256 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



that this tree was gnawed in the mating-season, they claim- 

 ing to have seen the Bears at it, and tliat the female granted 

 her favors to the Bear that gnawed the highest. 



There is no precise time for the Bears to hibernate. An 

 old Bear will not hibernate until it is fat, or the weather 

 becomes very cold. I have found Bears feeding or travel- 

 ing as late as the middle of January, in the Southern States, 

 and I liave found fat, old Bears bedded under piles of cane 

 as early as the middle of November. 



In the early '40s, the time I came to the West and set- 

 tled in Mississippi, the Bear-hunters met with no difficulty 

 in killing Bears by still-hunting. In fact, this was the best 

 mode for those who made it their occupation, either for 

 food or j)rofit. The settlers in the wide bottoms of the Missis- 

 sippi River, the St. Francis, White, Arkansas, and Ouachita 

 Rivers, of Arkansas; the Yazoo, Sunflower, and Big Black, 

 of Mississippi; the Red River, of Louisiana, and Sabine, 

 Neclies, Trinity, Brazos, and Colorado, of Texas, pre- 

 ferred to still-hunt the Bear. Hunting with dogs made the 

 Bears more timid, and drove them farther back into the 

 denser thickets. 



The Bear-hunter saved the hams and shoulders for his 

 family, or sold to trading-boats that were found on all these 

 rivers. The skins were dried and sold, but the sides and 

 all the fat he could collect from the entrails were tried out 

 and the oil brought a high price, in those early days. The fat 

 of the Bear, like that of the Opossum, has not that greasy, 

 fatty taste of hog's fat, but is very palatable, and a great 

 quantity can be eaten without producing nausea of the 

 stomach. 



But few Bear-hunters used dogs for hunting Bear in 

 those early times — only in cases where one hunted more 

 from the love of it, and the intense excitement it produced, 

 than for pecuniary profit. To me there is greater excite- 

 ment in hunting Bear with dogs than in any other method, 

 and so it is with many others. 



There is as much difference in the pleasure and excite- 

 ment of hunting Bear and Deer with dogs, and in that 



