26S FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS, 



incidents are, liowever, uncommon, and rarely take place with 

 grown-u]) men ; tliougli children and young lads are not un- 

 tieciuently thus annoyed in the back settlements. 



In the Northern and Midland States, it cannot be said that the 

 Bear is anywhere scientifically hunted. If the haunt of one is 

 discovered in the vicinity of any town or village, a levy en masse 

 takes jilace, weapons of all kinds are prepared and polishe4 

 up, and all the dogs of high and low degree, are forthwith 

 pressed into the service ; then after a hurly-burly sort of skir- 

 mish of perhaps two or three days' duration, bruin is fairly 

 worried to death, and after being shot at by platoons enough to 

 decimate an army, he is borne in triumph into the village, and 

 his hide displayed as a trophy by the rustic cockneys, who have 

 accomplished his " taking off." 



Otherwise the woodsmen, and the few who hunt by profes- 

 sion as it were and for a livelihood, either stumbling on him by 

 accident while in pursuit of other game, or falling on his tracks 

 and hunting him out with one or two old steidy hounds, 

 shoot him at a single shot as a matter of business. Occa- 

 sionally when they have found his watering places, such men 

 lie in wait for him in the afternoon, and shoot him from ambush 

 to leeward of his path. Still, I may say, that eastward of Loui- 

 siana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, there is no such thing as Bear- 

 hunting proper, as a regular sport. Many are killed, it is true, 

 to the north-eastward, in New Brunswick and the Canadas, 

 many in Hamilton County, Chatauque, and Cataraugus in New 

 York, and yet more in Northern and Western Pennsylvania ; 

 but in all these places the mode of killing them is casual, rather 

 than systematic, and for profit rather than for sport. 



In all the noithern regions, the Bear lies up regularly in some 

 den among the crags during the winter season, and remains in a 

 state of almost total torpidity, which is properly termed hiber- 

 nation, takes neither food or water until the return of spring. 

 It has been vulgarly believed that daring this period, the animal 

 subsists itself by suction of its own paws. This absurd and fa- 

 bulous tale has been completely exploded by the researches of 



