Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches

T >> Theodore Roosevelt >> Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches


Peccaries are very fast for a few hundred yards, but speedily tire, lose
their wind, and come to bay. Almost immediately one of these, a sow, as
it turned out, wheeled and charged at Moore as he passed, Moore never
seeing her but keeping on after another. The sow then stopped and stood
still, chattering her teeth savagely, and I jumped off my horse and
dropped her dead with a shot in the spine, over the shoulders. Moore
meanwhile had dashed off after his pig in one direction, and killed
the little beast with a shot from the saddle when it had come to bay,
turning and going straight at him. Two of the peccaries got off; the
remaining one, a rather large boar, was followed by the two dogs, and as
soon as I had killed the sow I leaped again on my horse and made after
them, guided by the yelping and baying. In less than a quarter of a
mile they were on his haunches, and he wheeled and stood under a
bush, charging at them when they came near him, and once catching
one, inflicting an ugly cut. All the while his teeth kept going like
castanets, with a rapid champing sound. I ran up close and killed him
by a shot through the backbone where it joined the neck. His tusks were
fine.

The few minutes' chase on horseback was great fun, and there was a
certain excitement in seeing the fierce little creatures come to bay;
but the true way to kill these peccaries would be with the spear. They
could often be speared on horseback, and where this was impossible, by
using dogs to bring them to bay they could readily be killed on foot;
though, as they are very active, absolutely fearless, and inflict a most
formidable bite, it would usually be safest to have two men go at one
together. Peccaries are not difficult beasts to kill, because their
short wind and their pugnacity make them come to bay before hounds
so quickly. Two or three good dogs can bring to a halt a herd of
considerable size. They then all stand in a bunch, or else with their
sterns against a bank, chattering their teeth at their antagonist. When
angry and at bay, they get their legs close together, their shoulders
high, and their bristles all ruffled and look the very incarnation
of anger, and they fight with reckless indifference to the very last.
Hunters usually treat them with a certain amount of caution; but, as a
matter of act, I know of but one case where a man was hurt by them.
He had shot at and wounded one, was charged both by it and by its two
companions, and started to climb a tree; but as he drew himself from
the ground, one sprang at him and bit him through the calf, inflicting
a very severe wound. I have known of several cases of horses being cut,
however, and the dogs are very commonly killed. Indeed, a dog new to the
business is almost certain to get very badly scarred, and no dog that
hunts steadily can escape without some injury. If it runs in right at
the heads of the animals, the probabilities are that it will get killed;
and, as a rule, even two good-sized hounds cannot kill a peccary,
though it is no larger than either of them. However, a wary, resolute,
hard-biting dog of good size speedily gets accustomed to the chase, and
can kill a peccary single-handed, seizing it from behind and worrying it
to death, or watching its chance and grabbing it by the back of the neck
where it joins the head.

Peccaries have delicately moulded short legs, and their feet are small,
the tracks looking peculiarly dainty in consequence. Hence, they do
not swim well, though they take to the water if necessary. They feed
on roots, prickly pears, nuts, insects, lizards, etc. They usually keep
entirely separate from the droves of half-wild swine that are so often
found in the same neighborhoods; but in one case, on this very ranch
where I was staying a peccary deliberately joined a party of nine pigs
and associated with them. When the owner of the pigs came up to them one
day the peccary manifested great suspicion at his presence, and finally
sidled close up and threatened to attack him, so that he had to shoot
it. The ranchman's son told me that he had never but once had a peccary
assail him unprovoked, and even in this case it was his dog that was the
object of attack, the peccary rushing out at it as it followed him home
one evening through the chaparral. Even around this ranch the peccaries
had very greatly decreased in numbers, and the survivors were learning
some caution. In the old days it had been no uncommon thing for a big
band to attack entirely of their own accord, and keep a hunter up a tree
for hours at a time.



CHAPTER VII.--HUNTING WITH HOUNDS.

In hunting American big game with hounds, several entirely distinct
methods are pursued. The true wilderness hunters, the men who in
the early days lived alone in, or moved in parties through, the
Indian-haunted solitudes, like their successors of to-day, rarely made
use of a pack of hounds, and, as a rule, did not use dogs at all. In
the eastern forests occasionally an old time hunter would own one or two
track-hounds, slow, with a good nose, intelligent and obedient, of use
mainly in following wounded game. Some Rocky Mountain hunters nowadays
employ the same kind of a dog, but the old time trappers of the great
plains and the Rockies led such wandering lives of peril and hardship
that they could not readily take dogs with them. The hunters of the
Alleghanies and the Adirondacks have, however, always used hounds to
drive deer, killing the animal in the water or at a runaway.

