Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and its Chase with Horse, Hound, and RifleRoosevelt, Theodore
History
Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle
Roosevelt, Theodore
Hunting -- United States
Once I had the good fortune to witness a very exciting hunt of this
character among the foot-hills of the northern Rockies. I was staying
at the house of a friendly cowman, whom I will call Judge Yancy Stump.
Judge Yancy Stump was a Democrat who, as he phrased it, had fought for
his Democracy; that is, he had been in the Confederate Army. He was
at daggers drawn with his nearest neighbor, a cross-grained mountain
farmer, who may be known as old man Prindle. Old man Prindle had been
in the Union Army, and his Republicanism was of the blackest and most
uncompromising type. There was one point, however, on which the two came
together. They were exceedingly fond of hunting with hounds. The
Judge had three or four track-hounds, and four of which he called
swift-hounds, the latter including one pure-bred greyhound bitch of
wonderful speed and temper, a dun-colored yelping animal which was a
cross between a greyhound and a fox-hound, and two others that were
crosses between a greyhound and a wire-haired Scotch deer-hound. Old
man Prindle's contribution to the pack consisted of two immense brindled
mongrels of great strength and ferocious temper. They were unlike any
dogs I have ever seen in this country. Their mother herself was a cross
between a bull mastiff and a Newfoundland, while the father was descried
as being a big dog that belonged to a "Dutch Count." The "Dutch Count"
was an outcast German noble, who had drifted to the West, and, after
failing in the mines and failing in the cattle country, had died in a
squalid log shanty while striving to eke out an existence as a hunter
among the foot-hills. His dog, I presume, from the description given me,
must have been a boar-hound or Ulm dog.
As I was very anxious to see a wolf-hunt the Judge volunteered to get
one up, and asked old man Prindle to assist, for the sake of his two big
fighting dogs; though the very names of the latter, General Grant and
Old Abe, were gall and wormwood to the unreconstructed soul of the
Judge. Still they were the only dogs anywhere around capable of
tackling a savage timber wolf, and without their aid the judge's own
high-spirited animals ran a serious risk of injury, for they were
altogether too game to let any beast escape without a struggle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account