nd shot the
bear. The party who told me this bear story, said it was a put up
job, so as to make it appear that the bear was killed in self
defense.

[Illustration: A PARTY OF VISITORS AT E. N. WOODCOCK'S CAMP ON THE
BANKS OF THE ETAWAH RIVER AT DIKES CREEK, GA.]

I know of many excuses to avoid game laws, but this one beats them
all. I have had a good deal of experience in game hunting, but never
had the luck to have a bear run on to me in this manner.

I will tell a panther story, which a man told me that happened some
year ago, in North Carolina, near the Tennessee line. The man was in
a small shack, and he often heard panthers screaming about the shack,
and finally one night when he had some fresh deer meat in the shack,
the man was awakened by some animal trying to pull up a roof board.
The roof of the shack was not more than six or eight feet from the
ground floor, and soon the panther raised up a board sufficient to
run a foot down through the crack. The man stood watching the game,
and when the foot came through the crack, the man seized the panther
by the foot, and a terrible fight began. The hunter finally cut a
foot of the panther off, and stabbed it with his knife until he
killed it. The hunter had a rug made of the skin of this panther,
which he intends to keep in the family for all time to come. I think
that this hunter is doing the right thing in so doing.

I will now give a little of my own experience, but it is not in the
way of an adventure with either a bear or panther, but, no doubt, I
was just as nervous for a time as those who had the reported
adventure with the bear and the panther.

The last days of December, 1912, I went into camp about twelve or
fourteen miles from Crandel, near the Tennessee line. Early the next
morning after going into camp, a man came to the camp and asked many
questions as to what I was doing. How long I was going to be there?
Where I was from? Also many other similar questions, and then went
away. That evening four or five men came to my tent, and asked about
the same questions that the man in the morning had asked.

When I stepped outside of the tent next morning, there were three or
four bunches of hickory withes standing against the guy ropes of the
tent. I did not know what those hickory withes meant, but surmised
that some jealous trapper had put them there as a warning for me to
get out. But it was not long after daylight, when a man came to camp,
and said