As soon, however, as the old wilderness hunter type passes away, hounds
come into use among his successors, the rough border settlers of the
backwoods and the plains. Every such settler is apt to have four or five
large mongrel dogs with hound blood in them, which serve to drive off
beasts of prey from the sheepfold and cattle-shed, and are also used,
when the occasion suits, in regular hunting, whether after bear or deer.

Many of the southern planters have always kept packs of fox-hounds,
which are used in the chase, not only of the gray and the red fox, but
also of the deer, the black bear, and the wildcat. The fox the dogs
themselves run down and kill, but as a rule in this kind of hunting,
when after deer, bear, or even wildcat, the hunters carry guns with them
on their horses, and endeavor either to get a shot at the fleeing animal
by hard and dexterous riding, or else to kill the cat when treed, or the
bear when it comes to bay. Such hunting is great sport.

Killing driven game by lying in wait for it to pass is the very poorest
kind of sport that can be called legitimate. This is the way the deer
is usually killed with hounds in the East. In the North the red fox is
often killed in somewhat the same manner, being followed by a slow hound
and shot at as he circles before the dog. Although this kind of fox
hunting is inferior to hunting on horseback, it nevertheless has its
merits, as the man must walk and run well, shoot with some accuracy, and
show considerable knowledge both of the country and of the habits of the
game.

During the last score of years an entirely different type of dog from
the fox-hound has firmly established itself in the field of American
sport. This is the greyhound, whether the smooth-haired, or the
rough-coated Scotch deer-hound. For half a century the army officers
posted in the far West have occasionally had greyhounds with them, using
the dogs to course jack-rabbit, coyote, and sometimes deer, antelope,
and gray wolf. Many of them were devoted to this sport,--General Custer,
for instance. I have myself hunted with many of the descendants of
Custer's hounds. In the early 70's the ranchmen of the great plains
themselves began to keep greyhounds for coursing (as indeed they had
already been used for a considerable time in California, after the
Pacific coast jack-rabbit), and the sport speedily assumed large
proportions and a permanent form. Nowadays the ranchmen of the cattle
country not only use their greyhounds after the jack-rabbit, but also
after every other kind of game animal to be found there, the antelope
and coyote being especial favorites. Many ranchmen soon grew to own fine
packs, coursing being the sport of all sports for the plains. In Texas
the wild turkey was frequently an object of the chase, and wherever the
locality enabled deer to be followed in the open, as for instance in the
Indian territory, and in many places in the neighborhood of the large
plains rivers, the whitetail was a favorite quarry, the hunters striving
to surprise it in the early morning when feeding on the prairie.

I have myself generally coursed with scratch packs, including perhaps
a couple of greyhounds, a wire-haired deer-hound, and two or three long
legged mongrels. However, we generally had at least one very fast
and savage dog--a strike dog--in each pack, and the others were of
assistance in turning the game, sometimes in tiring it, and usually in
helping to finish it at the worry. With such packs I have had many a
wildly exciting ride over the great grassy plains lying near the Little
Missouri and the Knife and Heart Rivers. Usually our proceedings on such
a hunt were perfectly simple. We started on horseback and when reaching
favorable ground beat across it in a long scattered line of men and
dogs. Anything that we put up, from a fox to a coyote or a prong-buck,
was fair game, and was instantly followed at full speed. The animals we
most frequently killed were jack-rabbits. They always gave good runs,
though like other game they differed much individually in speed. The
foxes did not run so well, and whether they were the little swift, or
the big red prairie fox, they were speedily snapped up if the dogs had a
fair showing. Once our dogs roused a blacktail buck close up out of
the brush coulie where the ground was moderately smooth, and after a
headlong chase of a mile they ran into him, threw him, and killed him
before he could rise. (His stiff-legged bounds sent him along at a
tremendous pace at first, but he seemed to tire rather easily.) On two
or three occasions we killed whitetail deer, and several times antelope.
Usually, however, the antelopes escaped. The bucks sometimes made a good
fight, but generally they were seized while running, some dogs catching
by the throat, others by the shoulders, and others again by the flank
just in front of the hind-leg. Wherever the hold was obtained, if the
dog made his spring cleverly, the buck was sure to come down with a
crash, and if the other dogs were anywhere near he was probably killed
before he could rise, although not infrequently the dogs themselves were
more or less scratched in the contests. Some greyhounds, even of high
breeding, proved absolutely useless from timidity, being afraid to take
hold; but if they got accustomed to the chase, being worked with old
dogs, and had any pluck at all, they proved singularly fearless. A
big ninety-pound greyhound or Scotch deer-hound is a very formidable
fighting dog; I saw one whip a big mastiff in short order, his wonderful
agility being of more account than his adversary's superior weight.

