Sheep and hogs are their favorite prey, especially the latter, for bears seem to have a special relish for pork.

Twice I have known a black bear kill cattle.
Once the victim was a bull which had got mired, and which the bear deliberately proceeded to eat alive, heedless of the bellows of the unfortunate beast.

On the other occasion, a cow was surprised and slain among some bushes at the edge of a remote pasture.

In the spring, soon after the long winter sleep, they are very hungry, and are especially apt to attack large beasts at this time; although during the very first days of their appearance, when they are just breaking their fast, they eat rather sparingly, and by preference the tender shoots of green grass and other herbs, or frogs and crayfish; it is not for a week or two that they seem to be overcome by lean, ravenous hunger.

They will even attack and master that formidable fighter the moose, springing at it from an ambush as it passes--for a bull moose would surely be an overmatch for one of them if fronted fairly in the open.