This story, “Bear Hunt in Dismal Swamp,” initially ran within the February 1946 concern of Outdoor Life. Although the creator mentions potential protections for the Dismal Swamp, it wasn’t designated for conservation till 1974, when it grew to become the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. At practically 113,000 acres, the refuge is the most important intact remnant of an unlimited swamp that after lined a couple of million acres of Virginia and North Carolina.
A BIG POTLICKER whimpered, then tilted its nostril skyward and sounded off mournfully. The somber gaze of the half a dozen different hounds crowded within the bow of the boat had been held unswervingly on the financial institution, however now all of them surged to at least one facet of our overloaded skiff.
“Down, dogs–down!” Dave commanded, hauling again a neat-footed little bitch that was doing a tightrope-walking act on the gunwale. “Down! There are too many water moccasins in this ditch for comfort, if you should tip us over!”
The hounds subsided obediently on the ground boards, and the boat rocked again onto its flat backside. Ed, who was steering, laughed and pointed to the clean-stripped branches of a black gum tree on the financial institution.
“Bear sign, and fresh,” he commented. “Been eatin’ berries. Last night, I reckon.”
A bear was what we have been after within the forbidding Dismal Swamp of tide water Virginia. Lloyd, who began life on a California cattle ranch and nonetheless wears blue denims when he goes looking, wiped his arms on them and picked up his .30/30 Winchester.
“Too early now for the chance of a shot,” Dave discouraged him. “And anyhow, the outboard makes too much noise. But sometimes late in the evenin’, when it’s almost dark, you can sneak along in a row boat and shoot a bear out of a tree.”
“Shucks,” Ed mentioned, “you don’t have to go sneakin’ round in a boat to shoot a bear out of a tree. Why, Mr. Cherry did that the other night out of his bedroom window. The bears have been bustin’ up his beehives somethin’ scandalous this year, and he’s provoked at ‘em.”
Before we go any additional, let’s get ourselves oriented. Half an hour earlier Lloyd and I had saved a long-standing date with Dave and Ed on the common retailer at Wallaceton. That’s about 25 miles south of Norfolk on U.S. Route 17. For greater than 30 miles the freeway parallels the Dismal Swamp Canal—japanese border of the 700 sq. miles of marshy wilderness that sprawls over a large portion of two Virginia and 5 North Carolina counties.
At Wallaceton we loaded hounds, rifles, duffel, and ourselves into an historic boat, Ed spun its outboard into motion, and we headed up the feeder ditch which ends up in mysterious Lake Drummond, hidden within the coronary heart of the swamp.
Nowadays that slender, straight-as-a-string channel of black water is the one route you possibly can journey into the a part of the swamp the place the bears are thickest. It wasn’t at all times that means. In the times when cypress and cedar have been being minimize, the ditches which lead into Lake Drummond from the western facet of the swamp have been busy waterways, however now they’re so barricaded by wind-toppled timber and so clogged by snake-infested aquatic progress that it’s unimaginable to pole even a canoe via them.
No matter what number of looking journeys you’ve made, there’s a sense of taut-nerved expectancy on every new “going in” that units your blood to circulating sooner. And moving into on this amphibious hunt was much more thrilling than regular. It had a robust spice of novelty. Dismal Swamp is acquainted looking floor to Ed and Dave, but it surely was each new nation and a brand new sort of nation to Lloyd and me.
Best of all, we have been going bear looking! There’s at all times a thrill in that. Most Virginia bears, whether or not they stay within the swamp or within the mountains, are fairly on the small facet, and possibly they’re as huge cowards as my buddy Bob Lattimer, a Pennsylvania sport protector, claims all black bears are, however they carry an armament of claws and fangs backed by brute energy that makes them probably harmful sport. No hunter who’s occupied with conserving his pores and skin complete ought to ever make the error of considering that he is aware of what a wounded or cornered bear goes to do subsequent. Bear looking at all times guarantees pleasure—and never occasionally it produces it in amount.