The proper way to course, however, is to take the dogs out in a wagon
and drive them thus until the game is seen. This prevents their being
tired out. In my own hunting, most of the antelope aroused got away,
the dogs being jaded when the chase began. But really fine greyhounds,
accustomed to work together and to hunt this species of game, will
usually render a good account of a prong-buck if two or three are
slipped at once, fresh, and within a moderate distance.

Although most Westerners take more kindly to the rifle, now and then
one is found who is a devotee of the hound. Such a one was an old
Missourian, who may be called Mr. Cowley, whom I knew when he was living
on a ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri. Mr. Cowley was a
primitive person, of much nerve, which he showed not only in the hunting
field but in the startling political conventions of the place and
period. He was quite well off, but he was above the niceties of personal
vanity. His hunting garb was that in which he also paid his rare formal
calls--calls throughout which he always preserved the gravity of an
Indian, though having a disconcerting way of suddenly tip-toeing across
the room to some unfamiliar object, such as a peacock screen or a vase,
feeling it gently with one forefinger, and returning with noiseless gait
to his chair, unmoved, and making no comment. On the morning of a hunt
he would always appear on a stout horse, clad in a long linen duster, a
huge club in his hand, and his trousers working half-way up his legs.
He hunted everything on all possible occasions; and he never under any
circumstances shot an animal that the dogs could kill. Once when a skunk
got into his house, with the direful stupidity of its perverse kind, he
turned the hounds on it; a manifestation of sporting spirit which roused
the ire of even his long-suffering wife. As for his dogs, provided they
could run and fight, he cared no more for their looks than for his own;
he preferred the animal to be half greyhound, but the other half could
be fox-hound, colley, or setter, it mattered nothing to him. They were
a wicked, hardbiting crew for all that, and Mr. Cowley, in his flapping
linen duster, was a first-class hunter and a good rider. He went almost
mad with excitement in every chase. His pack usually hunted coyote, fox,
jack-rabbit, and deer; and I have had more than one good run with it.

My own experience is too limited to allow me to pass judgment with
certainty as to the relative speed of the different beasts of the chase,
especially as there is so much individual variation. I consider the
antelope the fleetest of all however; and in this opinion I am sustained
by Col. Roger D. Williams, of Lexington, Kentucky, who, more than any
other American, is entitled to speak upon coursing, and especially upon
coursing large game. Col. Williams, like a true son of Kentucky, has
bred his own thoroughbred horses and thoroughbred hounds for many
years; and during a series of long hunting trips extending over nearly
a quarter of a century he has tried his pack on almost every game animal
to be found among the foot-hills of the Rockies and on the great plains.
His dogs, both smooth-haired greyhounds and rough-coated deer-hounds,
have been bred by him for generations with a special view to the chase
of big game--not merely of hares; they are large animals, excelling not
only in speed but in strength, endurance, and ferocious courage. The
survivors of his old pack are literally seamed all over with the scars
of innumerable battles. When several dogs were together they would stop
a bull-elk, and fearlessly assail a bear or cougar. This pack scored
many a triumph over blacktail, whitetail, and prong-buck. For a few
hundred yards the deer were very fast; but in a run of any duration the
antelope showed much greater speed, and gave the dogs far more trouble,
although always overtaken in the end, if a good start had been obtained.
Col. Williams is a firm believer in the power of the thoroughbred
horse to outturn any animal that breathes, in a long chase; he has not
infrequently run down deer, when they were jumped some miles from cover;
and on two or three occasions he ran down uninjured antelope, but in
each case only after a desperate ride of miles, which in one instance
resulted in the death of his gallant horse.

