The first year they were here Mr. Peck killed
some seven or eight wolves, seventeen bears, and seventy-three deer,
which he secured, besides others which were mortally wounded but fled
beyond his reach. At first he practised what is called "still
hunting," stealing on game unawares or watching for them where
they passed along, without the aid of dogs. He soon procured a large
and strong bear-trap with steel springs and sharp teeth like nails,
with which he caught many bears, but did not use the log or fall-trap
and cage, with which bears are still caught on the mountains. His
steel trap he used without bait, in a narrow, rocky ravine, near the
top of South Mountain, through which bears passed in coming down from
the evergreen woods, near the summit of the mountain, where they had
their dens, to the oak woods below, to feed on acorns. The rocky
ravine through which the bears passed was so narrow that they could
not well avoid getting in the trap.
One day while hunting north of the Clove, on
the mountain, a deer came along heated and fatigued, pursued as he
supposed by his dog ; when, having shot it, and, as his custom was,
having loaded his gun immediately, an immense wolf followed on the
track of the deer, which he also shot. At another time Mr. Peck met a
bear, with two cubs, which had seriously injured and driven off his
dogs with the exception of one, which was very staunch and of an
imported breed, which followed by scent, but more resembled a
greyhound than a bloodhound. This dog he called away, when the bear
made a rush upon him, when, waiting until she was about a foot from
the muzzle of his gun, he shot her in the breast, and the ball passed
through the whole length of her body, suddenly ending her days. Mr.
Peck continued to hunt until he died, in Palensville, where his son
now lives, in 1820, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.
Mr. Hezekiah Myers, aged ninety, hunted some in
his early days, and was familiar with the hunting adventures of
others. He was once with a hunting party on the mountains when the
dogs drove a bear so near him that he could have struck him with an
axe which he had in his hand ; but as he had, besides this, only a
pistol, he feared to strike him, though many of the old bear-hunters
did not shrink from fighting a bear with an axe. To strike and wound
a bear, without killing him, is, however, dangerous, as when thus
enraged they are very furious. Nor is it safe to wait until a bear is
as near as was the one shot by Mr. Peck, spoken of above ; for should
the gun miss fire, or only wound the bear, he might prove a
troublesome neighbor.
Mr. William Travis, aged seventy-eight, a
neighbor of Mr. Myers in Palensville, near the Clove, when sixteen
years old, watched at night for a bear in a cornfield a little north
of where Mr. Charles Teal now lives. He had done much injury to all
the fields in the neighborhood; and hence all the neighbors watched
in their respective fields at the same time, as he did not visit the
same field two nights in succession. Near morning Mr. Travis heard a
bear in the bushes, then he entered the field, and, rising up erect
snuffed the air to learn if any danger was near, and, bringing his
paws together, drew before him the corn of two hills, one on each
side of him, and began to eat. Mr. Travis rose twice before he dared
to fire; but the third time shot him in the breast, when he turned
back over the fence, groaning like a man. A Dutchman who was near him
asleep, rose suddenly, sadly frightened, made a fearful floundering
on the ground, declaring that he had shot a black man. Soon guns were
heard in all directions, as the neighbors hastened where the first
shot was heard. The bear, a large one, was found in the morning in
the mud, in the woods near by, where he had gone to check the flow of
blood. Though badly wounded, it required several shots to kill him.
When Mr. Travis was living for a time in
Lexington, west of the mountains, a neighbor and friend of his went,
to Shandaken, some twenty miles south, to keep school. One day, as
some of his pupils went to drive the cows home from pasture, they
found a large bear seated on the carcase of one of the cows, which he
had killed, taking his supper from her flesh. The children gave the
alarm, when the neighbors, who were together at a raising, took their
guns, - five rifles, and several shot-guns; and having by shooting so
injured one of his legs that he could not move rapidly, they fired at
him thirty-five times before they killed him. Mr. Travis had one of
his tusks, which was larger than his thumb. When dressed, the four
quarters weighed more than four hundred pounds.
