The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told

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by Jay Cassell


  While president, TR hunted regularly—taking a wild turkey in Virginia and a bear in Louisiana; coursing after wolves, coyotes, and foxes in several states; killing rattlesnakes and wolves in Oklahoma; and chasing bears and bobcats in Colorado. He also regularly entertained noted sportsmen, ranging from fellow members of the Boone and Crockett Club to renowned foreign hunters such as Fred Selous, at the White House.

  As his second term drew toward an end, he began thinking about and then planning a grand African safari. His papers contain correspondence with a number of individuals—Selous, J. H. Patterson, Carl Akeley, Edward North Buxton, and R. J. Cuninghame—who knew the continent well. Andrew Carnegie helped subsidize the safari, and TR contracted with Scribner’s Magazine to write a series of articles about it.

  The undertaking was a striking success from start to finish. Accompanied by his son, Kermit, Roosevelt bagged Africa’s Big Five along with an incredible variety of lesser game. His experiences are fully detailed in African Game Trails (1910) and the two-volume Life-Histories of African Game Animals (with Edmund Heller, 1914). Altogether the hunters and scientists involved in the expedition collected 4,897 mammals, some 2,000 reptiles, 500 fish, and 4,000 birds, not to mention numerous invertebrates. The holding, one of the most important of its kind, went to the Smithsonian.

  The end of the African safari was a bittersweet one, but in 1913 TR, despite having lost all vestiges of sight in his left eye, nonetheless planned a final expedition to Brazil’s storied River of Doubt. It was, as he put it, “a last chance to be a boy.” The journey, described in Through the Brazilian Wilderness (1914), was what TR reckoned “a thorough success.” Nonetheless, it took its toll on the aging giant. He was injured in a canoe accident, and when the party emerged from the jungle he was lame, utterly exhausted, and had lost 35 pounds. Still he was at peace with himself as only a bone-weary, inwardly happy sportsman can be.

  The Great War brought great tragedy to the Roosevelt family. His son, Quentin, died in aerial combat late in the war, and James Amos, TR’s beloved butler and bodyguard, said the death of “Quinikins” left his father a changed man “eating his heart out.” To make matters worse, TR suffered a severe attack of jungle fever, a holdover from his earlier adventures in the tropics. It left him with limited mobility and some deafness, but characteristically, even when warned he might spend the remainder of his life in a wheelchair, he shrugged it off and said, “All right, I can work that way.”

  Late in 1918, TR was once more quite ill. He rallied briefly with the New Year, and on January 5 worked a full eleven hours. At bedtime though, he told his wife, Edith, that he had “such a strange feeling.” He died that night in his sleep, and his son, Archibald, at home recuperating from wounds suffered on the Western Front, cabled family members and friends: “The old Lion is dead.”

  Thus ended what TR had often called “the great adventure.” For him, all of life was an ongoing adventure, and he characterized those who dared to be adventurous as “torch-bearers.” He was in the forefront of those carrying the flame, and nowhere was that more obvious than in his efforts as a hunter, naturalist, and advocate of protecting the nation’s natural resources for enjoyment and use by future generations.

  Roosevelt remains the only American president to have had a true sense and a sure feel for balancing human and environmental needs. He left a lasting, romantic legacy, one that places today’s lovers of nature, whether their outlook is that of Thoreau or of hunters like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, deeply in his debt. He lived, with incredibly fullness, the strenuous life in which he so staunchly believed. Even today, a full four score years and more later, TR’s legacy inspires us and his joie de vivre invigorates us. To join him vicariously, in the pages of his many books on the outdoors, is to savor his inspiration and share the invigoration that moved a masterful writer and a genuinely great American.

  Reprinted with permission of the author. Jim Casada has written or edited more than forty books. Readers can order his books by going to his website, www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com. His website offers a free monthly e-newsletter.

  A Man-Killing Bear

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  Almost every trapper past middle age who has spent his life in the wilderness has stories to tell about exceptionally savage bears. One of these stories was told in my ranch house one winter evening by an old mountain hunter, clad in fur cap, buckskin hunting shirt and leather trousers, who had come to my ranch at nightfall, when the cowboys were returning from their day’s labor.

  The old fellow, who was known by the nickname of “Buckskin,” had camped for several months in the Bad Lands but a score of miles away from my ranch. Most of his previous life had been spent among the main chains of the Rockies. After supper the conversation drifted to bears, always a favorite subject of talk in frontier cabins, and some of my men began to recount their own adventures with these great, clumsy-looking beasts.

  This at once aroused the trapper’s interest. He soon had the conversation to himself, telling us story after story of the bears he had killed and the escapes he had met with in battling against them.

  In particular he told us of one bear which, many years before, had killed the partner with whom at the time he was trapping.

  The two men were camped in a high mountain valley in northwestern Wyoming, their camp being pitched at the edge of a “park country”—that is, a region where large glades and groves of tall evergreen trees alternate.

  They had been trapping beaver, the animal which, on account of its abundance and the value of the fur, was more eagerly followed than any other by the old-time plains and mountain trappers. They had with them four shaggy pack ponies, such as most of these hunters use, and as these ponies were not needed at the moment, they had been turned loose to shift for themselves in the open glade country.

