264 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



the hunter prefer the rifle, let him use a Winchester rifle, 

 and an Express ball prepared for this special work. For 

 what particular purpose the Bears take these regular step- 

 pings, I have never been able to determine. I have seen 

 none but very fat Bears at it. 



A poor Bear, in the Southwest, seldom, if ever, hiber- 

 nates. I have found them feeding every month of the 

 winter. It is the opinion of many hunters with whom I 

 have conversed about the steppings made by fat Bears, that 

 it was done for the purpose of preparing their systems for 

 the hibernation of three or more months. 



It is now only a question of time, and that very short, 

 when the Black Bear will be exterminated, unless some may 

 be preserved in captivity in zoological gardens. Take the 

 fifty years of my experience with Bears — estimate the vast 

 number that existed in the United States at the beginning 

 of the year 1840 with the sparse number in 1890 — and one 

 may reasonably conjecture that forty years hence it will 

 be almost impossible to find a wild Bear in the same space 

 of territory. At the present time, Bears are still found 

 along the Appalachian Range of mountains, in the wide 

 and unsettled parts of the Mississippi bottoms and all its 

 tributaries, and also in the Trinity, Sabine, and Brazos 

 bottoms. Right here where I am now living, twenty-five 

 years since. Bears were abundant; two years since, two Bears 

 were killed on the opposite side of the river; but now, I 

 firmly believe, not a Bear could be found in a radius of one 

 hundred miles, their extermination being due to the 

 advance of railroads, that caused the country to be settled, 

 and to the rapid improvement in fire-arms and ammuni- 

 tion. 



I append here accounts of several hunts in which I 

 participated in my early life, and which accounts I con- 

 tributed to the American Field, some years ago, under my 

 own initials. 



Solitude is more company to me than society. When T 

 want genuine comfort, freedom from all care, give me my 



