BEAR HUNTING. 281 
both foi the convenience of carrying it on horseback, and from 
a conviction of its greater deadliness, the short, large-bored 
yager, or the heavy double-shot gun, with buck-shot or car¬ 
tridge. 
In the former State, Bear-hunting is pursued both for sport 
and profit by the rough hardy woodsmen, who form the greater 
portion of its rural population; in the latter, by the wealthy 
and cultivated planters, who dwell on their own fine estates, 
and resort to this wild and sometimes dangerous pursuit, merely 
as a frolic. 
In both States, the same rules of hunting are observed,—the 
hunters camp out for the night, in whatever suitable position 
they can find, near to the haunts of the Bear. These haunts 
are easily known by the habit of this animal during the summer 
months, from July to September, of tearing the bark of the 
trees in the vicinity of his favorite resorts, with tooth and claw, 
as high up as he can reach, in the same manner as the Stag 
frays them with his antlers, or the Bull and Bison toss the earth 
with hoof and horn, in their corresponding seasons. 
By a careful observation of these marks, old and experienced 
hunters will speedily tell you how many Bears are to be found 
in any given neighborhood, and will pronounce, with what ap¬ 
proximates wondrously to certainty, on the size, sex and weight 
of each individual. In Louisiana, the Bears do not hibernate ; 
but the female, during the first month or two after producing 
cubs, which she does ordinarily but once in two years, and then 
two or three at a birth, conceals herself with the cubs in the 
hollow of a decayed tree, until they are able to follow her, 
leaving her den neither for food nor for water, but subsisting, 
as before described, on her own internal fat and juices—which 
is the more astonishing, wl#n we consider that, during this pe¬ 
riod, she self-supported, supports also, from the same internal 
storehouse, her voracious family. 
The Bears make their beds in the thickest canebrakes in the 
vicinity of their watering-places, to which they have their regu¬ 
lar paths, which they never change, so long as they bed in the 