  Late one evening three of the ponies surprised the trappers by galloping up to the campfire and there halting. The fourth did not make his appearance. The trappers knew that some wild beast must have assailed the animals and had probably caught one and caused the others to flee toward the place which they had learned to associate with safety.

  Before dawn the next morning the two men started off to look for the lost horse. They skirted several great glades, following the tracks of the ponies that had come to the fire the previous evening. Two miles away, at the edge of a tall pine wood, they found the body of the lost horse, already partially eaten.

  The tracks round about showed that the assailant was a grizzly of uncommon size, which had evidently jumped at the horses just after dusk, as they fed up to the edge of the woods. The owner of the horse decided to wait by the carcass for the bear’s return, while old Buckskin went off to do the day’s work in looking after traps, and the like. Buckskin was absent all day, and reached camp after nightfall. His friend had come in ahead of him, having waited in vain for the bear. As there was no moon he had not thought it worthwhile to stay by the bait during the night.

  The next morning they returned to the carcass and found that the bear had returned and eaten his full, after which he had lumbered off up the hillside. They took up his tracks and followed him for some three hours; but the wary old brute was not to be surprised. When they at last reached the spot where he had made his bed, it was only to find that he must have heard them as they approached, for he had evidently left in a great hurry.

  After following the roused animal for some distance they found they could not overtake him. He was in an ugly mood, and kept halting every mile or so to walk to and fro, bite and break down the saplings, and paw the earth and dead logs; but in spite of this bullying he would not absolutely await their approach, but always shambled off before they came in sight.

  At last they decided to abandon the pursuit. They then separated, each to make an afternoon’s hunt and return to camp by his own way.

  Our friend reached camp at dusk, but his partner did not turn up that evening at all. However, it was nothing unusual for either one of
the two to be off for a night, and Buckskin thought little of it.

  Next morning he again hunted all day, and returned to camp fully expecting to see his friend there, but found no sign of him. The second night passed, still without his coming in.

  The morning after, the old fellow became uneasy and started to hunt him up. All that day he searched in vain, and when, on coming back to camp, there was still no trace of him, he was sure that some accident had happened.

  The next morning he went back to the pine grove in which they had separated on leaving the trail of the bear. His friend had worn hobnail boots instead of moccasins, and this made it much easier to follow his tracks. With some difficulty the old hunter traced him for some four miles, until he came to a rocky stretch of country, where all sign of the footprints disappeared.

  However, he was a little startled to observe footprints of a different sort. A great bear, without doubt the same one that had killed the horse, had been travelling in a course parallel to that of the man.

  Apparently the beast had been lurking just in front of his two pursuers the day they followed him from the carcass; and from the character of the “sign” Buckskin judged that as soon as he separated from his friend, the bear had likewise turned and had begun to follow the trapper.

  The bear had not followed the man into the rocky piece of ground, and when the old hunter failed in his efforts to trace up his friend, he took the trail of the bear instead.

  Three-quarters of a mile on, the bear, which had so far been walking, broke into a gallop, the claws making deep scratches here and there in the patches of soft earth. The trail then led into a very thick and dark wood, and here the footprints of the man suddenly reappeared.

  For some little time the old hunter was unable to make up his mind with certainty as to which one was following the other; but finally, in the decayed mold by a rotten log, he found unmistakable sign where the print of the bear’s foot overlaid that of the man. This put the matter beyond doubt. The bear was following the man.

  For a couple of hours more the hunter slowly and with difficulty followed the dim trail.

  The bear had apparently not cared to close in, but had slouched along some distance behind the man. Then in a marshy thicket where a mountain stream came down, the end had come.

  Evidently at this place the man, still unconscious that he was followed, had turned and gone upward, and the bear, altering his course to an oblique angle, had intercepted him, making his rush just as he came through a patch of low willows. The body of the man lay under the willow branches beside the brook, terribly torn and disfigured.

  Evidently the bear had rushed at him so quickly that he could not fire his gun, and had killed him with its powerful jaws. The unfortunate man’s body was almost torn to pieces. The killing had evidently been done purely for malice, for the remains were uneaten, nor had the bear returned to them.

  Angry and horrified at his friend’s fate, old Buckskin spent the next two days in looking carefully through the neighboring groves for fresh tracks of the cunning and savage monster. At last he found an open spot of ground where the brute was evidently fond of sunning himself in the early morning, and to this spot the hunter returned before dawn the following day.

  He did not have long to wait. By sunrise a slight crackling of the thick undergrowth told him that the bear was approaching. A few minutes afterward the brute appeared. It was a large beast with a poor coat, its head scarred by teeth and claw marks gained in many a combat with others of its own kind.

  It came boldly into the opening and lay down, but for some time kept turning its head from side to side so that no shot could be obtained.

  At last, growing impatient, the hunter broke a stick. Instantly the bear swung his head around sidewise, and in another moment a bullet crashed into its skull at the base of the ear, and the huge body fell limply over on its side, lifeless.

