“However, my neighbor, whose name is McDaniel, and my little son and me, went on down to the lake to my second camp, where we had killed the seventeen bears the week before, and turned out to hunting. We hunted all day without the dogs getting a single start. We had carried but little provisions with us, and the next morning were entirely out of meat. I sent my son to the house of an old friend, about three miles off, to get some. The old gentleman was much pleased to hear that I was hunting in those parts, for the year before the bears had killed a great many of his hogs. He had that day been killing his bacon hogs, and so he gave my son some meat, and sent word to me that I must come in to his house that evening, and that he would have plenty of feed for my dogs, and some accommodations for ourselves; but before my son got back, we had gone out hunting, and in a large cane-brake my dogs found a big bear in a cane house, which he had fixed for his winter quarters, as they sometimes do.
“When my lead dog found him, and raised the yell, all the rest broke to him, but none of them entered his house till we got up. I encouraged my dogs, and they know’d me so well that I could have made them seize the old serpent himself, with all his horns and heads and cloven foot and ugliness, if he would have only come to light, so they could have seen him. They bulged in, and in an instant the bear followed them out, and I told McDaniel to shoot him, as he was mighty wrathy to kill a bear. He did so, and killed him prime. We carried him to our camp, by which time my son had returned; and after we had got our dinners, we packed up and cut for the house of my friend, whose name was Davidson.
“We got there and stayed with him that night; and the next morning, having salted up our meat, we left it with him, and started to take a hunt between the Obion lake and Reelfoot lake. As there had been a dreadful harricane which passed between them, I was sure there must be a heap of bears in the fallen timber. We had gone about five miles without seeing any sign at all; but at length we got on some high cany ridges, and as we rode along I saw a hole in a large black oak, and, on examining more closely, I discovered that a bear had clomb the tree. I could see his tracks going up, but none coming down, and so I was sure he was in there. A person who is acquainted with bear-hunting, can tell easy enough when the varment is in the hollow; for as they go up they don’t slip a bit, but as they come down they make long scratches with their nails.
“My friend was a little ahead of me, but I called him back and told him there was a bear in that tree, and I must have him out. So we lit from our horses, and I found a small tree which I thought I could fall so as to lodge against my bear tree, and we fell to work chopping it with our tomahawks. I intended, when we lodged the tree against the other, to let my little son go up and look into the hole, for he could climb like a squirrel. We had chopped on a little time, and stopped to rest, when I heard my dogs barking mighty severe at some distance from us, and I told my friend I know’d they had a bear; for it is the nature of dogs, when they find you are hunting bears, to hunt for nothing else. They become fond of the meat, and consider other game as ‘not worth a notice,’ as old John said of the devil.
“We concluded to leave our tree a bit, and went to my dogs, and when we got there, sure enough they had an eternal great big fat bear up a tree, just ready for shooting. My friend again petitioned me for liberty to shoot this one also. I had a little rather not, as the bear was so big, but I couldn’t refuse; and so he blazed away, and down came the old fellow like some great log had fell.
“I now missed one of my dogs, the same that I had before spoke of as having treed the bear by himself some time before, when I had started the three in the cane-brake. I told my friend that my missing dog had a bear somewhere, just as sure as fate; so I left them to butcher the one we had just killed, and I went up on a piece of high ground to listen for my dog. I heard him barking with all his might some distance off, and I pushed ahead for him. My other dogs that were with me heard him and broke for him, and when I got there, sure enough he had another bear already treed. If he hadn’t, I wish I may be shot! I fired on him, and brought him down; and then went back, and helped finish butchering the one when I had left my friend. We then packed, on our horses, both to the tree where I had left my boy.
“By this time, the little fellow had cut the tree down that we intended to lodge against the hollow one, but it fell the wrong way; he had then feathered in on the big tree, to cut that, and had found that it was nothing but a shell on the outside, and all doted [decayed] in the middle, as too many of our big men are in these days, having only an outside appearance. My friend and my son cut away on it, and I went off about a hundred yards with my dogs to keep them from running under the tree when it should fall. On looking back at the hole in the tree, I saw the bear’s head out of it, watching down at them as they were cutting. I hollered to them to look up, and they did so, and McDaniel catched up his gun; but by this time the bear was out, and coming down the tree. He fired at it, and as soon as it touched the ground the dogs were all round it, and they had a roll-and-tumble fight to the foot of the hill, where they stopped him. I ran up, and, putting my gun against the bear, fired and killed him. We had now three, and so we made our scaffold and salted them up.”