March 9, 1895 . 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
185 
and fifty pounds weight, it is true, but with jet black, 
long, soft, glossy fur— as pretty material for a rug as one 
ever saw, this I cau testify; for the hunters insisted on 
my taking the skins we got. 
In the little open glade we paused and took stock, and 
blew the return call for the absent, who soon joined us. 
It transpired that the bear had been killed less than half 
a mile from us, and that the hunters had afterward fired 
a dozen shots to call in the dogs, but we had not heard a 
sound of it, the wind being against us. There were only 
five dogs in at the death, but every one of these was 
game to take hold of a bear. The bear had treed in a 
vast white oak, in the middle of a strip of the heaviest 
cane. Horace and Frank and the two colored boys heard 
the bay, and crept in through the cane. The bear saw 
them, and at once let go all holds, apparently, and 
dropped down out of the tree almost as fast as if it were 
taking a straight drop through the air. Horace took a 
snap shot at it, and so did Fran! , but neither could say 
he hit it, the fall of the creature was so swift as it backed 
down the tree trunk. As soon as it struck the 
ground the five dogs seized it, and strung it out. Mr. 
Bobo siid he would have taken the cub alive, but the 
colored boys had a dog or two in that fight that they 
didn't want to have hurt. Tom rushed in among the 
dogs, and sent a couple of bullets straight down through 
the bear's head, bursting open the whole back part of the 
skull, and ending the fight at once. 
It was a bit disappointing that the rest of us had not 
seen the finish, or heard the fight, but at any rate we 
had our bear, and there was rejoicing accordingly. Mr. 
Bobo and Mr. Payne both thought there bad been two 
starts, an old bear and her cub, and that the main pack 
had gone off with the old bear, the few dogs in at the 
death with the cub having jumped it and treed after a 
short run. Yet by some way of their own the rest of the 
pack seemed to know a kill had been made, for in twos 
and threes they began to straggle in; at the gralloching 
there were dozens of hounds to fight over the tidbits 
most prized in a bear dog's gastronomy. Then the bear 
was again lashed behind the saddle of Bill's mule. I 
noticed that the front paws were cut across and un- 
jointed, and was told this was done to keep the claws 
from digging into the sides of the mule as the body 
swayed about. Surely the art of bear bunting was done 
fine here. 
We finally took saddle again, and made off down the. 
Black Bayou, a vast dry bed of the river, filled with 
cypress tress and hedged in with giant oaks and gum 
trees. It was only a trifle past noon, and we wanted an- 
other bear. The dogs were trailing at one time, but the 
day was so dry and the wind disturbed the dry leaves so 
much that no pack on earth could do much with a cold 
trail, so we got no other start, or at least got no other 
bear, though at one time we expected a shot as a large 
section of the pack came sweeping up in full cry. There 
was a fire in the cane brake, between us and the Sun- 
flower, and we could hear the loud popping of the cane, 
and smell the smoke very plainly. This disturbed the 
hunt, and before night we hurried back and went to 
camp. 
DRESSING THE BEAR HIDE. 
"Well, you didn't get your shot, did you?" said Mr. 
Bobo, as we sat around the fire. "But you keep close to 
me to-morrow, and you won't be far off at the finish. I 
want you to kill the bear to-morrow." 
' To-morrow?" I said. "Why, I thought I was going 
to take the train south to-night, somewhere down in 
here." 
"Well, you're not," said Mr. Bobo. "You'd have to 
ride fifteen miles through the dark now by way of the 
upper ford to get to the nearest station, and if you swam 
the Sunflower here you'd have to go ten miles, and you'd 
have to hurry then, for the train is due there about nine 
o'clock. You are going to stay right here and go bear 
hunting some more." 
So I was a prisoner, and a very philosophical one, for I 
reasoned that Mr. Divine and his friends would not wait 
for me at New Orleans now anyhow, and so concluded to 
take the world as it came; which is a pretty good way to 
do. if you can only do it. 
That night we skinned the young bear carefully, leav- 
ing on his feet and head and fleshing off the hide as well 
as we could. Mr. Bobo showed me that by using corn- 
meal with the salt the flesh on the inside of the hide could 
be stripped off much more easily, the meal Irying up the 
greasy flesh so it could be pulled off in flakes and strips. 
This "wrinkle" is valuable in preserving green skms, 
and to it I attribute much of the excellent condition of 
the skins I sent North, which did not suffer in the least, 
though the weather in the South was then quite warm. 