Colonel Merchant Lawrence, who for many years
lived where the family of the late Joseph Sax now reside, opposite
the Dutch Church, at the foot of the mountain, and kept a public
house there, tamed and raised several young bears, some of which he
kept until three years old. His house was a favorite resort of
sportsmen; and James Powers, Esq., a prominent lawyer in Catskill,
now more than eighty years of age, told me that he used, after the
labors of the day in his office, to drive out to Lawrence's, spend
the night there, catch a fine string of trout from the meadow brooks
near by, and then return to town in time for the business of the day.
For several years Colonel Lawrence invited him and other friends to a
New Year's supper of bear's meat, which they highly relished. From
two sons of Colonel Lawrence, who live near me, and who from early
life have been familiar with hunting, I have learned many facts with
regard to early hunting adventures, and the habits of the bears tamed
and fed by them when they were young. Tame bears do not commonly lie
torpid in their dens the first winter of their lives, especially if
they are in a public place, where there is much to excite them. This
was true of bears kept by Colonel Lawrence; and Mr. Schutt, at the
Laurel House, has a large young bear, which, during the whole of the
winter of 1865-6, moved freely about. Some, however, sleep through
their first winter.
As bears grow old they commonly become ugly and
cross, the females being more so than the males. One of the bears
kept by Colonel Lawrence, when a storm was coming on, would climb to
the top of a high post to which he was chained, and howl loud and
long, which always proved to be a sure sign of rain or snow.
Sometimes these bears would be very kind and affectionate with those
who trained and fed them, but fierce and savage when strangers
approached them. As cold weather came on they became cross and
sometimes dangerous. A son of Colonel Lawrence, and another man, once
beat a furious bear of his on the head with clubs for half an hour,
before they could subdue him; his head swelling up, and the blood
running from his nostrils. Dens were commonly made for them by
sinking part of a large hollow tree several feet in length in the
ground, with an entrance to it at one end; but sometimes they dug
dens for themselves in the side of a hill to the horizontal depth of
ten or twelve feet.
One of the bears kept by Colonel Lawrence was
quite a pet with his son Merchant, then fifteen years of age, who
played freely with him; but, as is supposed, becoming cross with the
approach of winter, and excited to fury by the smell of the blood of
a squirrel on the pantaloons of the boy, he seized him by the leg,
and tried to drag him into his den to devour him. This the boy
prevented, by seating himself on the end of the log within which the
bear was trying to draw him, where the beast fiercely gnawed his leg
from the heel to the knee, until a smaller boy who was with him
called the Colonel with his gun, and his wife with an axe, from the
house for his relief. The father wished to shoot the bear; but the
mother, fearing lest the boy might be injured by the shot, prevented
him, and, beating the teeth of the bear with the axe, compelled him,
for a moment, to loosen his hold on the boy, when he was hastily
withdrawn, the bear rushing fiercely after him as far as his chain
would permit him to do so. The bones of the leg were not injured,
though portions of the tendon separated from the flesh.
Facts have been stated, showing how difficult
it is to kill an old bear by shooting him, and hence the danger there
is of waiting until they are quite near before shooting, lest, having
wounded them, they should prove dangerous.
Colonel Lawrence, wishing to have an old bear
of his killed, his son took a gun and shot him deliberately in the
head. The bear gave little heed to the shot, and a younger son
bantered his brother on being such a wonderful shot that he could not
kill a bear with the muzzle of his gun close to his head, and told
him that the bear cared so little about his shooting that if he
should feed him he would eat as well as ever. This was warmly denied
by the older son, when his brother brought some bread from the house
which the bear quickly ate. A second shot, however, brought him to
the ground. I have seen an ox shot several times in the head with a
bullet before he fell. In such cases it is probable that the ball
enters the head too high or too low to give a deadly wound.
