THE BLACK BEAR OF MUSKOKA 103 



bear in a body, and he would then rush in and 

 stab it behind the shoulder, reaching over so as 

 inflict the wound on the opposite side from that 

 where he stood. He escaped scathless from all 

 these encounters, save one, in which he was 

 rather severely torn in the forearm. 



General Hampton always hunted with large 

 packs of hounds, managed sometimes by himself 

 and sometimes by his negro hunters. He occa- 

 sionally took out forty dogs at a time. He 

 found that all his dogs together could not kill 

 a big fat bear, but they occasionally killed three- 

 year-olds, or lean and poor bears. During the 

 course of his life he has himself killed, or 

 been in at the death of, 500 bears, at least 

 two-thirds of them falling by his own hand. 

 The two largest he himself killed weighed 

 respectively 408 Ibs. and 410 Ibs. These figures, 

 I understand, were taken down at the time 

 when the animals were actually weighed on 

 the scales. He has stated that " he knew of two 

 instances where hunters were fatally wounded in 

 the chase of the black bear. Both of these men 

 were inexperienced, one being a raftsman, and 

 the other a man from Vicksburg. He was not 

 able to learn the particulars of the last case, 



