Will Palmer, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina
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Will Palmer, 69 years old, was from Cataloochee, in Haywood County, North Carolina. He had some grade school education and worked as a farmer.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
Well, about nineteen years ago me and William Stafford from Tennessee took a notion we’d go out and look for some bear sign, we located the big bear and found he, where he was using and decided we’d come back and get some dogs and men and go catch him, so we started early next morning with our dogs, gun, men, and me and Mister Steve Woody went on the stand, and they jumped the bear and the bear come to the stand where we was at, and I gave him two good shots, and the bear run off down under the mountain a little and squatted down by a big balsam, old Uncle Steve Woody says “I’ll go around down thisaway below him and you go down in on him,” so I run, went down right in on him, I give him another shot, the bear then just rolled right down on Uncle Steve Woody and was about to catch him, Uncle Steve hollered “oh lord, shoot, Will, shoot,” and pretty soon then there was one of the little dogs hemmed the bear and turned him away from Uncle Steve Woody and turned the bear right off up towards me, come walking off up the hill and I fell to shooting him, I shot him ten times then before I killed him, and when he went down on his face dead, Mister Woody come up to me and says “give me that gun, I want to blow his brains out,” I gave him the gun and he stepped up and put the gun right agin his head and fired and says “I’ll kill you,” well, there was about a dozen men in the bunch, we carried the bear in, took him to the scales and weighed him, he weighed four hundred and seventy-five pound, and we brought him back then, dressed him, and divided him up, I believe that’s about all I know about that.
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Well, when we got the bear killed, we wanted to get our men all together, we fired our guns for signals to gather them up, and William Stafford said “old Uncle Steve Woody wouldn’t be any happier when he entered the gates of heaven.”
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Well, Turkey George Palmer was noted as a great hunter, bear hunter, killed lots of bear, so me and him, we decided to go to his traps one day, and it got a big bear in the trap and he’d come off down to the open woods, he, so we was going to the trap and we went to jump across a little swampy dreen and jumped right into the old bear’s face, the bear was hung on the laurel by the grabs, and George raised up with his Winchester and fired and he never touched a hair on that bear, I said “George, steady PRON study yourself agin a sapling there and kill him,” so George, he steadied hisself agin the sapling and cut down and just busted that bear’s head open, so we dressed, we dressed the bear and carried him in home.