This coursing on the prairie, especially after big game, is an
exceedingly manly and attractive sport; the furious galloping, often
over rough ground with an occasional deep washout or gully, the sight
of the gallant hounds running and tackling, and the exhilaration of the
pure air and wild surrounding, all combine to give it a peculiar zest.
But there is really less need of bold and skilful horsemanship than in
the otherwise less attractive and more artificial sport of fox-hunting,
or riding to hounds, in a closed and long-settled country.

Those of us who are in part of southern blood have a hereditary right
to be fond of cross-country riding; for our forefathers in Virginia,
Georgia, or the Carolinas, have for six generations followed the fox
with horse, horn, and hound. In the long-settled Northern States the
sport has been less popular, though much more so now than formerly; yet
it has always existed, here and there, and in certain places has been
followed quite steadily.

In no place in the Northeast is hunting the wild red fox put on a more
genuine and healthy basis than in the Geneseo Valley, in central New
York. There has always been fox-hunting in this valley, the farmers
having good horses and being fond of sport; but it was conducted in a
very irregular, primitive manner, until some twenty years ago Mr. Austin
Wadsworth turned his attention to it. He has been master of fox-hounds
ever since, and no pack in the country has yielded better sport than
his, or has brought out harder riders among the men and stronger jumpers
among the horses. Mr. Wadsworth began his hunting by picking up some of
the various trencher-fed hounds of the neighborhood, the hunting of that
period being managed on the principle of each farmer bringing to the
meet the hound or hounds he happened to possess, and appearing on foot
or horseback as his fancy dictated. Having gotten together some of these
native hounds and started fox-hunting in localities where the ground
was so open as to necessitate following the chase on horseback, Mr.
Wadsworth imported a number of dogs from the best English kennels. He
found these to be much faster than the American dogs and more accustomed
to work together, but less enduring, and without such good noses. The
American hounds were very obstinate and self-willed. Each wished to work
out the trail for himself. But once found, they would puzzle it out, no
matter how cold, and would follow it if necessary for a day and night.
By a judicious crossing of the two Mr. Wadsworth finally got his present
fine pack, which for its own particular work on its own ground would be
hard to beat. The country ridden over is well wooded, and there are many
foxes. The abundance of cover, however, naturally decreases the number
of kills. It is a very fertile land, and there are few farming regions
more beautiful, for it is prevented from being too tame in aspect by
the number of bold hills and deep ravines. Most of the fences are high
posts-and-rails or "snake" fences, although there is an occasional stone
wall, haha, or water-jump. The steepness of the ravines and the density
of the timber make it necessary for a horse to be sure-footed and able
to scramble anywhere, and the fences are so high that none but very good
jumpers can possibly follow the pack. Most of the horses used are bred
by the farmers in the neighborhood, or are from Canada, and they usually
have thoroughbred or trotting-stock blood in them.

One of the pleasantest days I ever passed in the saddle was after Mr.
Wadsworth's hounds. I was staying with him at the time, in company with
my friend Senator Cabot Lodge, of Boston. The meet was about twelve
miles distant from the house. It was only a small field of some
twenty-five riders, but there was not one who did not mean going. I was
mounted on a young horse, a powerful, big-boned black, a great jumper,
though perhaps a trifle hot-headed. Lodge was on a fine bay, which
could both run and jump. There were two or three other New Yorkers and
Bostonians present, several men who had come up from Buffalo for the
run, a couple of retired army officers, a number of farmers from the
neighborhood; and finally several members of a noted local family
of hard riders, who formed a class by themselves, all having taken
naturally to every variety of horsemanship from earliest infancy.