One of my neighbors, aged seventy-four, relates
among other things that one day while ploughing, he heard his two
hunting dogs, and three belonging to Uncle Frederick Sax, barking on
the side of the mountain above them. Mr. Sax went on the upper side
of a high hemlock-tree, on which was a large bear, and the other man
below it. As Mr. Sax aimed too low in shooting, he only wounded the
bear in the fore leg, when, rushing quickly down from the tree, one
of the dogs seized the bear by the throat, while bruin returned the
compliment by firmly fixing his teeth in the skin of the dog's back;
and thus, fiercely struggling, they rolled some ten rods down the
steep side of the mountain, closely pursued by the other dogs and the
man, until he twice struck the bear a heavy blow on the head with an
axe, which killed him. So staunch and true, however, was the dog,
that he did not loose his hold on the bear until he was dead ; though
the bear had, up to that time, held him in his teeth. This same man
once very irreverently remarked to me that he was "no more
afraid of a bear than of an old sow; " and he and other old
hunters in this matter did certainly, at times, show their faith by
their works. A tight hug by a bear is not, however, a thing to be
lightly spoken of; and the way in which they thus embrace one, is not
soon forgotten by those who have been favored with such a salutation.
The facts which follow were stated to me late
in June, 1866, by Frederick Layman, of Catskill, a nephew, if I
mistake not, of Frederick Sax, the great bear-hunter ; and who lived
with him, in his mountain home, from the time lie was eight years old
until he was twenty. Mr. Layman is now sixty-eight years old, so that
what is here related took place fifty years since and more. During
the twelve years referred to above, Mr. Layman aided Uncle Frederick
in killing thirty-five bears.
The first adventure they had together was south
of Roundtop, in Cairo, as distinct from the high mountain in Hunter,
of the same name, near where the Websters now live. A bear had made
sad havoc with the corn in that neighborhood, and was tracked and
treed by a dog, when Mr. Sax shot it through the leg, after which it
ran a quarter of a mile. Another shot broke his back; when, sitting
down, as the dogs rushed upon him, he knocked them, one after
another, a distance of ten or fifteen feet with his paws. A third
shot ended his days.
While hunting with Uncle Frederick in Winter
Clove, they came upon three bears, in a den in the rocks, on a ledge
some twelve feet high. They had no fair view of the bears ; yet,
after firing into the den twice, the noise and smoke drove the bears
out, when a dog seized one of them, while another ran against Uncle
Fred's legs, and he, with the two bears and the dog, all rolled down
the ledge together,-an adventure much more pleasant for one to tell
of, or to hear, than to be engaged in. On pursuing these bears, one
of them ran up a tree, half a mile distant from the den, and was
shot; another was killed the next day, and the third escaped.
A bear was once caught in a trap, on the side
of the mountain above Uncle Fred's, and Layman pursued him half a
mile, leading his dog. As he fired at the bear, the clog broke loose
from him, and, rushing upon the beast, bruin rose on his hind legs,
and seizing the dog with his fore paws, was hugging him more closely
than was either comfortable or safe for him, when, Layman coming up,
seized the bear from behind by the nape of his neck, and pulled him
over backwards. The bear then turning upon Layman, struck him with
his claws in the palm of his hand, badly wounding and tearing it
open, when the dog seized the bear and held him until Layman shot him.
On the side of the mountain, back of Nicholas
Rowe's, a little northeast of where the tollgate on the road to the
Mountain House now is, Uncle Frederick and Layman found a bear in a
den. As he came out, Mr. Sax shot, and broke the under jaw of the
bear, and Layman put a bullet in his head, but fired so low that it
did not kill him. Uncle Fred, in a hand-to-hand fight with the bear,
which was pressing bard upon him, while stepping backwards, hit
against a fallen bush or pole, and fell upon his back, when the bear
rushed upon him, and but for his broken jaw might have made quick
work with him. The dogs, however, fiercely seized the bear, thus
releasing Mr. Sax. The late Joseph Sax, who was working near by,
having come up, Uncle Fred took his axe and with it killed the bear.
Frederick Layman used to hunt with Evert
Lawrence, a son of Colonel Lawrence, spoken of above. South of the
Cauterskill Clove they once treed a bear, when, both of them having
fired at him, he fell from the tree, and, having run half a mile, he
was stopped by the dogs. Layman loaded his gun, and was trying to get
a chance to shoot the bear without putting the dogs in danger of
being shot, when the bear suddenly sprang upon him, from an elevation
of a few feet above him, threw him down under him, and would soon
have ended both his hunting and his life had not one of the dogs
seized the bear by the nose and two others in the rear, when Layman
was quickly released, and, seizing his gun, shot him through the heart.