WHEN WE SAW that first bear signal we have been nonetheless shut sufficient to the freeway to look again and see automobiles passing on it, however already the massive swamp had walled us in with its bizarre silence. It was a warmish, windless day on the tail finish of October, and apart from the putt-putting of our outboard there was no sound.
And the swamp was as nonetheless because it was silent. There was no motion within the tangle of creeper-interlaced brush that covers the low banks of the feeder ditch; not a leaf shivered within the foliage of the occasional black gums and candy magnolias that rise out of it. The solely issues that moved have been a hawk and a turtle. The hawk hovered in gradual circles excessive above our boat; and the turtle slithered noiselessly from the black mud beneath an overhanging financial institution into the thick-looking black water that our propeller churned into yellowish foam.
The hounds whimpered and strained at their rope leashes as we handed different gum timber freshly stripped of their berries, however that’s as shut as we got here to seeing any bears on our means in. After half an hour or so we arrived on the dam whose gates management the move of water from Lake Drummond via the feeder ditch into the Dismal Swamp Canal. The stage of the canal is of greater than native significance, since it’s a hyperlink of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Mr. Cherry, the superintendent on the dam, got here right down to his dock to fulfill us. In spite of his current exploit of capturing a bear from his bed room window, he has a live-and-let-live angle towards most members of the bruin tribe.
“I used to go after ‘em when I was younger,” he advised me, “and there are plenty of ‘em around here for y’all to hunt, but now I leave ‘em alone unless they pester me out of all patience. These days I do most of my killin’ on snakes. I’d rather kill a rattler or a moccasin than the biggest bear or the finest buck that’s ever been taken out of the swamp.”
While we’re with regards to snakes—we didn’t see a single one. There are loads of them within the swamp, in fact, however by the point the looking season opens they often have fairly effectively quieted down for the winter, and swamp-wise sportsmen refuse to concern themselves over what they are saying is nearly one likelihood in 1,000,000 of getting bitten.
We unloaded our boat and packed our duffel just a few hundred yards alongside a muddy path main via jungle-thick brush to the comfy camp of the South Side Gun Club, whose members’ hospitality Lloyd and I have been having fun with. Then we went again to the dam and listened to Cherry inform bear and snake tales whereas we waited for the remainder of our social gathering.
Out of the primary boat that arrived there stepped a tall, white-haired man who didn’t carry a rifle, however had a few handsome hounds on leash.
“That’s Cortez Temple,” Ed advised me. “He has a farm on the edge of the swamp a few miles below the state line in Carolina, and I reckon he knows more about the Dismal than anyone else alive. He’s been huntin’ bear and deer in here all his life. Now his doctor won’t let him go huntin’, but he just couldn’t stay away when we told him we were goin’ to have a bear race. ‘Evenin’, Mr. Temple. How many bears was it that you told me was the most you ever killed in one year?”
“Sixty-two,” Temple mentioned in a matter of-fact means.
Sixty-two appeared to me to be loads of bears, however earlier than lengthy I used to be to search out out that Cortez Temple was loads of hunter.
BY THE TIME all of the dozen members of our social gathering bought to camp it was mid-afternoon, too late to start out a drive. So Dave and I set out in a ship on the off likelihood of leaping a bear.
Paddling quietly, we headed up the feeder ditch and turned the boat right into a sluggish waterway which branched off from it. At as soon as we have been within the coronary heart of Dismal Swamp. Bald Cypress timber thrust their gnarled trunks out of the water. Thick tangles of pink maples, magnolias, and black gums grew out of oozy quagmires. In locations the place deep peat beds lined the underlying clay and sand, groves of useless timber, their roots charred away by the gradual floor fires that generally smolder within the peat for years, waited for the massive wind which sometime will topple them. Now after which we skirted appreciable areas of pretty dry land mendacity a foot or two above the high-water stage and lined with thick jungles of second-growth hardwoods, brush, and creepers.
It could be each straightforward and harmful to get misplaced within the swamp, and my recommendation to the hunter who visits it for the primary time is to rent a information who actually is aware of it—and to stay near him.
