2S4 FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
and of pluck enough, to occupy his attention, is to reload your 
rifle as quietly and as deliberately as possible, and then step¬ 
ping up to him, to give him the charge in a vital place delibe¬ 
rately. 
Bears, if they are long run, and can outrun the hounds, which 
in dense coverts an old lean one will often do, are very apt to 
run in circles, and return to the lair from which they were first 
started : the drivers, therefore, when the game is afoot and the 
hounds have gone away on a hot scent, can hardly do better 
than take post on the paths by which he is likely to return, and 
await his coming patiently. 
In crossing bayous, or streams, these sagacious brutes will 
always take advantage of a log or tree which may have fallen 
across it, if there be one in the vicinity of their course, and for 
it they will frequently shape their path, so that it is a common 
and by no means unwise manoeuvre, when the cry of the hounds 
betokens that the quarry is heading for a known stream, to 
dash forward and take post at any crossing log of which the 
hunter may be aware, remembering always the old rule to keep 
well to leeward. As a general rule, no wild animal, not even 
wild fowl , can be approached certainly down wind, although 1 
believe it is the ears and not the noses of the latter, to which 
our presence is obnoxious. 
There is another noble animal peculiar to these regions, fiercer 
and more dangerous than any, but he is rare, and of his habits 
and whereabouts little is known— I mean the Wild Bull. I 
do not mean the Bison, nor a Domestic Bull which may have 
broken bounds and taken to the forest accidentally, but the 
descendant of the cattle turned out by the earliest Spanish 
settlers, to increase and multiply in the wilderness, the progeny 
perhaps of the far-famed Bulls of Andalusia, which were the 
pride and terror of the plazas di toro, at Grenada, or Madrid, 
for the delight of Moorish kings, or prouder Spanish nobles. 
Of these tremendous animals, I know nothing except an anec¬ 
dote of the late General Floyd, who it is said used to encounter 
them and kill them single-handed, on horseback, with the lance. 
