BEAR-HUNTING IN LOUISIANA.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 10 April 1908, Page 3

BEAR-HUNTING IN LOUISIANA.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S REMINISCENCES.

President Roosevelt contributes tc the January Scribner some reminiscences of his hunting experiences in the Louisiana "canebrakes," where th« Southern planters for over a century havo followe dthe bear with horse and houad and horn. These "canebrakes" stretch for many miles along slight rises of ground, and are well-nigh impenetrable to a man on horse-back. Accordingly bears make their lairs in them, and they are the refuge for hunted things. The President gives some pen pictures of his fellow huntsmen: "The morning after we reached camp we were joined by Ben Lilley, the hunter, a spare, full-beadred man, with wild, gentle blue eyes and a frame of steel and whipcord. I never met any other man indifferent to fatigue and hardship. He equalled Cooper's Deerslayer in woodcraft, in simplicity — and also in loquacity. The morning he joined us in camp he had come on foot through the thick woods, followed by his two dogs, and had neither eaten nor drunk for twenty-four hours; for he did not like to drink the swamp water.. It had rained hard throughout the nigh', and he had no shelter, no rubber cr. 'it, nothing but the clothes he wav roaring, and the ground was too we*, f;r him to lis on; so he perched in ; ; tree in the beating rain, 1/ eh as if he had been a wild turkey. But he was not in the least tired when lie struck camp ; and, though he slept an hour after breakfast, it was chiefly because he had nothing else to do, inasmuch as it was Sunday, on which day he never hunted nor labored. He could run through the woods like a buck, was far more enduring, and quite as indifferent to weather, though he was over fifty years

old. He had trapped and hunted throughout almost all the half-century of his life, and on trail of game he was as sure as his own hounds." Describing how he shot a big she-bear at Bear Lake, the writer says: "Peering through the thick-growing stalks I suddenly made out the dim outline of the bear coming straight towards us and noiselessly I cocked and halfraised my rifle, waiting for a clearer chance. In a few seconds it came; the .bear turned almost broadside to me, and walked forward very stifflegged, almost as if on tip-toe, new and then looking back at the nearest* dogs. . . .* All of this took but a few moments, and I saw the bear quite distinctly some twenty yards off; I fired for behind the shoulder. Although I could see her outline, yet the cane was so thick that my sight was on it and not on the bear itself. But I knew my bullet would go true; and, sure enough, at the crack of my rifle the bear stumbled and fell forward, the ' bullet having passed through both j lungs and out at the opposite side. I Immediately the dogs came running forward at full speed, and we raced forward likewise lest the pack should receive damage. The bear had but a minute or two to live, yet even in that time more than one valuable hound might lose its life; B o when within half-a-dozen steps of the black, angered beast I fired again, breaking the spine at the root of the neck; and down went the bear stark dead, slain in the Canebrake in true hunter fashion."