Once we have been out of sight of the feeder ditch it wasn’t exhausting to think about that we have been in a hitherto unexplored wilderness, however Dismal Swamp has been very totally exploited via the 2 centuries since William Byrd gave it its forbidding and precisely descriptive identify. Big fortunes have been made out of the slicing of its cedar and cypress, however now virtually all the great timber is gone, and the lumber firms which personal the land don’t think about it price whereas even to protect it towards the fires which generally burn over a whole lot of sq. miles.
At instances within the current conflict, smoke from these fires was so thick that it served as a display screen for prowling German submarines offshore and infrequently interfered with Army and Navy flight coaching. As a outcome, the federal authorities had to supply a measure of fireside safety. Discontinuance of this wartime safety now’s giving the swamp and its sport again to the fireplace devils, and curiosity has been revived and intensified in a proposal that the federal government purchase 1 / 4 million acres within the swamp and create a nationwide forest.
This venture is endorsed enthusiastically by the Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, which sees in it a possibility to open the swamp to hundreds of hunters now barred by lack of transportation and different services and by the unique privileges given to native looking golf equipment on the western facet of the swamp by a number of the absentee landowners.
The sport is there. Bears are plentiful, and there in all probability are extra native Virginia white-tail deer than there have been two centuries in the past. Adequate cooperative administration by the U.S. Forest Service and the state fee might make a lot of the upper floor produce sizable annual crops of upland sport birds. Waterfowl, nonetheless, for some unknown purpose, seldom go to the swamp.
In the course of our boat hunt we once more noticed loads of bear signal however no bears. “Never mind,” Dave consoled me as he swung the bow round, “I guarantee we’ll get one tomorrow.”
It was late afternoon once we bought again to camp. Sitting on the screened porch and watching twilight after which darkness steal over the swamp was a creepy expertise. Mist, gray-green towards the background of marsh and brush, ghosted up from nowhere and slowly thickened till it blotted out even the timber on the fringe of the little clearing. The silence grew to become uncanny, and when an unseen hound howled dismally someplace within the crowding mist it was like a voice from out of this world. A moist chill penetrated my bones.
Two males sitting close to me started speaking in low voices about some swamp dweller who had been pushed by the silence and loneliness to chop his personal throat. When that they had squeezed that juicy topic dry they bought onto the legends about swamp spirits and spooks that are so effectively believed that many individuals who stay all their lives within the villages on the sting of the Dismal by no means set foot in it. Of course, the talkers didn’t assume there was something within the tales, however. …
There’s an efficient antidote for these Dismal Swamp blues. After we had poured a few of it out of the bottle, we have been cheerful sufficient to eat an enormous meal, after which begin a sport of penny ante on which no ghosts intruded.
Daybreak within the swamp was as dreary as twilight had been, however with a few dozen impatient hounds yelping outdoors the cabin and half as many equally keen hunters stamping into their boots and demanding breakfast, it didn’t have an opportunity to get us down.
As quickly as we had completed stoking up for a protracted day we went right into a huddle outdoors the cabin to determine on a plan of operations towards the bears. Starting close to the camp there’s a partly overgrown path that twists via the hardwood-and-brush thickets, roughly paralleling the feeder ditch for a mile, then turning north after which again east to type a three-quarter loop round an space of comparatively excessive and dry land.
It was agreed that the hounds could be unleashed on the far finish of this path, in order that they’d drive any sport they put up towards standers who could be stationed alongside the mile of path that paralleled the ditch. It additionally was agreed that nobody would shoot at something however a bear or a deer. Bears have been what we have been actually after, however the season was open on white-tails, and a number of the hunters who had unhappy appetites for venison weren’t going to go up a possibility of bagging a buck.
While we have been drawing for our stands, Cortez Temple picked up Lloyd’s rifle, sighted it lovingly, and put it down once more with out saying something. Some one, forgetting that the swamp veteran’s physician has ordered him to not go looking, requested him which stand he had drawn.
He shook his head, smiled, and mentioned: “I’m just keepin’ the cook company here in camp, son.” Then he sat down on the entrance steps and began enjoying with just a little hound pup which had been busy profitable associates and influencing individuals ever since our arrival.
