HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 



CHAPTER VII. 



HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 



IN hunting American big game with hounds, 

 several entirely distinct methods are pur- 

 sued. The true wilderness hunters, the men 

 who in the early days lived alone in, or moved 

 in parties through, the Indian-haunted sol- 

 itudes, 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 for- 

 ests 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 a dog, but the old-time trappers of the 

 great plains and the Rockies led such wander- 

 ing lives of peril and hardship that they could 

 not readily take dogs with them. The hunters 

 of the Alleghanies and the Adirondacks have, 

 however, always used hounds to drive deer, 

 killing the animal in the water or at a run- 

 away. 



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. 



