Louis Paulin
More often than not, hunting big game in Louisiana today entails sitting quietly for hours in a tree or box stand overlooking a corn feeder and waiting for the deer or hog to come to you. One hundred years ago, however, it was an entirely different story.
On January 6, 1911, the Washington Post shared with its urban audience a story about Louisiana’s bear hunters. Readers learned that horse-mounted sportsmen in the Bayou State went after bears with nothing more than a pack of dogs, a knife, and gritty determination.
The newspaper article was titled “Bear Hunting in Louisiana a Novel Sport—Game is Killed with a Knife.” If the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries ever reopen a bear season in Louisiana, it will be interesting to see if anyone will have the gumption to hunt them the old-fashioned way.
"A Louisiana bear hunt," said a man whose sporting blood once induced him to get direct information on the subject by personal contact with it, “is conducted on quite different lines from those we follow in hunting the bear up here in the North. It partakes more of the nature of a fox chase, for it is undertaken on horseback, and is a riding to hounds that requires a quick eye, a ready hand, and a sure seat.”
“The chase is not across open fields or over hills. It is through a tangled maze of drooping vines and mosses and low and thickly growing branches! The dexterity with which horses trained to the Louisiana bear chase make their way at high speed through the dense and treacherous swamps into which the chase leads is simply wonderful. The rider need not guide them. He couldn't if he wanted to.”
“The hunter carries in his hand a strong, keen-bladed knife, which he is frequently forced to bring into instant use for severing at a blow some threatening loop of vine or stubborn festoon of moss. The horse will follow the dogs, and when they have brought the quarry to bay soon bears its rider to the spot.”
"Another peculiarity of the Louisiana bear hunt is that the hunter behind a pack of hounds carries no gun. The bear dogs are valuable, and require special training for their work. The necessary risks of the chase they, of course, must run, and if one or two or half a dozen fall before the savage rushes and deadly hugs of the bear they have harried and forced to turn and defend itself, their loss, while regretted, is accepted as something to be expected. The packs of hounds are always large, as many as 25 dogs being not an uncommon number to take the trial, and while the yelping and snarling pack is surrounding the bear, springing at its throat, tearing at its flank, or leaping up and swarming about the furious beast on all sides, so that it is at times almost hidden by the dogs, if the hunter should send a rifle bullet at some exposed part of the animal, and one of the dogs should receive it instead, that would be the killing of a dog that might have been avoided, and is regarded as a damper on the chase.”
"To prevent the possibility of thus sacrificing a dog, the genuine Louisiana sportsman never lays his dogs open to the risk of it. When the bear is brought to bay, and the hunter arrives at the spot where Bruin has made his stand, he dismounts, and, armed with a long-bladed sharp-pointed knife, promptly joins in the fray. He rushes upon the bear, and with a thrust of the formidable blade finds a vital spot. He may have to make his fatal stab by pushing the knife between the very ears of a dog, but his aim is so true that while he may shave a tuft of hair from a hound with the keen blade, he never wounds the flesh.”
"One skillful sinking of the blade into a bear's body is usually enough. The hunter steps aside. The huge brute fights on. Presently it totters and drops. Then with a last savage lunge at some too venturesome or overconfident dog the bear falls like an uprooted tree in the midst of the yelping pack.”
Dr. Terry L. Jones is professor of history emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Louisiana Pastimes, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294.
