CHAPTER XVII 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 



IN hunting American big game with hounds, several 

 entirely distinct methods are pursued. The true 

 wilderness hunters, the men who in the early days 

 lived alone in, or moved in parties through, the Indian- 

 haunted solitudes, like their successors of to-day, rarely 

 made use of a pack of hounds, and, as a rule, did not use 

 dogs at all. In the eastern forests occasionally an old- 

 time hunter would own one or two track-hounds, slow, 

 with a good nose, intelligent and obedient, of use mainly 

 in following wounded game. Some Rocky Mountain 

 hunters nowadays employ the same kind of dog, but the 

 old-time trappers of the great plains and the Rockies led 

 such wandering lives of peril and hardship that they could 

 not readily take dogs with them. The hunters of the 

 AUeghanies and the Adirondacks have, however, always 

 used hounds to drive deer, killing the animal in the water 

 or at a runaway. 



As soon, however, as the old wilderness hunter type 

 passes away, hounds come into use among his successors, 



the rough border settlers of the backwoods and the plains. 



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