There is no part of Hunting I like better than fooling 
over a hide, so I sat up late rubbing and scraping this 
skin, at length rolling it up in salt and meal in the cer- 
tainty that it would never spoil. All of this seemed to 
interest the others, who couldn't see what there was 
about a bear hide to be worth bothering over. They did 
not know how prized such a gift is to one who doesn't 
live in a bear country. I noticed that all the horses and 
mules about the camp seemed perfectly indifferent to the 
bear or the skin and paid no attention. The ordinary 
horse is deathly afraid of the mere smell of bear. These 
horses must have had many a bear about them. On my 
last day out I made a saddle blanket out of the cub skin, 
as Coleman had a sonsh back, but Coleman didn't mind 
the odor of the skin, nor the swinging of the bear's legs 
along his sides. 
OFF FOR ANOTHER BEAR. 
On the morning following we were up early, and had a 
breakfast of bear liver and bear steak, and each man 
made himself a bear sandwich for lunch. This made our 
hearts strong, but it was hard on the bear. After breakfast 
the dogs had a turn at what was left, andby noon the one 
hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and fifty pound 
carcass was gone. When you have along a pack of fifty- 
three bear dogs, there is little danger of any meat going 
to waste. 
By this time the dogs had some of the wire edge taken 
off from them, and were much more manageable, so that 
we kept the pack pretty well together. As we were 
starting out for the hunt, one of the men employed at 
the camp called to us from a path in the woods to come 
over to him, as there was a panther in the brake near by 
him. He said it had called out several times while he 
was at the spring near by and had followed along in the 
cane for a distance. I thought this was a pretty good 
chance for a run, but Mr. Bobo kept right on, saying he 
thought the man had heard the old she bear whose cub 
we had killed the day before. "We'll get a bear easy 
enough where we are going," said he. 
THE STRIKE. 
The plan for the day's hunt was to skirt along some 
pools in old bayou beds, where we had seen tracks of bear 
the day before, in hopes that we could get on the trail of 
one that had been in to water the night previous, or in the 
morning. To make it short, we did before very long find 
fresh tracks in the mud at a little water-hole, and while 
we were figuring on these the dogs broke away in full <*ry 
—and what a magnificently savage music they did make. 
This is the best of this nort of bear hunting — the music of 
the pack. No man living can sit in his saddle unmoved 
by it. It thrills and tingles and insists that we yell and 
ride. 
We yelled and rode. The pack split. Mr. Bobo, Mr. 
Payne and myself took the left-hand trail, which Mr. 
Bobo said was the natural course of the bear. Now, it 
did look a bear hunt, and we rode hard. I began to see 
where Mr. Bobo got his reputation as a hard rider. He 
went ahead for nearly a quarter of a mile riding at the. 
bottom of a dry ravine or water-coiu-se. This was full 
of trees, vines and saplings and a million keen-tipped 
switches cut the hands and face continually, while one's 
legs were bruised by the elastic saplings and the tree 
trunks against which they were constantly scraping. I 
thought this even more punishing to ride through than 
the cane. It was no walking or even trotting, but full 
gallop, which one must do here to keep in sight of the 
leader. The hunting horses, under spur, plunged at the 
thicket full speed, and we had to sit fast and fight the 
vines and branches as best we could at full speed. At 
last we rode out of the gully to a hillock in the cane, to 
find that we had not headed the pack. There had been a 
turn, and we were at fault. Crack! smash! slam! we 
went through the cane for a way and then again paused 
to listen. Faint voices of the pack came from below us. 
THE START. 
"The bear has smelled the burning cane and headei 
back from it," said Mi". Bobo. "We must get back." So 
back we went down that awful ravine, full gallop, 
smashing and tearing through the vine-knit, tough young 
trees, getting as much as we gave in punishment, I im- 
agine. I know my legs were black and blue after it. 
Yet again we rode up on high ground to listen. One part 
of the pack was now trailing back of us, across the 
ravine. "Some one ought to go over that way," said Mr. 
Bobo. "The bear is up now." Mr. Payne volunteered 
to go. 
"Come on with me, now," cried Mr. Bobo to me. 
And I went in after him the best I could, through an hour 
or more of the worst riding I ever had in my life. Up and 
down that awful ravine. Bobo the bear hunter raged un- 
satisfied. We went to the open glade at the lower end of 
the ravine where the bear should have crossed, but could 
not find any sign that the cbase had passed. We rode 
over to the banks of the Black Bayou four different times 
and back, but no dogs did we hear. 
