bear-bacon

Updated: June 13, 2025

Farming was irksome to this restless, nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse would exchange the plow and the grubbing hoe for the long rifle and keen-edged hunting knife. In a single day during the autumn season he would kill four or five deer; or as many bears as would snake from two to three thousand pounds weight of bear-bacon.

Archibald Henderson - The Conquest of the Old Southwest; the romantic story of the early pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790

In a single day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats; turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods. But life was not all sport for the young Boones.

Rupert Sargent Holland - Historic Boyhoods