BEAR HUNTING. 
267 
This Bear is principally granivorous and graminivorous, doing 
great mischief to the maize fields, of which grain he is ex¬ 
tremely fond, and like the Common Bear of Europe he is a 
great bee hunter, and voracious amateur of honey. He does 
not, however, refuse a change of diet, when it offers in the 
shape of animal food, such as young calves, lambs, and even 
sheep full-grown. Moreover, when he has once addicted him¬ 
self to this sanguineous diet, he rarely returns to his more 
innocent vegetable regimen, and becomes a very pest to the 
frontier farmer. 
To man, unless pursued and wounded, he is perfectly inno¬ 
cuous, and will, on occasions, if permitted, betake himself to his 
heels, which carry him off at a far more rapid rate than his 
singularly waddling and awkward gait would lead you to ima¬ 
gine possible. Even when badly hurt, he is not dangerous, and 
though he may charge and make a savage snap at you en pas¬ 
sant , he is easily avoided, and rarely if ever returns to the 
charge voluntarily. At close quarters he is of course an ugly 
customer, parrying all blows aimed at him with a blunt weapon, 
or even with an axe, the handle of which he will dash aside, 
without allowing the head to strike him, with the dexterity of 
a prize fighter. 
A tomahawk is therefore, unless used as a missile, an in 
strument of no avail against him, while with a good stout bowie 
knife of two or three pounds’ weight, the Western hunters have 
no hesitation whatever in going in hand to hand with the brute 
when at bay, in order to preserve their hounds from his fatal 
claws, and yet more fatal hug; nor is it once in a hundred times 
that their temerity is punished by a wound. 
The exception to this innocuous character of the American 
Black Bear, is the female with young cubs. She has been 
known pertinaciously to attack intruders upon the privacy of 
her young bearlings, and even to climb trees in pursuit of the 
offender, to the utmost height the strength of the branches will 
admit, and then, unable to rise higher, to maul and mangle the 
dependent limbs of the fugitive in her impotent ferocity. Such 
