The Bear, by William Faulkner is a short story about a boy named Ike, who goes on two pursuits. The first hunting for a bear named Old Ben and the other the truth of his heritage.

Ike, awaits until he is old enough to go on the hunt with his family and their hunting group. "With Sam Fathers beside him he began his apprenticeship" to become a more skillful hunter. On his first day out in the woods he learns how to be observant and how to prepare himself to shoot. When he kills his first deer, Sam Fathers makes tribal marks on Ike's face with the deer's blood, the mark of a true hunter and the growing of a man. With a compass and a gun of his own, he begins to venture out to learn the land and its ways. At age 13 Ike knew the...