as he runs and either throw him or twirl him round. A grisly could not
disregard a wary and powerful hound capable of performing this trick,
even though he paid small heed to mere barking and occasional nipping.
Nor do I doubt that it would be possible to get together a pack of many
large, fierce dogs, trained to dash straight at the head and hold on
like a vise, which could fairly master a grisly and, though unable, of
course, to kill him, would worry him breathless and hold him down so
that he could be slain with ease. There have been instances in
which five or six of the big so-called blood-hounds of the southern
States--not pure blood-hounds at all, but huge, fierce, ban-dogs, with
a cross of the ferocious Cuban blood-hound, to give them good scenting
powers--have by themselves mastered the cougar and the black bear. Such
instances occurred in the hunting history of my own forefathers on my
mother's side, who during the last half of the eighteenth, and the first
half of the present, century lived in Georgia and over the border in
what are now Alabama and Florida. These big dogs can only overcome such
foes by rushing in in a body and grappling all together; if they hang
back, lunging and snapping, a cougar or bear will destroy them one by
one. With a quarry so huge and redoubtable as the grisly, no number
of dogs, however large and fierce, could overcome him unless they all
rushed on him in a mass, the first in the charge seizing by the head or
throat. If the dogs hung back, or if there were only a few of them, or
if they did not seize around the head, they would be destroyed without
an effort. It is murder to slip merely one or two close-quarter dogs at
a grisly. Twice I have known a man take a large bulldog with his pack
when after one of these big bears, and in each case the result was the
same. In one instance the bear was trotting when the bulldog seized it
by the cheek, and without so much as altering its gait, it brushed off
the hanging dog with a blow from the fore-paw that broke the latter's
back. In the other instance the bear had come to bay, and when seized by