Bear hunting

“ Grisly old trappers coming down to the frontier towns of the Western States once a year for provisions, or hanging round the forts of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada for the summer, tell a different tale. Their hunting is done in a field where human presence is still so rare that it is unknown and the bear treats mankind precisely as he treats all other living beings from the moose and the musk-ox to mice and ants—as fair game for his own insatiable maw. ”

“ In settling the Mississippi Valley, when bear's meat was such a factor in the way of food, each of the frontiersmen kept a pack of dogs—all the way from three to half-a-dozen—partly for bear hunting, which was a very exciting sport, in fact the most of any other game hunting. I have been long and well acquainted with the courage shown by dogs in hunting and fighting game, and there is nothing I ever saw a dog undertake that arouses his courage so much as a contest with a bear. The dog seems to think a fight with a bear the climax of his existence. ”

“ When the huntsmen left, she said, with an emotion which was evident in every glance, tone and gesture.
"Cousin, bear-hunting here is a very serious affair, and none but the boldest of the villagers undertake it. When one of these ferocious animals is killed, it is borne home in triumph, and the victory is celebrated with shouts of joy and traditional ceremonies. He who kills one of these old northern forest-kings, drives a brass nail in the stock of his gun. Our peasants have various superstitions about the bear. ”

“ Now we noticed they were beginning to feed on the grass and come down into the valley. The leaves were pretty well developed by this time. Hunting big bear in the alder is very dangerous sport, for at any minute a big she with her cubs might rise up close by and make a charge. If our guns should catch in the brush, the jig would be all up, for the bear are large and hard to stop at close range. My guide said that not many men will hunt them in this way and told me he had had several narrow escapes himself. On one occasion he dropped a big fellow right at his feet. ”

“ To me, bear-hunting possesses a great fascination, and for years I have hunted nothing else. Personally I prefer to go after them in the spring. Their skins are then in their prime, the hair long and soft, and their claws (if valued as they should be) are long and sharp from disuse. Bears seek their winter quarters in Bad Lands and in the mountains. Those that adopt the former come out much earlier; consequently if the hunter is on the ground soon enough, by beginning first in the lower lands and working toward the mountains, he may be reasonably sure of securing good skins as late as June. ”

“ XII BEAR HUNTING
Killing bears with the bow and arrow is a very old pastime, in fact, it ranks next in antiquity to killing them with a club. However, it has faded so far into the dim realms of the past that it seems almost mythical.
The bear has stood for all that is dangerous and horrible for ages. No doubt, our ancestral experiences with the cave bears of Europe stamped the dread of these mighty beasts indelibly in our hearts. The American Indians in times gone past killed them with their primitive weapons, but even they have not done it lately, so it can be considered a lost art. ”

“ One familiar with, and accustomed to, bear hunting can tell at long distances whether the dogs are having a combat with a bear or some other animal, by the energy they put into their yelping. When fighting a bear the dogs continually snap and bite at his hind legs, as this is the only way they have of exasperating and irritating him, as they dare not approach him in front. ”

“ There are two ways of hunting the Northern brown bear which have proved successful for the single hunter: either by tracking the animal with a carefully trained dog, or by discovering the places where he finds some special delicacy, and waiting at a considerable distance for him to come to feed, then stalking him and getting a shot. ”

“ There is danger in hunting the bear; for though he’s a peaceable fellow enough when you let him alone, he’s fierce and furious if you interfere with his business, or come in his way when he’s pinched with hunger.
“I’ve had some adventures with bears myself, and I think I know the ways of the beast as well as anybody. Sometimes he’ll trot by, only giving you a surly look or a saucy growl. But if you chance to fall upon a she bear, with a parcel of cubs about her, why then look out.”
“Did you ever see a bear with cubs, father?” said Nicholas, the elder of Linsk’s sons. ”

“ The winter dragged along but not the wind, which roared in tempests, and rushed over the floe in currents traveling fifty-three miles an hour. It played wild and free with the little bark which had intruded upon its domains, breaking up the ice around it, and straining at its moorings attached to the friendly berg.
Spring came at last. Hunting became lively and successful. His majesty, the bear, became meat for the hunters after a plucky fight, in which two dogs had their zeal for bear combat fairly subdued. Musk-oxen stood in stupid groups to be shot. White foxes would not be hit at any rate. ”

“ When they arrive at the hunting-ground, they surround as large a space as they can, and then contract their circle, searching, at the same time, every hollow tree, and every place capable of being the retreat of a bear; and they continue the same practice till the chase is expired.
"As soon as a bear is killed, a hunter puts into his mouth a lighted pipe of tobacco, and, blowing into it, fills the throat with the smoke, conjuring the spirit of the animal not to resent what they are about to do to its body, or to render their future chases unsuccessful. ”

“ The mode of hunting the black bear does not differ from that practised with the fox or wild cat. He is usually chased by dogs, and forced into his cave or a tree. If the former, he is shot down, or the tree, if hollow, is felled. Sometimes smoking brings him out. If he escapes to a cave, smoking is also tried; but if that will not succeed in dislodging him, he must be left alone, as no dogs will venture to attack him there.
The hunter often tracks and kills him in the woods with a bullet from his rifle. ”

