Bear Hunting

Here is a tale if an early bear hunt in Oneida Township.

We had two kinds of bears in the woods of Oneida, the large, long-legged, brown-nosed species, and the short-legged black one. The bear, like some bipeds, is a great lover of pork; this seemed to be all of the flesh kind he cared about, and of this he was quite tenacious. My mode was to take them in traps,-that is, when I could, though I did take quite a number in that way. There was one of these fellows, however, that knew too much for me. Having killed a hog for my neighbor Lewis, in his absence, I was sent for with orders from Mrs. Lewis to go and capture him. So taking my young friend, Master George W. Nichols, with me as an assistant, I set the trap as usual. On the next morning we went for our bear. A light snow having fallen in the night, we encountered the well-known track on our way. Confident and elated with our expectations, our disappointment and chagrin were now the greater when we found the fellow had taken the trap off some twenty feet, and, as if to convince us of his superiority, turned it bottom side up, and left it there unsprung. Eating what he wanted of the bait, he had very graciously retired. We tried him again for three successive nights, but to no purpose. On the fifth night, having set two traps instead of one, we caught him good by the ball of one foot. Carrying the ponderous trap to a log some distance away, he then pounded it off, leaving within its jaws the sinews of his leg, some eight inches long, and then made his escape.
Unlike the wolf, when caught, the bear will fight to the very last breath. I have shot and trapped a large number of these animals, and have always found this to be an infallible trait. One morning, as I was proceeding in considerable haste to one of my bear-traps, I was accosted by two of my clergy neighbors as to the cause of my hurry. Answering that a bear was in my trap, they expressed a desire to go along and see the sport. After going about three miles we struck the trail. Letting my anxious dogs loose, I ran ahead of my reverend companions for the purpose of getting a shot. Giving the bear a shot in the best place for crippling him,-the region of the kidneys,-the fight began. The two elders coming up and seeing the power, endurance, and grit of the bear, even in his crippled condition, their desire seemed to evaporate, the dogs and myself having the honor of conducting the whole fight throughout.
George Jones, Philander Parmenter, William Henry, Amadon Aldrich, and others of the early settlers occasionally indulged in the luxury of a bear-hunt, and this was especially the case on one occasion, when the four men mentioned followed a bear-which had unluckily got into a wolf-trap and carried it off-nearly to the site of the present city of Lansing, and after an exciting fight with the two dogs which they had along, his bearship was finally killed by a lucky shot from Mr. Jones' rifle. The carcass-a large one-was cut up, and each carried a portion of it home, where they arrived about sunset.