Blow the tannery whistle: Wid Medford, bear hunter
Back in the late 1880s, two remarkable men, Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup, visited Western North Carolina for the express purpose of developing a comprehensive profile of the region’s resources.
The subsequent book, “The Heart of the Alleghenies or Western North Carolina” does contain an amazing catalog of trees, minerals, birds, animals and topography complete with detailed information regarding each item. However, readers quickly discovered that the gathering of factual data is merely a means to an end. Wilbur and Ben are sportsmen and nature lovers. Equally surprising is their fortitude. They fish, hunt, scale peaks and sketch with a zest and energy that quickly gains them the respect of local hunters who have spent their lives in the wilderness.
The book Is filled with descriptive detail, both written and etched: Nantahala Gorge, trout streams in the Balsams, dying bears beset by hounds and the ramparts of what would become known as the Great Smokies. It is an impressive and rare book.
The most memorable portraits are of people. Zeigler and Grosscup have a genuine admiration for the inhabitants of the region and go to considerable pains to reproduce the character and language of hunters, fisherman, housewives and farmers. Fascinated by the nuances of speech, they carefully reproduce the rhythms and annunciation of Cherokees, bear hunters and merchants. Invariably, the results have a strange musical beauty.
Shortly after arriving in Waynesville, the two men made inquiries about local residents who had an exceptional knowledge of the region and would be willing to take them into the Balsams, despite adverse weather (it was winter). Everyone assured them that there was only one man who could do that: Israel Medford, nicknamed Wid. Considered a master hunter and a “singular character,” he was one of the vanishing species of mountaineer who had been reared in the wilderness. The two men sought him out and found him to be a gifted mimic, a shrewd judge of character and an accomplished talker. He could hunt, too!
The subsequent venture into the Balsams amid a snow storm and freezing temperatures for the singular purpose of finding the lair of a black bear constitutes one of the most memorable passages in the book. Wid, 65 years old, grey-haired but with a red mustache, hatchet-faced and ruddy-skinned, agrees to talk the night away but warns his listeners that he will not tolerate skepticism about his adventures.
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“Whenever I talk of facts,” he says,” you can count on them as true as scripture.”
The hunting party and an assortment of hounds take their places before a roaring fire in an isolated cove in the Balsams and listen.
Here, a direct quote from a lengthy chapter, in mountain vernacular:
“What I don’t know about these mountings,” said he, directing his keen blue eyes upon one member of the group, “haint of enny profit to man or devil. Why, I’ve fit bars from the Dark Ridge kentry to the headwaters of the French Broad. I’ve brouged it through every briar patch an’ laurel thicket, an haint I bin with Guyot, Sandoz, Grand Pierre and Clingman over every peak from hyar to the South Caroliny and Georgy lines? Say?”
The night Is just beginning and Wid weaves a tale that keeps his audience spellbound, recounting a series of hair-raising adventures as the temperature begins to drop and snowflakes drift in the firelight. The following passage is a prime example of Wid Medford at his most eloquent:
“Hit war a hot summer day. We — thet is, Bill Massey who’s almost blind now, Bill Allen who gin up huntin’ long ye’rs ago, my brother El, me and sev’ral others — we started a bar on the Jackson County line nigh Scotts Creek in the mornin’. We driv till arter-noon, an’ in the chase I got below hyar. I heared the dogs up on Old Bald an’ abearin’ down the ridgetop I was on. Powerful soon I seed the bar comin’ on a dog-trot under the trees. He war a master brute! … 450 pounds net. Thinks me to myself, ‘gun fust, knife next’ fer, you see, I war clean played out with the heat and the long run … I fetched my gun to my shoul’er an’ fired. The brute never stopped but I knowed I’d hit him, fer I hed dead sight on his head; an’ like blockade whiskey, a ball outer thet black bore allus goes to the spot. I dropped my gun an pulled my knife. On he com. He didn’t pay no more tenshun to me then ef I’d bin a rock. I drew back a step an’ as he brashed by me, I bent over him, grabbin the ha’r o’ his neck with one hand, an’ staubed him deep in the side with the knife in the other. Thet is all I knowed for hours.”
“Did you faint?” someone asked.
“Faint?” sneered Wid, sticking out his square chin and showing his teeth. “You ass! You don’t reckon I faint, do you? Women faint. I fell dead! You see, all the blood in me jumped over my heart, an’ ov course hit finished me for a time … but the boys and dogs com on me a second arter. Bill Allen cut my veins, an’ in a short time I com around, but I war sick for a week … Hit (the bear) lay dead by the branch, staubed clean through the heart.”
As colorful as Wid’s adventures are, the details of Zeigler and Grosscup’s bear hunt the following day surpass all expectations. As the party crashes through ice-bound streams and laurel thickets, the authors describe scenes of amazing beauty … and horror.
Ice-wreathed trees, flocks of great wild turkeys, towering oaks that measure 16 to 30 feet in diameter, and the gory demise of a cornered bruin. The bloodshed attending the giant Bears last stand is daunting. Amid the mangled, dead and dying dogs, hugged to death by the dying beast, the Bears finally killed and the authors, somewhat sobered by the violence of the last encounter, ask Wid if it would not be better to trap bears.
“Traps is good fer ‘em ez hunts rabbits, an’ rabbit huntin’ is good fer boys; but fer me, give me my old flint-lock shootin’ iron, an’ let a keen pack o’ lean hounds be hoppin’ on ahead; an’ of al;l sports, the master sport is follerin’ their music over the mountings, an’ windin’ up, with bullet or sticker, a varminous ole bar!”
At one point in this lengthy narrative, the authors ask Wid about his life. They diplomatically suggest that “his way” is passing and wonder if he had his life to do over, knowing what he knows now, would it be different. What would he do? Wid’s answer could well serve as his epitaph.
“I’d git me a neat woman, an’ go to the wildest kentry in creation, an’ hunt from the time I was big nuff to tote a rifle-gun ontil ole age an’ roomaticks fastened on me.”
Well said, Wid.
Gary Carden is one of Southern Appalachia’s most revered literary figures and has won a number of significant awards for his books and plays over the years, including the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association in 2001, the Brown Hudson Award for Folklore in 2006 and the North Carolina Arts Council Award for Literature in 2012. His most recent book, “Stories I lived to tell,” is available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, or online through uncpress.org.