  Old Ephraim

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  Few bears are found in the immediate neighborhood of my ranch; and though I have once or twice seen their tracks in the Bad Lands, I have never had any experience with the animals themselves except during the elk-hunting trip on the Bighorn Mountains.

  The grizzly bear undoubtedly comes in the category of dangerous game, and is, perhaps, the only animal in the United States that can be fairly so placed, unless we count the few jaguars found north of the Rio Grande. But the danger of hunting the grizzly has been greatly exaggerated, and the sport is certainly very much safer than it was at the beginning of this century. The first hunters who came into contact with this great bear were men belonging to that hardy and adventurous class of backwoodsmen which had filled the wild country between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. These men carried but one weapon: the long-barrelled, small-bored pea-rifle, whose bullets ran seventy to the pound, the amount of powder and lead being a little less than that contained in the cartridge of a thirty-twocalibre Winchester. In the eastern states almost all the hunting was done in the woodland; the shots were mostly obtained at short distance, and deer and black bear were the largest game; moreover, the pea-rifles were marvellously accurate for close range, and their owners were famed the world over for their skill as marksmen. Thus these rifles had so far proved plenty good enough for the work they had to do, and indeed had done excellent service as military weapons in the ferocious wars that the men of the border carried on with their Indian neighbors, and even in conflict with more civilized foes, as at the battles of Kings’ Mountain and New Orleans. But when the restless frontiersmen pressed out over the Western plains, they encountered in the grizzly a beast of far greater bulk and more savage temper than any of those found in the Eastern woods, and their small-bore rifles were utterly inadequate weapons with which to cope with him. It is small wonder that he was considered by them to be almost invulnerable, and extraordinarily tenacious of life. He would be a most unpleasant antagonist now to a man armed only with a thirty-two-calibre rifle that carried but a single shot and was loaded at the muzzle. A rifle, to be of use in this sport, should carry a ball weighing from half an ounce to an ounce. With the old pea-rifles the shot had to be in the eye or heart; and accidents to the hunter were very common. But the introduction of heavy breech-loading repeaters has greatly lessened the danger, even in the very few and far-off places where the grizzlies are as ferocious as formerly. For nowadays these great bears are undoubtedly much better aware of the death-dealing power of men, and, as a consequence, much less fierce, than was the case with their forefathers, who so unhesitatingly attacked the early Western travellers and explorers. Constant contact with rifle-carrying hunters, for a period extending over many generations of bear life, has taught the grizzly by bitter experience that man is his undoubted overlord, as far as fighting goes; and this knowledge has become an hereditary characteristic. No grizzly will assail a man now unprovoked, and one will almost always rather run than fight; though if he is wounded or thinks himself cornered he will attack his foes with a headlong, reckless fury that renders him one of the most dangerous of wild beasts. The ferocity of all wild animals depends largely upon the amount of resistance they are accustomed to meet with, and the quantity of molestation to which they are subjected.

  The change in the grizzly’s character during the last half-century has been precisely paralleled by the change in the characters of its Northern cousin, the polar bear, and of the South African lion. When the Dutch and Scandinavian sailors first penetrated the Arctic seas, they were kept in constant dread of the white bear, who regarded a man as simply an erect variety of seal, quite as good eating as the common kind. The records of these early explorers are filled with examples of the ferocious and man-eating propensities of the polar bears; but in the accounts of most of the later Arctic expeditions, they are portrayed as having learned wisdom, and being now most anxious to keep out of the way of the hunters. A number of my sporting friends have killed white bears, and none of them were ever even charged. And in South Africa the English spor
tsmen and Dutch Boers have taught the lion to be a very different creature from what it was when the first white man reached that continent. If the Indian tiger had been a native of the United States, it would now be one of the most shy of beasts. Of late years our estimate of the grizzly’s ferocity has been lowered; and we no longer accept the tales of uneducated hunters as being proper authority by which to judge it. But we should make a parallel reduction in the cases of many foreign animals and their describers. Take, for example, that purely melodramatic beast, the North African lion, as portrayed by Jules Gérard, who bombastically describes himself as “le tueur des lions.”Gérard’s accounts are self-evidently in large part fictitious, while, if true, they would prove less for the bravery of the lion than for the phenomenal cowardice, incapacity, and bad marksmanship of the Algerian Arabs. Doubtless Gérard was a great hunter; but so is many a Western plainsman, whose account of the grizzlies he has killed would be wholly untrustworthy. Take, for instance, the following from page 223 of La Chasse au Lion: “The inhabitants had assembled one day to the number of two or three hundred, with the object of killing (the lion) or driving it out of the country. The attack took place at sunrise; at midday five hundred cartridges had been expended; the Arabs carried off one of their number dead and six wounded, and the lion remained master of the field of battle.” Now, if three hundred men could fire five hundred shots at a lion without hurting him, it merely shows that they were wholly incapable of hurting anything, or else that M. Gérard was more expert with the long-bow than with the rifle. Gérard’s whole book is filled with equally preposterous nonsense; yet a great many people seriously accept this same book as trustworthy authority for the manners and ferocity of the North African lion. It would be quite as sensible to accept M. Jules Verne’s stories as being valuable contributions to science. A good deal of the lion’s reputation is built upon just such stuff.

 

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