seeing little more than the flicker of its
white tail through the dense bushes; and the pack caught and killed a very lean
two-year-old bear weighing eighty pounds. Near a beautiful pond called Panther
Lake we found a deer-lick, the ground not merely bare, but furrowed into
hollows by the tongues of the countless generations of deer that had frequented
the place. We also passed a huge mound, the only hillock in the entire
district; it was the work of man, for it had been built in the unknown past by
those unknown people whom we call mound-builders. On the trip, all told, we
killed and brought into camp three bear, six deer, a wild-cat, a turkey, a
possum, and a dozen squirrels; and we ate everything except the wild-cat.
Around camp fire
In
the evenings we sat around the blazing camp-fires, and, as always on such
occasions, each hunter told tales of his adventures and of the strange feats
and habits of the beasts of the wilderness. There had been beaver all through
this delta in the old days, and a very few are still left in out-of-the-way
places. One Sunday morning we saw two wolves, I think young of the year, appear
for a moment on the opposite side of the bayou, but they vanished before we
could shoot. All of our party had had a good deal of experience with wolves.
The Metcalfs had had many sheep killed by them, the method of killing being
invariably by a single bite which tore open the throat while the wolf ran
beside his victim. The wolves also killed young hogs, but were very cautious
about meddling with an old sow; while one of the big half-wild boars that ranged
free through the woods had no fear of any number of wolves. Their endurance and
the extremely difficult nature of the country made it difficult to hunt them,
and the hunters all bore them a grudge, because if a hound got lost in a region
where wolves were at all plentiful they were almost sure to find and kill him
before he got home. They were fond of preying on dogs, and at times would
boldly kill the hounds right ahead of the hunters. In one instance, while the
dogs were following a bear and were but a couple of hundred yards in front of
the horsemen, a small party of wolves got in on them and killed two. One of the
Osborns, having a valuable hound which was addicted to wandering in the woods,
saved him from the wolves by putting a bell on him. The wolves evidently
suspected a trap and would never go near the dog. On one occasion another of
his hounds got loose with a chain on, and they found him a day or two afterward
unharmed, his chain having become entangled in the branches of a bush. One or
two wolves had evidently walked around and around the imprisoned dog, but the
chain had awakened their suspicions and they had not pounced on him. They had
killed a yearling heifer a short time before, on Osborn's plantation, biting
her in the hams. It has been my experience that foxhounds as a rule are afraid
of attacking a wolf; but all of my friends assured me that their dogs, if a
sufficient number of them were together, would tackle a wolf without
hesitation; the packs, however, were always composed, to the extent of at least
half, of dogs which, though part hound, were part shepherd or bull or some
other breed. Doctor Miller had hunted in Arkansas with a pack specially trained
after the wolf. There were twenty-eight of them all told, and on this hunt they
ran down and killed unassisted four full-grown wolves, although some of the
hounds were badly cut. None of my companions had ever known of wolves actually
molesting men, but Mr. Ichabod Osborn's son-in-law had a queer adventure with
wolves while riding alone through the woods one late afternoon. His horse
acting nervously, he looked about and saw that five wolves were coming toward
him. One was a bitch, the other four were males. They seemed to pay little heed
to him, and he shot one of the males, which crawled off. The next minute the
bitch ran straight toward him and was almost at his stirrup when he killed her.
The other three wolves, instead of running away, jumped to and fro, growling,
with their hair bristling, and he killed two of them; whereupon the survivor at
last made off. He brought the scalps of the three dead wolves home with him.
Near
our first camp was the carcass of a deer, a yearling buck, which had been
killed by a cougar. When first found, the wounds on the carcass showed that the
deer had been killed by a bite in the neck at the back of the head; but there
were scratches on the rump as if the panther had landed on its back. One of the
negro hunters, Brutus Jackson, evidently a trustworthy man, told me that he had
twice seen cougars, each time under unexpected conditions.
The Negro hunters
Once
he saw a bob-cat race up a tree, and riding toward it saw a panther reared up
against the trunk. The panther looked around at him quite calmly, and then
retired in leisurely fashion. Jackson went off to get some hounds and when he
returned two hours afterward the bob-cat was still up the tree, evidently so
badly scared that he did not wish to come down. The hounds were unable to
follow the cougar. On another occasion he heard a tremendous scuffle and
immediately afterward saw a big doe racing along with a small cougar literally
riding it. The cougar was biting the neck, but low down near the shoulders; he
was hanging on with his front paws, but was tearing away with his hind claws,
so that the deer's hair appeared to fill the air. As soon as Jackson appeared
the panther left the deer. He shot it, and the doe galloped off, apparently without
serious injury.