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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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