HUNTING LORE. 257 



hounds in the southern canebrakes ; though 

 at one time I had for many years a standing 

 invitation to witness this last feat on a planta- 

 tion in Arkansas. The friend who gave it, 

 an old backwoods planter, at one time lost 

 almost all his hogs by the numerous bears 

 who infested his neighborhood. He took a 

 grimly humorous revenge each fall by doing 

 his winter killing among the bears instead 

 of among the hogs they had slain ; for as the 

 cold weather approached he regularly proceed- 

 ed to lay in a stock of bear-bacon, scouring 

 the canebrakes in a series of systematic hunts, 

 bringing the quarry to bay with the help of 

 a big pack of hard-fighting mongrels, and then 

 killing it with his long, broad-bladed bowie. 



Again, I should like to make a trial at kill- 

 ing peccaries with the spear, whether on foot 

 or on horseback, and with or without dogs. 

 I should like much to repeat the experience 

 of a friend who cruised northward through 

 Bering Sea, shooting walrus and polar bear ; 

 and that of two other friends who travelled 

 with dog-sleds to the Barren Grounds, in 

 chase of the caribou, and of that last survivor 

 of the Ice Age, the strange musk-ox. Once 

 in a while it must be good sport to shoot al- 

 ligators by torchlight in the everglades of 

 Florida or the bayous of Louisiana. 



If the big-game hunter, the lover of the 

 rifle, has a taste for kindred field sports with 

 rod and shotgun, many are his chances for 

 pleasure, though perhaps of a less intense 

 kind. The wild turkey really deserves a place 

 17 



