Copyright 1947 by Wm. Sloane Associates, Inc.
Special permission to re-print this bear story was granted by Wm.
Sloane Associates, Inc., of New York City, Publishers of “Home
Country”, by Ernie Pyle, which book contains this story.
Uncle Steve Cole lives on at his old home place, right in the park. He
is a typical mountain man of the old school—a good mountain man, the
kind who lives right and does right.
I dropped in one afternoon to talk to him. Uncle Steve lit a fire, and
sat down beside it and began spitting in the fireplace. He wasn’t
chewing tobacco, but he spit in the fireplace all the time anyhow.
Uncle Steve had killed more bears than any man in these mountains. He
says so himself, and others say so too. He hasn’t the remotest idea how
many he has killed. But he has killed bears with muzzle-loaders, modern
rifles, deadfalls, clubs, axes, and he even choked one to death with his
bare hands.
I got him to tell me that story. He and a neighbor went out one night.
The dogs treed a bear. The way Uncle Steve tells it would take half an
hour, and that’s too long for us. But the essence of it was that they
built a fire, the bear finally came down the tree. Uncle Steve stood
there until the bear’s body was pressing on the muzzle of the gun, and
then he pulled the trigger. “I figured I couldn’t miss that way,” Uncle
Steve laughs.
He didn’t miss, but the shot didn’t kill the bear. He ran 50 yards or
so, and then the dogs were on him. And the first thing Uncle Steve knew
the bear had clenched his great jaws right down on a dog’s snoot, and
was just crushing it to pieces.
Now Uncle Steve’s gun was an old-fashioned, sawed-off muzzle-loading hog
rifle, and he didn’t have time to reload it. So to save the dog, he just
rushed up to the bear from behind, put his legs around the bear, and
started prying the dog’s snoot out of the bear’s mouth.
“And before I knew what happened,” says Uncle Steve, “the bear let go of
the dog, and got my right hand in his mouth, and began a-crunchin’ and
a-growlin’ and a-eating on my hand.
“One long tooth went right through the palm of my hand, and another went
through the back of my hand. There wasn’t nothin’ for me to do but reach
around with my left hand for the bear’s throat. I got him by the goozle
and started clampin’ down. Pretty soon he let go. Then I just choked him
till he was deader’n 4 o’clock.” Uncle Steve spit in the fireplace.
Mrs. Cole was sitting on the bed, listening. Nobody said anything for a
minute. Then Mrs. Cole chuckled and said, “Four o’clock ain’t dead.”
Uncle Steve didn’t dignify her quibble with an answer. He just spit in
the fireplace again.