A young widower moves with his daughter into a North Carolina mountain town in 1934. He quickly takes up with a young woman with an illegitimate baby. First he must prove himself to her father and her three brothers. He does so first by joining them on a bear hunt and then by designing a clock tower for the small community. Trouble comes when it is revealed that the baby's father is the demented son of a mean clan across the river and they mean to take the child back.
Shortly after the dogs find the bear, the bear swats at and kills one of the dogs. The dogs lifeless body is shown several times, and at one point Kurt Russell appears crouched over checking on the dead dog. The owner of the dogs inquiries about his dogs after the petty fighting among the humans ends.
When the hunters are preparing at the general store for the bear hunt, several hunting dogs are brought together and the owners seem to gleefully let them fight among each other. Honestly, this scene was graphic and long, and more sickening than the dead dog scene which happens later. I don't know if a dog was hurt or died here because we couldn't stand it and fast forwarded several seconds into the fight until they were on the truck.