"Great governor!" said Mr. Bobo, "can it be that I've 
lost the pack again to-day, right when I want you to be 
in at the fight. And so he raged and fumed and rode 
and blew loud upon his horn; but the wilderness replied 
not. r 
I suppose we had spent two hours thus, thrown entire- 
ly out of the chase, when we heard the faint voice of a 
horn. "That's Horace's horn," said Mr, Bobo, and he's 
coming up the Black Bayou. "So back to the Black 
Bayou we sped again. There at length we met Horace 
and Frank and the colored boy Bill. They had no more 
idea where the hunt had gone than we had." 
"Well, you're a good lot," said Mr. Bobo, to let the 
dogs run plum away from you. Where are all the dogs, 
anyhow?" 
The boys said they had met two dogs coming back, half 
a mile below and showed the direction from which the 
dogs came. Mr. Bobo carefully asked the names of the 
dogs they had met coming back. "Why didn't you shoot 
them?" said he. "I don't want any dogs that leave the 
trail when it gets hot." 
"Now, I know all about this hunt." said he, "as well as 
if I bad seen it. The dogs that Mr. Payne went back to 
were the dogs that had the bear. The others were Tun- 
ing the back track. The dogs that you saw coming back 
came from over there, in that thick cane, and that's 
right where the bear went, too. It's very likely he's a 
dead bear by this time, too, for those two niggers, Pete 
and Tom, would get him if Mr. Payne didn't. Come 
ahead, I know right where to go now." 
THE KILE. . 
So off we went at a gallop, making through the open 
glades at the head of the bayou, and at length striking a 
great body of very heavy cane. Here we heard a horn, 
and answering got reply in a repeated sounding which 
made my heart sink, for I knew then the bear was dead, 
and that it had been impossible to hold it for me to shoot, 
as it was the understanding among these generous hunt- 
ers should be done if possible. We answered and pushed 
on into the brake. Mr. Bobo took one course to the horn, 
and in trying to follow him I took the wrong glade, and 
got in with the negro Bill, who confidently led me into 
the worst cane brake I ever saw. The voices of the hunt- 
ers with the horn seemed two hundred yards away, but 
when the hardy Coleman burst through the last of the 
cane I found they had not been forty yards away. 
And there was a picture for you. Horses standing 
about in the little open space at the foot of a giant white 
oak. Dogs lying panting, or fighting or sneaking about, 
apparently a hundred of them. Mr. Payne, tall, quiet, 
and slow of speech, leaning against the tree. The negro 
boys, Tom and Pete, bending over a vast object on the 
ground. Which object was the bear. 
"Well, there's your bear," said Mr. Bobo, discontented- 
ly, throwing one leg over his saddle horn, "and I reckon 
you got a rug this time, bub I would have given twenty 
dollars for you to have had the shot." 
Yes; there was the bear, about three hundred and fifty 
pounds or more of him lying red and white on the leaves, 
and his jetty robe already lying under him, for the boys 
had him nearly butchered. This same robe, thanks to 
the generosity of Mr. Bobo, now rests in the Western 
office of Forest and Stream,"along with the skull of the 
same bear. This was the bear I should have killed, which 
everybody wanted me to kill, and which it was a ten to 
one wager I would kill if I kept close to Mr. Bobo. But 
on this particular day luck was against me. Had we 
turned back with Mr. Payne, we would have had the 
shot. The dogs bayed the bear in this brake, and it went 
* up this big white-oak tree — something which I would 
have bet all my woi Idly goods it couldn't have done, so 
big and fat was it— and the two negro partners sneaked 
in just ahead of Mr. Payne. They weren't taking many 
chances about that bear's coming down among the dogs, 
but promptly shot him where he was, about sixty feet 
above the ground. 
"We double-fired him, sah, " said Tom, meaning by that 
that they had both shot at the same time. The bear was 
shot through the heart and fell to the ground dead. I 
should have thought it would have broken every bone in 
its body. There were fifteen dogs in at the death. 
It seemed that the Afro-American was getting to be a 
good deal in evidence as bear hunter in our crowd, but 
all the rest of us could do was to go in and stand it and 
hope for better luck. So we cut up the bear, put the 
pieces in sacks brought aloug for the purpose, distributed 
the burden among all the horses, fastened the skin behind 
a saddle and set out for camp, which was only about a 
mile away. Until till very late that night we ate bear 
meat, and told bear stories, and boiled bear heads, and 
scraped bear hides, and were perfectly, childlessly happy, 
at least I was. And once more the New Orleans express 
went south through the brakes and forests of the Delta, 
and I let it go. And Providence alone knew where Tom 
Divine and the others were by that time. 
