292 The Wilderness Himter. 



fierce, ban-dogs, with a cross of the ferocious Cuban blood- 

 hound, to give them good scenting powers have by them- 

 selves mastered the cougar and the black bear. Such 

 instances occurred in the hunting history of my own 

 forefathers on my mother's side, who during the last half 

 of the eighteenth, and the first half of the present, century 

 lived in Georgia and over the border in what are now 

 Alabama and Florida. These big dogs can only overcome 

 such foes by rushing in in a body and grappling all 

 together ; if they hang back, lunging and snapping, a 

 cougar or bear will destroy them one by one. With a 

 quarry so huge and redoubtable as the grisly, no number 

 of dogs, however large and fierce, could overcome him 

 unless they all rushed on him in a mass, the first in the 

 charge seizing by the head or throat. If the dogs hung 

 back, or if there were only a few of them, or if they did 

 not seize around the head, they would be destroyed without 

 an effort. It is murder to slip merely one or two close- 

 quarter dogs at a grisly. Twice I have known a man take 

 a large bull dog with his pack when after one of these big 

 bears, and in each case the result was the same. In one 

 instance the bear was trotting when the bulldog seized it 

 by the cheek, and without so much as altering its gait, it 

 brushed off the hanging dog with a blow from the fore- 

 paw that broke the latter's back. In the other instance 

 the bear had come to bay, and when seized by the ear it 

 got the dog's body up to its jaws, and tore out the life 

 with one crunch. 



A small number of dogs must rely on their activity, 

 and must hamper the bear's escape by inflicting a severe 