The three membership members who had volunteered for the powerful job of looking the hounds set off alongside the path with the canines at their heels. After ready 1 / 4 of an hour, the remainder of us adopted them. Where the trail become the comb I seemed again. Cortez Temple was nonetheless sitting on the steps enjoying with the hound pet.
By that point the solar was shining brightly, however within the brush it was as dim as twilight. The slender path, hedged in by a tangle so thick that you can see just a few yards into it, was a succession of dips into shallow gullies and rises over slight elevations. In the dips we quashed via sticky black mud. On the rises we needed to go rigorously over uncovered tree roots and foot-tangling creepers.
Lloyd had drawn the stand nearest the cabin-a slight elevation the place a good-size tree had been wind-thrown throughout the path. By standing on its trunk he might see a scant 5 yards into the comb and maybe twice that far alongside the path in both route.
Used to open Western nation, he shook his head doubtfully. “If a bear comes through here,” he remarked, “he’ll be so close to me by the time I see him, I’ll have to do some fast shooting. And if I don’t knock him over, I’ll have to do some even faster running—if I can find any place to run to!”
My stand was the following one, fifty yards farther alongside and as carefully brushed in. The different hunters cautioned me that Jim, the third stander, could be near me, wished me luck, and disappeared up the path.
Then, though it was the top of October, the mosquitoes got here down on me—clouds of them, and each one ravenous. For what appeared a very long time nothing else occurred. I couldn’t see something however the inexperienced partitions that fenced me in, and I didn’t hear something however an occasional muffled cough from Jim. Finally I known as to Lloyd, bought a low-voiced reply, and went again alongside the path to see what he was doing. He was swatting mosquitoes and cussing fluently. He hadn’t seen or heard any greater than I had, and I went again to my stand.
FOR ANOTHER very long time nothing in any respect occurred. Then the silence of the swamp was damaged by the far-away baying of a hound. Another and one other chimed in till it sounded as if all of them have been working on a sizzling scent, however after a couple of minutes the refrain dwindled to unsure particular person barks which quickly died away.
But 10 minutes later I heard the hounds once more. Now they appeared a lot nearer-close sufficient for me to listen to somebody urging them on with high-pitched yells of “Hunt ‘im! Hunt ‘im ! Hunt ‘im!”
There’s no different music so thrilling as that made by hounds and hunters. It set my pulses pounding, and I stared expectantly into the comb till my eyes ached. In the hope of having the ability to see over the obscuring inexperienced display screen that I couldn’t see into, I seemed round for a tree I might climb. A couple of yards again within the tangle I noticed simply what I wanted—a gnarled, weather-bleached stump about eight toes excessive. After a few hurried failures, I scrambled to its prime.
There I waited impatiently, however no bear got here crashing via the comb throughout the path from my perch. The sound of the hounds didn’t come any nearer, and after some time they appeared to separate, some working towards the east and a few towards the west. Then I heard a rifle shot, adopted after a few seconds by two others shut collectively. They sounded as in the event that they got here from not less than half a mile up the path.
Again for a very long time nothing occurred, and I took the chance for go searching me. I couldn’t see Lloyd, however within the different route the duvet wasn’t fairly so thick, and I might make out Jim. He was perched precariously on the trunk of an enormous down tree, with a double-barrel shotgun within the criminal of his arm.
Then I noticed one thing black and massive transferring quietly and shortly via the comb behind him. It was a bear! My rifle introduced itself as much as my shoulder, and I lined the sights on the black physique and squeezed the set off.
Maybe a sapling deflected the bullet, or possibly it was only a awful shot. Either means, it didn’t do something to the bear however scare it. The animal spun spherical in order that it was broadside to me, shifted into excessive gear, and headed straight for the tree trunk on which Jim was sitting. Before I might lever one other cartridge into the chamber it was scrambling over the trunk, not six toes from him. Then it bolted throughout the path, skidded to a cease, and got here tearing again.
