Next to the whitetail deer the black bear is the commonest and most
widely distributed of American big game. It is still found quite
plentifully in northern New England, in the Adirondacks, Catskills, and
along the entire length of the Alleghanies, as well as in the swamps
and canebrakes of the southern States. It is also common in the great
forests of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and throughout
the Rocky Mountains and the timbered ranges of the Pacific coast. In the
East it 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 hunters.
The black bear is a timid, cowardly animal, 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. Its meat
is good and its fur often valuable; and in its chase there is much
excitement, and occasionally a slight spice of danger, just enough to
render it attractive; so it has always been eagerly followed. Yet it
still holds its own, though in greatly diminished numbers, in the more
thinly settled portions 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 exterminated before the wolf.
In a few wild spots in the East, in northern Maine for instance, here
and there in the neighborhood of the upper Great Lakes, in the
east Tennessee and Kentucky mountains and the swamps of Florida and
Mississippi, there still lingers an occasional representative of the old
wilderness hunters. These men live in log-cabins in the wilderness.
They do their hunting on foot, occasionally with the help of a 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 of 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 a life of such lonely
isolation as to insure his individual characteristics developing into
peculiarities. Most of the wilder districts in the eastern States still
preserve memories of some such old hunter who lived his long life alone,
waging ceaseless warfare on the vanishing game, whose oddities, as well
as his courage, hardihood, 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 occasionally 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 rifle however. In the
years after the Civil War one of the many noted hunters of southwest
Virginia and east Tennessee was Wilber Waters, sometimes 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 to be found in his neighborhood; and he slew
innumerable bears, with no worse results to himself than an occasional
bite or scratch.
In the southern States the planters living in the wilder regions have
always been in the habit of following the black bear with horse and
hound, many of them keeping 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, although 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 he is certain to play havoc with them, disemboweling them
with blows of his paws or seizing 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 a
shot at him. The weapons used are rifles, shotguns, and occasionally
revolvers.
Sometimes, however, the hunter uses the knife. General Wade Hampton, who
has probably killed more black bears than any other man living in the
United States, frequently used the knife, slaying thirty or forty with
this weapon. His plan was, when he found that the dogs had the bear at
bay, to walk up close and cheer them on. They would instantly seize
the bear in a body, and he would then rush in and stab it behind the
shoulder, reaching over so as to inflict the wound on the opposite side
from that where he stood. He escaped 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, as witness his feats with the "white
arm" during the Civil War.
General Hampton always hunted with large packs of hounds, managed
sometimes by himself and sometimes by his negro hunters. He occasionally
took out forty dogs at a time. He found that all his dogs together could
not kill a 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, five hundred bears, at least two
thirds of them falling by his own hand. In the year just before the war
he had on one occasion, in Mississippi, killed sixty-eight bears in five
months. Once he killed four bears in a day; at another time three,
and frequently two. The two largest bears he himself killed weighed,
respectively, 408 and 410 pounds. They were both shot in Mississippi.
But he saw at least one bear killed which was much larger than either of
these. These figures were taken down at the time, when the animals were
actually weighed on the scales. Most of his hunting for bear was done
in northern Mississippi, where one of his plantations was situated, near
Greenville. During the half century that he hunted, on and off, in
this neighborhood, he knew of two instances where hunters were
fatally wounded in the chase of the black bear. Both of the men were
inexperienced, one being a raftsman who came down the river, and the
other a man from Vicksburg. He was not able to learn the particulars
in the last case, but the raftsman came too close to a bear that was at
bay, and it broke through the dogs, rushed at and overthrew him, then
lying on him, it bit him deeply in the thigh, through the femoral
artery, so that he speedily bled to death.
But a black bear is not usually a formidable opponent, and though he
will sometimes charge home he is much more apt to bluster and bully than
actually to come to close quarters. I myself have but once seen a man
who had been hurt by one of these bears. This was an Indian. He had come
on the beast close up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded it with
his gun; it had then closed with him, knocking the gun out of his hand,
so that he was forced to use his knife. It charged him on all fours, but
in the grapple, when it had failed to throw him down, it raised itself
on its hind legs, clasping him across the shoulders with its fore-paws.
Apparently it had no intention of hugging, but merely sought to draw him
within reach of his jaws. He fought desperately against this, using the
knife freely, and striving to keep its head back; and the flow of blood
weakened the animal, so that it finally fell exhausted, before being
able dangerously to injure him. But it had bitten his left arm very
severely, and its claws had made long gashes on his shoulders.
Black bears, like grislies, vary greatly in their modes of attack.
Sometimes they rush in and bite; and again they strike with their
fore-paws. Two of my cowboys were originally from Maine, where I knew
them well. There they were fond of trapping bears and caught a good
many. The huge steel gins, attached by chains to heavy clogs, prevented
the trapped beasts from going far; and when found they were always tied
tight round some tree or bush, and usually nearly exhausted. The men
killed them either with a little 32-calibre pistol or a hatchet. But
once did they meet with any difficulty. On this occasion one of them
incautiously approached a captured bear to knock it on the head with his
hatchet, but the animal managed to partially untwist itself, and with
its free fore-arm made a rapid sweep at him; he jumped back just in
time, the bear's claws tearing his clothes--after which he shot it.