"Wr'II kill another bear to-morrow," said Mr. Bobo. 
E. Hough. 
909 Security Building , Chicago. 
A REMINISCENCE. 
1 have never considered it necessary for a man nearly 
to drow r n, to appreciate what it is to five. Nor do I 
think it essential for a man to work himself almost to 
death, in order to fully realize the blessings and benefits 
of recreation and a change. Yet I do believe that he 
rests better who deserves a rest, and I pity the man who 
has nothing to rest from but himself. In seeking this de- 
served diversion, some chose one thing, some another. 
As for me, the gun and dogs, and the freedom of the 
fields and woods with well-chosen companions, are the 
days that when the body is tired and the spirit heavy, 
can be recalled with a pleasant and refreshing benefit. 
The soul straining times of 1898 and '94 have to me had 
their bright days as well as dark ones, and what I owe 
to my guns and my (brothers') dogs, I can never repay. 
The times have not been of the debt paying sort, and 
while Donald is the smartest dog on earth and Ben Hadad 
the most sensible, both of them have been so smothered 
with kindness they won't miss my donation of gratitude. 
The man who thinks a Kev'd Dr. is only a handy insti- 
tution in a sick room or the pulpit, has had little experi- 
ence with men of the cloth. Just before Thanksgiving 
the Dr. wrote me that he had .an order to stop a big vesti- 
buled New York and New Orleans express train at Reids- 
ville, N. C, to let us off, and stop a few days later at the 
same place again to take us on, and that he would join 
us for dinner on the train at Philadelphia. And what for? 
The Dr., George and myself were off for a hunting trip in 
North Carolina. The student had laid aside his books for 
a well-deserved outing, taking nothing with him but his 
pure broad Chrislian manhood, a good gun and most 
promising young dog. George had said good-by to the 
tiers and tiers of religious and country newspapers and 
type-writers, and soon forgot whether the balance in bank 
belonged to him or his creditors; but out of consideration 
for the. Dr. and myself he didnt forget to take Donald. 
And I — well, the man who has held his job down, and 
drawn his full salary these last two years in a big mer- 
cantile house, knows pretty well that there has been 
some work and a heap of anxiety connected with it, and 
a change at this time was most welcome. 
We reached Reidsville Thanksgiving morning, before 
the cock had the heart to crow, and that in North Caro- 
lina is early. A rap on the hotel door soon brought down 
a native darker than the night, but in those black hands 
there was light, and that light soon extended to the big 
fire-place, an & soon we were warming by a cheerful log 
fire, watching a typical late November morning break 
into day, while the appetizing aroma of an early break- 
fast cooking penetrated every nook and corner of our 
nostrils. 
At breakfast we were notified that one, Mr. Hicks, had 
called for us on schedule time, having received instruc- 
tions to do so from Mr. Lewis, who was expecting us. 
Mr, Hicks was to drive us, and in this case us, meant a 
lot, to Monroeton eight miles away. My years of experi- 
ence in the dry goods business came in handy in loading 
that wagon. Mr. Hicks is a small man, and has small 
feet, but he never got them in the wagon, there wasn't 
room. I hope that my memory will never fail me, for Mr. 
Hicks and the five-year old gray horse and the twenty- 
one year old black one will always remain a bright spot 
with me as long as memory lasts. Mr. Hicks said he was 
forty-six years old, barring the three months of a hard 
winter to come, and had never had money enoughat one 
time to travel beyond the cmnty line, and had never 
missed a day's work since he had the measels. The black 
horse had in years gone by won eveiy race in every 
county in the State, and was no slouch of a critter yet. 
The gray one had done considerable traveling by running 
away at each and every opportunity. What else he said 
during that eight miles drive would make a book, and 
an interesting one, too, could it be written as related. 
Aside from the rural gossip we heard, the only incident 
that occurred was our stopping to secure the small end of 
a fence rail to thrash Donald with, because he wouldn't 
lie down and be comfortable on the rear spring of the 
wagon. Arriving at our destination we were soon chang- 
ing clothes before another one of those glowing log fires, 
which our host had so thoughtfully prepared for us, and 
in less than an hour, divided into two parties; we were in 
the field and our guns cracking, and with a fresh pair of 
thoroughbred dogs every hour or two. _ 
The sport was simply intense. Lewis had a fine lot of 
youngsters, among them my own dog Mont, an Antonia 
puppy that he had been handling for four months. The 
