General Hampton always hunted with large packs of hounds,managed sometimes by himself and sometimes by his negro hunters.He occasionally took out forty dogs at a time.He found that all his dogs together could not kill a big fat bear,but they occasionally killed three-year-olds,or lean and poor bears.During the course of his life he has himself killed,or been in at the death of,five hundred bears,at least two thirds of them falling by his own hand.In the year just before the war he had on one occasion,in Mississippi,killed sixty-eight bears in five months.Once he killed four bears in a day;at another time three,and frequently two.The two largest bears he himself killed weighed,respectively,408and 410pounds.They were both shot in Mississippi.But he saw at least one bear killed which was much larger than either of these.These figures were taken down at the time,when the animals were actually weighed on the scales.Most of his hunting for bear was done in northern Mississippi,where one of his plantations was situated,near Greenville.During the half century that he hunted,on and off,in this neighborhood,he knew of two instances where hunters were fatally wounded in the chase of the black bear.Both of the men were inexperienced,one being a raftsman who came down the river,and the other a man from Vicksburg.He was not able to learn the particulars in the last case,but the raftsman came too close to a bear that was at bay,and it broke through the dogs,rushed at and overthrew him,then lying on him,it bit him deeply in the thigh,through the femoral artery,so that he speedily bled to death.
But a black bear is not usually a formidable opponent,and though he will sometimes charge home he is much more apt to bluster and bully than actually to come to close quarters.I myself have but once seen a man who had been hurt by one of these bears.This was an Indian.He had come on the beast close up in a thick wood,and had mortally wounded it with his gun;it had then closed with him,knocking the gun out of his hand,so that he was forced to use his knife.It charged him on all fours,but in the grapple,when it had failed to throw him down,it raised itself on its hind legs,clasping him across the shoulders with its fore-paws.Apparently it had no intention of hugging,but merely sought to draw him within reach of his jaws.He fought desperately against this,using the knife freely,and striving to keep its head back;and the flow of blood weakened the animal,so that it finally fell exhausted,before being able dangerously to injure him.But it had bitten his left arm very severely,and its claws had made long gashes on his shoulders.
Black bears,like grislies,vary greatly in their modes of attack.
Sometimes they rush in and bite;and again they strike with their fore-paws.Two of my cowboys were originally from Maine,where I knew them well.There they were fond of trapping bears and caught a good many.The huge steel gins,attached by chains to heavy clogs,prevented the trapped beasts from going far;and when found they were always tied tight round some tree or bush,and usually nearly exhausted.The men killed them either with a little 32-calibre pistol or a hatchet.But once did they meet with any difficulty.On this occasion one of them incautiously approached a captured bear to knock it on the head with his hatchet,but the animal managed to partially untwist itself,and with its free fore-arm made a rapid sweep at him;he jumped back just in time,the bear's claws tearing his clothes--after which he shot it.Bears are shy and have very keen noses;they are therefore hard to kill by fair hunting,living,as they generally do,in dense forests or thick brush.They are easy enough to trap,however.Thus,these two men,though they trapped so many,never but once killed them in any other way.On this occasion one of them,in the winter,found in a great hollow log a den where a she and two well-grown cubs had taken up their abode,and shot all three with his rifle as they burst out.