It was a thoroughly democratic assemblage; every one was there for
sport, and nobody cared an ounce how he or anybody else was dressed.
Slouch hats, brown coats, corduroy breeches, and leggings, or boots,
were the order of the day. We cast off in a thick wood. The dogs struck
a trail almost immediately and were off with clamorous yelping, while
the hunt thundered after them like a herd of buffaloes. We went headlong
down the hill-side into and across a brook. Here the trail led straight
up a sheer bank. Most of the riders struck off to the left for an easier
place, which was unfortunate for them, for the eight of us who went
straight up the side (one man's horse falling back with him) were the
only ones who kept on terms with the hounds. Almost as soon as we got to
the top of the bank we came out of the woods over a low but awkward rail
fence, where one of our number, who was riding a very excitable sorrel
colt, got a fall. This left but six, including the whip. There were two
or three large fields with low fences; then we came to two high, stiff
doubles, the first real jumping of the day, the fences being over four
feet six, and so close together that the horses barely had a chance
to gather themselves. We got over, however, crossed two or three
stump-strewn fields, galloped through an open wood, picked our way
across a marshy spot, jumped a small brook and two or three stiff
fences, and then came a check. Soon the hounds recovered the line and
swung off to the right, back across four or five fields, so as to enable
the rest of the hunt, by making an angle, to come up. Then we jumped
over a very high board fence into the main road, out of it again, and on
over ploughed fields and grass lands, separated by stiff snake fences.
The run had been fast and the horses were beginning to tail. By the time
we suddenly rattled down into a deep ravine and scrambled up the other
side through thick timber there were but four of us left, Lodge and
myself being two of the lucky ones. Beyond this ravine we came to one
of the worst jumps of the day, a fence out of the wood, which was
practicable only at one spot, where a kind of cattle trail led up to
a panel. It was within an inch or two of five feet high. However, the
horses, thoroughly trained to timber jumping and to rough and hard
scrambling in awkward places, and by this time well quieted, took the
bars without mistake, each one in turn trotting or cantering up to
within a few yards, then making a couple of springs and bucking over
with a great twist of the powerful haunches. I may explain that there
was not a horse of the four that had not a record of five feet six
inches in the ring. We now got into a perfect tangle of ravines, and the
fox went to earth; and though we started one or two more in the course
of the afternoon, we did not get another really first-class run.

At Geneseo the conditions for the enjoyment of this sport are
exceptionally favorable. In the Northeast generally, although there are
now a number of well-established hunts, at least nine out of ten runs
are after a drag. Most of the hunts are in the neighborhood of great
cities, and are mainly kept up by young men who come from them. A few of
these are men of leisure, who can afford to devote their whole time to
pleasure; but much the larger number are men in business, who work hard
and are obliged to make their sports accommodate themselves to their
more serious occupations. Once or twice a week they can get off for an
afternoon's ride across country, and they then wish to be absolutely
certain of having their run, and of having it at the appointed time; and
the only way to insure this is to have a drag-hunt. It is not the lack
of foxes that has made the sport so commonly take the form of riding to
drag-hounds, but rather the fact that the majority of those who keep it
up are hard-working business men who wish to make the most out of every
moment of the little time they can spare from their regular occupations.
A single ride across country, or an afternoon at polo, will yield more
exercise, fun, and excitement than can be got out of a week's decorous
and dull riding in the park, and many young fellows have waked up to
this fact.

At one time I did a good deal of hunting with the Meadowbrook hounds, in
the northern part of Long Island. There were plenty of foxes around us,
both red and gray, but partly for the reasons given above, and partly
because the covers were so large and so nearly continuous, they were not
often hunted, although an effort was always made to have one run every
week or so after a wild fox, in order to give a chance for the hounds
to be properly worked and to prevent the runs from becoming a mere
succession of steeple-chases. The sport was mainly drag-hunting, and
was most exciting, as the fences were high and the pace fast. The Long
Island country needs a peculiar style of horse, the first requisite
being that he shall be a very good and high timber jumper. Quite a
number of crack English and Irish hunters have at different times been
imported, and some of them have turned out pretty well; but when they
first come over they are utterly unable to cross our country, blundering
badly at the high timber. Few of them have done as well as the American
horses. I have hunted half a dozen times in England, with Pytchely,
Essex, and North Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable that English
thoroughbreds, in a grass country, and over the peculiar kinds of
obstacles they have on the other side of the water, would gallop away
from a field of our Long Island horses; for they have speed and
bottom, and are great weight carriers. But on our own ground, where
the cross-country riding is more like leaping a succession of five or
six-bar gates than anything else, they do not as a rule, in spite of
the enormous prices paid for them, show themselves equal to the native
stock. The highest recorded jump, seven feet two inches, was made by the
American horse Filemaker, which I saw ridden in the very front by Mr. H.
L. Herbert, in the hunt at Sagamore Hill, about to be described.