Uncle Frederick once shot a female bear just at
night on the mountain back of his house, and, seizing her by the leg,
dragged her home. The next morning her three cubs, several months
old, having followed her trail down to near the house, were there
treed by the dogs. The tree was cut down, when one of the cubs was
killed by the dogs who had broken from their muzzles, while the other
two were secured, one of them having been carried to the house in the
checked woollen apron of Mrs. Sax, and, though it scratched her
severely, she held it fast.
These two cubs were tamed and kept two or three
years, one of them by Colonel Lawrence, at the hotel at the foot of
the mountain, and the other by Mr. Peter P. Sax, about a mile north
of the hotel and church. From the sons of Colonel Lawrence, and from
Mr. Peter F. Sax, a nephew of Peter P., who lived with him when
young, I had the facts which follow. Mr. Peter F. Sax was about
twenty years old when the facts here spoken of took place, and is now
sixty-four. He and one of the Lawrences referred to above were elders
in the church of which I was pastor.
During the winter, from early in December until
about the first of April, these bears were torpid in their dens,
eating nothing, and when disturbed barely opening their eyes, without
stirring unless they were forced to do so. They lay so still that
they did not disturb the snow which fell on their chains, as the
chains lay on the ground outside of their dens. The bear which Mr.
Sax had, dug a den in the side of a hill near the house of a
horizontal depth of about twelve feet, where he wintered. Mrs. Sax
once in a measure forced him from his winter quarters, soon after he
had retired there, to gratify the curiosity of some visitors, when so
cross was he that he gave her a blow on her hand with his paw, the
marks of which she bore with her to her grave, though he was very
fond of her, and used to take food from her bands and her large
pockets as he stood erect beside her. Peter F. Sax told me that he
once tied a bone, with meat on it, on the end of a long pole, in
winter, and thrust it under the nose of the bear, in his den, when he
stupidly opened his eyes, but did not taste or touch it, though at
other times he had a most greedy appetite for meat.
And now I come to a fact connected with the
natural history of bears, of which I have never seen anything in
books, but for the truth of which all the old hunters of the Catskill
Mountains and the country around, and those connected with them, will
solemnly vouch, as proved by their own personal observation, or the
testimony of those whose veracity cannot be impeached, and the truth
of whose statements no one who knew them well would ever question.
And yet there may be those who would think it strange that an honest
old Dutch dominie, of full size and mature age, should venture to
tell as true what follows. My reply to such would be, that there
always have been those in the world who doubt or deny the truth of
what they themselves have never seen or known. A fool of this stripe,
who said that he would not believe in what he had never seen, was
very properly asked if he had ever seen his own back?
What I here refer to is that the second day of
February of each year is known as "Bear's Day; " and that
on that day bears wake from winter sleep, come forth from their dens,
take a knowing observation of the weather for a few minutes, and then
retire to their nests and finish their repose of some weeks or
months,-it may be longer. It is further claimed that if the sky is
clear, the sun shining so that they can see their shadows, and the
weather cold, when they thus come forth, they sleep quietly on until
about the first of April, thinking that cold weather will continue
thus long. On the other hand, if the weather is mild and cloudy, they
look for an early spring, and often leave their dens; or if the water
from the melting snow above them penetrates the earth, so as to wet
them in their dens, they seek some new resting-place and home. |
|
That bears do thus come forth from their dens
the second day of February, is known by the tracks made by them that
day at the mouth of their winter quarters, as also by observing the
habits of tame bears, which, as in the case of the two named above,
come forth on Bear Day, and, after wisely observing the weather some
five minutes, retire again to rest. As several tame bears have been
kept by those whom I know well, men of Christian principle, and
entirely reliable, and after a careful observation in some cases for
two or three successive winters of the same animals, as their
testimony is uniform as to the fact that these bears did, each
winter, thus come forth from their dens the second day of February,
as described above, I cannot therefore question or doubt the truth of
the statement here advanced. Thus much for Bear Day.
Since writing the above I met with the
following, under date of February, 1867:
"THE WEATHER AT CINCINNATI. - The
'Cincinnati Commercial' says that 'the old tradition that when, on
the 2d of February, the ground-hog leaves his hole, and, seeing his
shadow, returns to winter quarters, we may expect six weeks of severe
winter weather, was determined, so far as this section is concerned,
in favor of an early spring. The sky was overcast on Saturday; and
the ground-hog, if he appeared at all, found that he cast no more
shadow than the Dutchman who sold his to the Evil One."