By that point Jim, justifiably startled however nonetheless balanced precariously on the log, had jerked his gun up. His hurried shot despatched a rifled slug smacking into the comb just a few inches above the bear’s head, and the gun’s kick unbalanced him and knocked him backward off the tree. The panic-stricken bear saved proper on going, hurdled the trunk and simply missed Jim, who was sprawled on his again on the bottom behind it, and plunged right into a thicket earlier than I dared danger one other shot.
Attracted by the capturing, Lloyd got here working up. A few minutes later, whereas we have been nonetheless attempting to determine what to do subsequent, Dave and two different hunters, with three or 4 hounds at their heels, arrived breathless from the opposite route. The hounds’ neck hairs bristled when their noses caught the bear odor, then they have been off on the red-hot path, working with their heads up and giving tongue in a means that promised a brief chase.
Dave slanted an skilled eye within the route that they had gone and shook his head. “We can’t get through there—too thick and boggy,” he determined. “But there’s a cross trail, and if we get on it in a hurry we may be able to cut that bear off. Let’s go!”.
We all pounded down the path towards the cabin, leaping or scrambling over the trunks of fallen timber, slithering via mud, tripping over roots, and getting our toes snarled up in creepers.
After a few minutes we got here to the place the slender cross path branched off, and become it. Then we noticed that there was somebody forward of us. It was Cortez Temple. He wasn’t working, however he was strolling virtually as quick as we might run over that dangerous footing. He was carrying an previous single-barrel shotgun that I acknowledged as one I’d seen standing in a nook of the cabin kitchen. When he heard us and turned his head, we noticed that his blue eyes have been blazing. He pointed down the path.
“Bear just crossed, with hounds right after him,” he mentioned. “We’ll get him. Come on!”
“How come you got here so quick?” Dave requested him as we hurried alongside in his wake.
“I was sitting on the cabin steps and heard the shots and then the hounds,” the veteran defined. “Anyone hit him?”
Jim and I needed to admit that we’d wasted our ammunition. Cortez Temple grunted. “Here’s where he crossed,” he mentioned, and led the best way into the comb.
It appeared a very long time since we had heard the hounds. “That bear’s likely swum the feeder ditch,” somebody mentioned. “Once he’s across it, he’s got us licked.”
Dave was simply opening his mouth to answer when what sounded just like the daddy of all dogfights broke out in a hardwood thicket just a few hundred toes forward of us.
“They’ve bayed him!” Cortez Temple mentioned. “Fan out, boys! Watch out you don’t hit the dogs, but soon as you can get a clear shot at him, let him have it!”
Fanning out in that tangle was simpler advisable than carried out, however we managed to type a form of ragged skirmish line and, with rifles and shot weapons prepared, superior on the thicket. The sounds of the scrap occurring in there had reached a brand new excessive of snarls, howls, yelps, and deep-throated growls.
When we bought to the sting, an enormous stump in my means made me drop behind Temple. A couple of steps extra, and we might see into the thicket the place the bear was making its final stand. Reared up on its hind legs, it was snarling and cuffing on the worrying hounds.
“Now!” Cortez Temple mentioned softly.
His previous single-barrel gun went easily to his shoulder and, a cut up second later, blasted out a slug. At virtually the identical prompt, Lloyd’s and Dave’s rifles spat. The bear spun midway spherical, slumped over sideways, and went down with the hounds tearing at it.
When we bought into the thicket we discovered a really quiet bear. Any one of many three photographs which had hit it might have settled its account.
Cortez Temple stood trying down on the carcass. After a second he shook his head sadly.
“What’s the matter, Cort?” somebody requested. “Ain’t he big enough to suit you?”
“Nice he-bear, with plenty of good eatin’ on him,” the veteran mentioned. “But I just remembered that I clean forgot I’d promised the doc not to go huntin’ anymore!”
It wasn’t a really huge bear-something lower than 200 kilos—however getting it out of the comb wasn’t too straightforward. We tied its legs collectively, strung it on a sapling, and sweated fortunately over the job of carrying it to camp.
Lloyd had the heavy finish of the load on the ultimate leg of the journey. When we bought to the cabin he dropped the pole, swabbed his moist face with a bandanna, and grinned extensively. “What I want to know,” he mentioned, “is what darned fool named this swamp Dismal?”
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