General Wade Hampton, who with horse and hound has been the mightiest
hunter America has ever seen, informs me that he has killed with his
pack some sixteen cougars, during the fifty years he has hunted in South
Carolina and Mississippi. I believe they were all killed in the latter
State. General Hampton's hunting has been chiefly for bear and deer,
though his pack also follows the lynx and the gray fox; and, of course,
if good fortune throws either a wolf or a cougar in his way it is
followed as the game of all others. All the cougars he killed were
either treed or brought to bay in a canebrake by the hounds; and they
often handled the pack very roughly in the death struggle. He found them
much more dangerous antagonists than the black bear when assailed with
the hunting knife, a weapon of which he was very fond. However, if his
pack had held a few very large, savage, dogs, put in purely for
fighting when the quarry was at bay, I think the danger would have been
minimized.
General Hampton followed his game on horseback; but in following the
cougar with dogs this is by no means always necessary.
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