with the bear he is certain to play havoc with them, disemboweling them
with blows of his paws or seizing them in his arms and biting through
their spines or legs. The riders follow the hounds through the
canebrakes, and also try to make cutoffs and station themselves at open
points where they think the bear will pass, so that they may get a
shot at him. The weapons used are rifles, shotguns, and occasionally
revolvers.

Sometimes, however, the hunter uses the knife. General Wade Hampton, who
has probably killed more black bears than any other man living in the
United States, frequently used the knife, slaying thirty or forty with
this weapon. His plan was, when he found that the dogs had the bear at
bay, to walk up close and cheer them on. They would instantly seize
the bear in a body, and he would then rush in and stab it behind the
shoulder, reaching over so as to inflict the wound on the opposite side
from that where he stood. He escaped scathless from all these encounters
save one, in which he was rather severely torn in the forearm. Many
other hunters have used the knife, but perhaps none so frequently as he;
for he was always fond of steel, as witness his feats with the "white
arm" during the Civil War.

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,