Bears in the Smokies (1859)

 From "Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee" by S. B. Buckley in the American Journal of Science (1859)

The tedium of the night, when encamping on the mountains, is almost always enlivened by the stories of the guides and their adventures in hunting. They all positively assert that the bears in early spring, when first emerging from their winter quarters, are as fat as when they first retire for the winter.

The "original" Grizzly Adams and Ben, ca. 1860

During the winter they shed the soles of their feet, which renders their walking difficult in the first of spring, when their food consists of the young plants, on which diet they soon become lean, and remain so until the ripening of berries in August and September. They are very fond of hogs and pigs, pork and honey being their favorite diet. Why they bite and scratch the bark and limbs of the balsam and black spruce we cannot tell. It cannot be for food, because they do not generally leave the marks of their teeth on a tree, except in one or two places. Sometime they rise on their hind legs and make long deep scratches in the bark with their fore paws. It may be done for sport or to let their companions know their whereabouts. We have seen those fresh bites and scratches on different trees at all seasons of the year.

The bears show great sagacity in feeding at the leeward of the paths on the mountain ridges, along which the hunter is almost obliged to travel, hence if the wind blows it is almost impossible to get a shot at them, their keen scent discovering the hunter long before he gets within shooting distance. They are stupid and unwary about traps, entering without fear the log pens; these are shallow, with a depth of not more than two feet, over which is raised a very heavy top, which falls and crushes the bear when he disturbs the bait. Hundreds are caught in this manner every year.

In the unfrequented parts of the mountains the large steel trap is concealed in the bear trail; but this is dangerous, and liable to catch dogs, of which we saw two caught in one morning to our great sorrow. The piteous yells of those unfortunate dogs rang in our ears long afterwards. The bears rarely disturb calves or young cattle, but in one locality of the Smoky mountains we were told that they did much damage in killing young cattle, and that there could be no mistake about it, because a large bear had been caught in the act of killing a young steer.

The panther, wild cat, and wolf are all troublesome to the mountain farmer of those regions. The panther destroys sheep and hogs; the wild cat, lambs and pigs. Both are cowardly and thievish, being rarely seen.