Bears are shy and have very keen noses; they are therefore hard to kill
by fair hunting, living, as they generally do, in dense forests or
thick brush. They are easy enough to trap, however. Thus, these two men,
though they trapped so many, never but once killed them in any other
way. On this occasion one of them, in the winter, found in a great
hollow log a den where a she and two well-grown cubs had taken up their
abode, and shot all three with his rifle as they burst out.
Where they are much hunted, bear become purely nocturnal; but in the
wilder forests I have seen them abroad at all hours, though they do not
much relish the intense heat of noon. They are rather comical animals to
watch feeding and going about the ordinary business of their lives. Once
I spent half an hour lying at the edge of a wood and looking at a black
bear some three hundred yards off across an open glade. It was in good
stalking country, but the wind was unfavorable and I waited for it to
shift--waited too long as it proved, for something frightened the beast
and he made off before I could get a shot at him. When I first saw him
he was shuffling along and rooting in the ground, so that he looked like
a great pig. Then he began to turn over the stones and logs to hunt for
insects, small reptiles, and the like. A moderate-sized stone he would
turn over with a single clap of his paw, and then plunge his nose down
into the hollow to gobble up the small creatures beneath while still
dazed by the light. The big logs and rocks he would tug and worry at
with both paws; once, over-exerting his clumsy strength, he lost his
grip and rolled clean on his back. Under some of the logs he evidently
found mice and chipmunks; then, as soon as the log was overturned, he
would be seen jumping about with grotesque agility, and making quick
dabs here and there, as the little, scurrying rodent turned and twisted,
until at last he put his paw on it and scooped it up into his mouth.
Sometimes, probably when he smelt the mice underneath, he would
cautiously turn the log over with one paw, holding the other lifted and
ready to strike. Now and then he would halt and sniff the air in every
direction, and it was after one of these halts that he suddenly shuffled
off into the woods.
Black bears generally feed on berries, nuts, insects, carrion, and the
like; but at times they take to killing very large animals. In fact,
they are curiously irregular in their food. They will kill deer if they
can get at them; but generally the deer are too quick. Sheep and hogs
are their favorite prey, especially the latter, for bears seem to have
a special relish for pork. Twice I have known a black bear kill cattle.
Once the victim was a bull which had got mired, and which the bear
deliberately proceeded to eat alive, heedless of the bellows of the
unfortunate beast. On the other occasion, a cow was surprised and slain
among some bushes at the edge of a remote pasture. In the spring, soon
after the long winter sleep, they are very hungry, and are especially
apt to attack large beasts at this time; although during the very first
days of their appearance, when they are just breaking their fast, they
eat rather sparingly, and by preference the tender shoots of green grass
and other herbs, or frogs and crayfish; it is not for a week or two that
they seem to be overcome by lean, ravenous hunger. They will even attack
and master that formidable fighter the moose, springing at it from an
ambush as it passes--for a bull moose would surely be an overmatch for
one of them if fronted fairly in the open. An old hunter, whom I could
trust, told me that he had seen in the snow in early spring the place
where a bear had sprung at two moose, which were trotting together;
he missed his spring, and the moose got off, their strides after
they settled down into their pace being tremendous, and showing how
thoroughly they were frightened. Another time he saw a bear chase a
moose into a lake, where it waded out a little distance, and then
turned to bay, bidding defiance to his pursuer, the latter not daring to
approach in the water. I have been told--but cannot vouch for it--that
instances have been known where the bear, maddened by hunger, has gone
in on a moose thus standing at bay, only to be beaten down under the
water by the terrible fore-hoofs of the quarry, and to yield its life
in the contest. A lumberman told me that he once saw a moose, evidently
much startled, trot through a swamp, and immediately afterwards a
bear came up following the tracks. He almost ran into the man, and was
evidently not in a good temper, for he growled and blustered, and two or
three times made feints of charging, before he finally concluded to go
off.
Bears will occasionally visit hunters' or lumberman's camps, in the
absence of the owners, and play sad havoc with all that therein is,
devouring everything eatable, especially if sweet, and trampling into
a dirty mess whatever they do not eat. The black bear does not average
much more than a third the size of the grisly; but, like all its kind,
it varies greatly in weight. The largest I myself ever saw weighed was
in Maine, and tipped the scale at 346 pounds; but I have a perfectly
authentic record of one in Maine that weighed 397, and my friend, Dr.
Hart Merriam, tells me that he has seen several in the Adirondacks that
when killed weighed about 350.
I have myself shot but one or two black bears, and these were obtained
under circumstances of no special interest, as I merely stumbled on them
while after other game, and killed them before they had a chance either
to run or show fight.