Throwback Thursday: Holt Collier, America's Greatest Bear Hunter

Photos courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Born into slavery, Collier's legend eclipses that of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett combined.

The American frontier produced several legendary bear hunters, two of the most famous being Daniel Boone (1734-1820) and David “Davy” Crockett (1786-1836). But one particular hunter, Holt Collier, is credited with killing more bears than Boone and Crockett combined. During his long life, Collier and his excellent pack of hounds took more than 3,000 black bears in the swamplands of the South.

Born a black slave in Jefferson County Mississippi in 1846, as a boy Collier was sent to Washington County to work on the Plum Ridge Plantation, where his job was training the horses and dogs. And during that time, he was trusted with a muzzleloading shotgun and told to shoot any wild animal that was edible enough to help feed himself and his fellow slaves. He became such a proficient hunter that he learned to shoot both right and left-handed, and killed his first black bear at the age of ten.

Collier was offered an education during his early years—the three “Rs” of readin, writin, and ‘rithmetic—but didn’t take to it. His mind, it seems, was always on the swamps, thinking about the many game animals living there and how to hunt them: white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and of course, black bears.

Four years later, now in his mid-teens, Collier ran away from the plantation to join his master and his master’s son (Howell Hines and young Thomas Hines), who were off fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

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