The marmots, or woodchucks, are sometimes
called ground-hogs, and so also are bears. Which are here meant, I do
not know.
The two tame bears spoken of above were killed
at the same time, and their meat taken to market. The skin of one of
them was sold for ten dollars in Albany, and stuffed, and is still in
a museum there. Bears are seen here and there on the mountains every
year, a few of which are killed; while, at times, they make free with
sheep, calves, and swine. During the winter of 1865-6, a bear
weighing three hundred and thirty-eight pounds when dressed was
killed on Stony Clove; and one was shot by a grandson of Frederick
Sax in October, 1866, the meat of which was eaten with a relish by
those who had been familiar with such meat in their early days. The
largest black bears in this region weigh, when dressed, from four
hundred to five hundred pounds. Five or six bears were trapped or
shot by hunters in and near Kiskatom in the fall and winter of 1866-7.
Traps for catching bears are made by hewing off
the upper surface of logs to about one third of their thickness, thus
making a floor seven feet long and three feet wide, with sides and an
end of logs, some three feet high. There are two heavy logs
lengthwise on the top, a low entrance, with two logs over it at one
end. Within is what is called a figure four, or other spring, baited,
by the falling of which the logs at the entrance come down, and the
bear is thus caged.
In the autumn of 1857, bears trampled down and
ate oats in a field near the lakes, just back of the Catskill
Mountain House. They were tracked by Mr. Beach, proprietor of the
house, and Old Thorp the Bear Hunter, as he is called, who lives
there, along the ridge of the North Mountain, by the well-known marks
which they make by rising on their hind feet and removing with their
teeth a piece of bark from the sides of trees, when they wish to pass
the same way again. It is said that along some of their paths, on the
upper ridges of the Catskill Mountains, there are trees which have
thus been entirely peeled some feet from the ground, and killed. A
trap like the one spoken of above was built on the North Mountain,
where its ruins now are, in which the old bears that troubled the
oats were caught, while their young ones taken were near by.
It is a fact worth noticing that there are
those who have a peculiar fondness for animals, and towards whom
animals, both tame and wild, are strongly attracted. In one of the
towns among the upper heights of the Catskill Mountains there is a
Mrs. B--- who is peculiarly fond of animals, as they are also of her.
She says that she is not afraid of any animal, and wild bears have
come to her in the woods, and licked her hands. Domestic animals she
sells; but will never have sheep, horned cattle, or swine killed on
the farm, nor sold to butchers or drovers for slaughtering.
Her greatest favorites, however, are cats, of
which she keeps twenty or thirty, each one having its own name and
place for feeding. Wishing to spend a winter with friends in New
England, some years since, she hired a man with a team to take her
cats there, safely confined in a large box-cage, and with them a cow
to furnish them with milk. While passing through the Cauterskill
Clove, as the cats were noisy and troublesome, the man made an
opening in their cage and let them all loose in the woods, much to
the annoyance of their mistress when she learned of her loss.
Bears are very fond of wild berries, which grow
in great abundance on the mountains, and are at times met with by
those who are picking them. Some young ladies thus employed in the
summer of 1865, a little north of and above the tollgate, on the way
to the Mountain House, on looking up saw a bear near them, very
politely standing upright, as much as to say, "I would take off
my hat if I had one, and make you a low bow." They did not,
however, wish for better acquaintance, and hurried down the mountain
in double-quick time. One of them, a granddaughter of Frederick Sax,
said that she would have taken a stick to him and driven him off, had
not her companions left her alone in such bad company.
That the bears are not all dead yet, at least
in the State of Maine, is evident from the following, published in
the winter of 1866-7 under the heading of " Bears Killed: "
"AUGUSTA, Me., January 10.-Returns
received at the office of the Secretary of State show that during
last year there were two hundred and sixty-five bears killed in this
State. In Penobscot County alone there were one hundred and nine
killed, and in the town of Lincoln fortyfive.
"The returns show that there were only
four wolves killed in the entire State during the year."
|
