BEAR HUNTING. 267 



This Bear is principally granivorous and graminivorous, d';ing 

 great mischief to the maize fields, of which grain he is ex- 

 tremely fond, and like the Common Bear of Europe he is a 

 great bee hunter, and voracious amateur of honey. He does 

 not, how^ever, refuse a change of diet, when it offers in the 

 shape of animal food, such as young calves, lambs, and even 

 tsheep full-grown. Moreover, when he has once addicted him- 

 self to this sanguineous diet, he rarely returns to his more 

 innocent vegetable regimen, and becomes a very pest to the 

 frontier farmer. 



To man, unless pursued and wounded, he is perfectly inno- 

 cuous, and will, on occasions, if permitted, betake himself to his 

 heels, which carry him off at a far more rapid rate than his 

 singularly waddling and awkward gait would lead you to ima- 

 gine possible. Even when badly hurt, he is not dangerous, and 

 though he may charge and make a savage snap at you en fos- 

 sant, he is easily avoided, and rarely if ever returns to the 

 charge voluntarily. At close quarters he is of course an ugly 

 customer, parrying all blows aimed at him with a blunt weapon, 

 or even with an axe, the handle of which he will dash aside, 

 without allowing the head to strike him, with the dexterity of 

 a prize fighter. 



A tomahawk is therefore, unless used as a missile, an in 

 strument of no avail against him, while with a good stout bowie 

 knife of two or three pounds' weight, the Western hunters have 

 no hesitation whatever in going in hand to hand with the brute 

 when at bay, in order to preserve their hounds from his fatal 

 claws, and yet more fatal hug ; nor is it once in a hundred times 

 that their temerity is punished by a wound. 



The exception to this innocuous character of the American 

 Black Bear, is the female with young cubs. She has been 

 known pertinaciously to attack intruders upon the privacy of 

 her young bearlings, and even to climb trees in pursuit of the 

 offender, to the utmost height the strength of the branches will 

 admit, and then, unable to rise higher, to maul and mangle the 

 dependent limbs of the fugitive in her impotent ferocity. Such 

 15 



