BEAR-HUNTING IN THE SOUTH. 



By JAMES GORDON. 



FROM my youth, bear-hunting has been to me a fascinating 

 sport, and, after an experience of more than thirty years in 

 all kinds of Southern sports, during which I have seldom 

 failed to spend a portion of the winter camp-hunting in the Missis- 

 sippi bottom, I think I may venture to relate one of my bear-hunts, 

 and give the inexperienced sportsman some idea of the characteris- 

 tics of the bear. 



We had pitched our tent on the banks of a beautiful sheet of 

 water, one of the chain of lakes that drains the swamps of Tunica 

 County, Mississippi, when the Father of Waters inundates the val- 

 leys. Through these lakes and the bayous leading from them the 

 annual overflows are carried off into the Coldwater, Tallahatchie, and 

 Sunflower rivers, thence into the Yazoo, and back into the Mississippi. 



Besides old Hannibal, a negro servant, there were only four of 

 us in camp. One was a professional hunter, two were cotton-plant- 

 ers and experienced hunters — not simply sportsmen who occasion- 

 ally spent a day of recreation in quail-shooting over a brace of 

 pointers, but hunters who had studied wood-craft until it seemed like 

 instinct to thread their way through the wilderness by day or night, 

 without other compass than the moss on the north side of the trees. 



When a novice in wood-craft joins a party of old hunters, he is 

 often subjected to many a practical joke ; although, at the same time, 

 old hunters are very generous in imparting information or in rescu- 

 ing him from danger. On this occasion, the target of our jokes was 

 James Rogers, a fair-haired Northerner from "old Long Island's sea- 

 girt shore," an enthusiastic sportsman, a crack shot at pigeons, but 



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