“ Sometimes, however, a bear will take to killing fresh meat for itself. Indeed, I think it is only its clumsiness that prevents it from becoming an habitual flesh-eater. Deer are so agile that bears can rarely get them; yet on occasions not only deer, but moose, buffalo, and elk fall victims to them. Wild game, 32however, are so shy, so agile, and so alert that it is only rarely they afford meals to old Ephraim—as the mountain hunters call the grizzly. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ The short distance at which the bear can be seen through the underbrush, the fury of his charge, and his tenacity of life make it necessary for the hunter on such occasions to have steady nerves and a fairly quick and accurate aim. It is always well to have two men in following a wounded bear under such conditions. ”

“ The mealy-nosed brown bear acts very much in the same manner. Hunting parties sometimes have with them a leash of trained bear-dogs, and they always close the hunt in a chase for bruin. There is in this kind of sport a dash of danger, that makes it all the more exciting.
Hunters, like poets, are born. Keenness of vision, presence of mind in case of conflict or danger, together with steadiness of nerve, are the essential characteristics of a true hunter. No practice or exercise can fully supply these qualities. ”

“ In early winter they sometimes find his track in the snow; and then pursue him with a gun and a bear-spear, killing him as they best can. Later still, when he has gone to sleep in his den, he is often found—by similar indications as those which guide the Laplanders, North American Indians, and Esquimaux—such as the hoar caused by his breath showing over the spot, or by their hunting-dogs scenting him out, and barking at the entrance. The log-trap, or dead-fall, is also in use among the Kamschatkan hunters ”

“ Ordinarily, however, even in the brush, the bear's object is to slink away, not to fight, and very many are killed even under the most unfavorable circumstances without accident. If an unwounded bear thinks itself unobserved it is not apt to attack; and in thick cover it is really astonishing to see how one of these large animals can hide, and how closely it will lie when there is danger. About twelve miles below my ranch there are some large river bottoms and creek bottoms covered with a matted mass of cottonwood, box-alders, bull-berry bushes, rosebushes, ash, wild plums, and other bushes. ”

“ Our hunters now made hunting excursions in different directions, but the supply of game was scanty. The openings in the ice probably swarmed with seals, but they were too distant, and without a boat it was impossible to carry on any hunting there. Not a single Polar bear now appeared to be visible in the neighbourhood, although bears' skulls are found at several places on the beach, and this animal appears to play a great part in the imagination of the natives, to judge of the many figures of bears among the bone carvings I purchased from the Chukches. ”

“ This is perhaps the most sportsmanlike of all, and if a coulee or creek bottom be selected where there are plenty of berries, or an open, hilly, rocky country, where the bears are in the habit of hunting for worms, or any good feeding-ground where bear signs are plentiful, and due care and caution be exercised, there is as good a chance of success as by any other method. Many hunters set guns with a cord running from the trigger to a bait of fresh meat, and the muzzle of the gun pointing at the meat ”

“ If the bear are digging roots, or otherwise procuring their food on the bare hill sides and table-lands, it is of course comparatively easy to see them; and it is under such circumstances that this kind of hunting is most successful. ”

“ The hunter, as he runs, leaning over his sledge, seizes the traces of a couple of his dogs and liberates them from their burden. It is the work of a minute; for the speed is not checked and the remaining dogs rush on with apparent ease. Pressed more severely, the bear stands at bay while his two foremost pursuers halt at a short distance and quietly await the arrival of the hunter. At this moment the whole pack are liberated; the hunter grasps his lance, and, stumbling through the snow and ice, prepares for the encounter. ”

“ In these countries, when the track of a bear is observed in the snow, it is followed up by the person who has discovered it, with the intention of “ringing” the animal—that is, ascertaining as near as maybe, the locality in which it may have halted from its rambles, and lain down to rest. Of course, if the person thus trailing the bear be a hunter—or if it be a party of hunters actually engaged in the chase, they will keep on until they have found the bear in his den. ”

“ They find the retreat in various ways: sometimes by their dogs scraping to get into it, and sometimes by observing the white hoar that hangs over a little hole which the warmth of the bear’s breath has kept open in the snow.
The hunters, having ascertained the exact position of the animal’s body, either dig from above, and spear the old she in her bed; or they make a tunnel in a horizontal direction, and, getting a noose around the head or one of the paws of the bear, drag her forth in that way. ”

“ There are six of them; all are boys, the oldest not over twenty, while the youngest may be under sixteen. And though at the same glance you are satisfied that they are but amateur hunters, the game they have succeeded in bringing down shows them gifted not only with skill but courage in the chase.
The carcase of a large bear lies beside them on the sward, his skin hanging from a tree, while several steaks cut from his fat rump, and impaled upon sapling spits, sing pleasantly over the camp fire, sending a savoury odour far into the forest around. ”

“ The tracker, having ascertained the circle within which the animal has made its temporary resting-place, next proceeds to warn the hunters of his village or settlement; and then a large party go out for the destruction of the common enemy. They deploy around the ring, and closing inward, are pretty sure to find the bear either asleep in his den, or just starting out of it, and trying to get off. ”