The true way to hunt the cougar is to follow it with dogs.If the chase is conducted in this fashion,it is very exciting,and resembles on a larger scale the ordinary method of hunting the wildcat or small lynx,as practised by the sport-loving planters of the southern States.With a very little training,hounds readily and eagerly pursue the cougar,showing in this kind of chase none of the fear and disgust they are so prone to exhibit when put on the trail of the certainly no more dangerous wolf.The cougar,when the hounds are on its track,at first runs,but when hard-pressed takes to a tree,or possibly comes to bay in thick cover.Its attention is then so taken up with the hounds that it can usually be approached and shot without much difficulty;though some cougars break bay when the hunters come near,and again make off,when they can only be stopped by many large and fierce hounds.Hounds are often killed in these fights;and if hungry a cougar will pounce on any dog for food;yet,as I have elsewhere related,I know of one instance in which a small pack of big,savage hounds killed a cougar unassisted.General Wade Hampton,who with horse and hound has been the mightiest hunter America has ever seen,informs me that he has killed with his pack some sixteen cougars,during the fifty years he has hunted in South Carolina and Mississippi.I believe they were all killed in the latter State.
General Hampton's hunting has been chiefly for bear and deer,though his pack also follows the lynx and the gray fox;and,of course,if good fortune throws either a wolf or a cougar in his way it is followed as the game of all others.All the cougars he killed were either treed or brought to bay in a canebrake by the hounds;and they often handled the pack very roughly in the death struggle.He found them much more dangerous antagonists than the black bear when assailed with the hunting knife,a weapon of which he was very fond.However,if his pack had held a few very large,savage,dogs,put in purely for fighting when the quarry was at bay,I think the danger would have been minimized.
General Hampton followed his game on horseback;but in following the cougar with dogs this is by no means always necessary.Thus Col.Cecil Clay,of Washington,killed a cougar in West Virginia,on foot with only three or four hounds.The dogs took the cold trail,and he had to run many miles over the rough,forest-clad mountains after them.
Finally they drove the cougar up a tree;where he found it,standing among the branches,in a half-erect position,its hind-feet on one limb and its fore-feet on another,while it glared down at the dogs,and switched its tail from side to side.He shot it through both shoulders,and down it came in a heap,whereupon the dogs jumped in and worried it,for its fore-legs were useless,though it managed to catch one dog in its jaws and bite him severely.
A wholly exceptional instance of the kind was related to me by my old hunting friend Willis.In his youth,in southwest Missouri,he knew a half-witted "poor white"who was very fond of hunting coons.He hunted at night,armed with an axe,and accompanied by his dog Penny,a large,savage,half-starved cur.One dark night the dog treed an animal which he could not see;so he cut down the tree,and immediately Penny jumped in and grabbed the beast.The man sung out "Hold on,Penny,"seeing that the dog had seized some large,wild animal;the next moment the brute knocked the dog endways,and at the same instant the man split open its head with the axe.Great was his astonishment,and greater still the astonishment of the neighbors next day when it was found that he had actually killed a cougar.These great cats often take to trees in a perfectly foolish manner.My friend,the hunter Woody,in all his thirty years'experience in the wilds never killed but one cougar.He was lying out in camp with two dogs at the time;it was about midnight,the fire was out,and the night was pitch-black.He was roused by the furious barking of his two dogs,who had charged into the gloom,and were apparently baying at something in a tree close by.He kindled the fire,and to his astonishment found the thing in the tree to be a cougar.Coming close underneath he shot it with his revolver;thereupon it leaped down,ran some forty yards,and climbed up another tree,where it died among the branches.
If cowboys come across a cougar in open ground they invariably chase and try to rope it--as indeed they do with any wild animal.I have known several instances of cougars being roped in this way;in one the animal was brought into camp alive by two strapping cowpunchers.
