Early Experiences.
As I promised to write something of my early experience at trapping
and hunting, I will begin by saying that I am now living within one
mile of where I was born sixty years ago (this was written in 1904),
and that I began my trapping career by first trapping rats in my
father's grist mill with the old figure four squat trap. I well
remember the many war dances that I had when I could not make the
trap stay set; but I did not trap long inside the mill for father
also ran a blacksmith shop and always kept a good man to do the work
in the shop. I was soon coaxing the smith to make me a steel trap,
which he did. I now began catching muskrats along the tail race and
about the mill dam, but the spring on my trap was so stiff that when
I found the trap sprung or found game in it, I was obliged to bring
the trap to the house and have some one older than I to set it. Then
I would carry it back to the creek and set it. Well this was slow
work and I was continually begging the blacksmith to make me more
traps with weaker springs so I could set them myself. After much
coaxing he made me three more which I was able to set and then the
muskrats began to suffer. Let me say at that time a muskrat skin was
worth more than a mink skin.
Boys, I was like a man in public office, the more of it they have,
the more they want. So it was with me in regard to the traps, but I
could not coax the blacksmith to make any more. An older brother came
to my aid in this way: he told me to go to town and see the
blacksmith there and see if I could not sell some charcoal to him for
traps, and he, (my brother) would help me burn the coal. Now this
burning the coal was done by gathering hemlock knots from old rotten
logs and piling them up and covering them like potato holes, leaving
a hole open at the bottom to start the fire. After the fire was well
started the hole was closed and the knots smoldered for several days.
Well, the plan worked and by the operation I became the possessor of
five more traps. By this time the vicinity of the mill dam and race
was no longer large enough to furnish trapping grounds, and I
ventured farther up and down the stream and took in the coon and mink
along with the muskrat.
[Illustration: WOODCOCK, WIFE, SISTER-IN-LAW, RESIDENCE AND HIS DOG
MACK.]
We had a neighbor, Washburn by name, who was considered a great
trapper, for he could now and then catch a fox. As time passed by, I
began to have a great desire to get on an equal with Mr. Washburn and
catch a fox. I began to urge him to allow me to go with him to see
how he set his trap, and after a long time coaxing, he granted my
request. I found what everyone of today knows of the chaff bed set.
You may now know that it was not long before I had a bed made near a
barn that stood well back in the field, and after much worry and many
wakeful nights I caught a fox and I thought myself Lord Jonathan. As
time went by, and by chance I learned that by mixing a goodly part of
hen manure with plenty of feathers in it, and mixing it with the
chaff, it was a great improvement on chaff alone. Next I learned of
the well known water set. However, I perhaps set different from the
most of trappers in making this set. Well as all trappers learn from
long years of experience, so have I, and those old-fashioned sets are
like the squat traps, not up-to-date. I will now drop the trapping
question for a time and tell you how I killed my first deer.
Just outside of the clearing on father's farm and not more than fifty
rods from the house was a wet place, such as are known to these parts
as a "bear wallow." This wet place had been salted and was what is
called a "salt lick." In those days it was not an uncommon thing to
see six or eight deer in the field any morning during the summer
season--the same as you will see them in parts of California today.
It was not an uncommon thing for my older brother to kill a deer at
this lick any morning or evening, but that was not making a nimrod of
me. I would beg father to let me take the gun (which was an old
double barreled flintlock shot gun) and watch the lick. As I was only
nine years old, they would not allow me to have the gun, so I was
obliged to steal it out when no one was in sight, carry it to the
barn and then watch my opportunity and "skipper" from the barn to the
lick. All worked smoothly and I got to the lick all right. It was
toward sundown and I had scarcely poked the gun through the hole in
the blind and looked out when I saw two or three deer coming toward
the lick. I cocked the old gun and made ready but about this time I
was taken with the worst chill that any boy ever had and I shook so
that I could scarcely hold the gun to the peep hole. It was only a
moment when two of the deer stepped into the lick, and I took the
best aim I could under the condition, and pulled the trigger. Well of
all the bawling a deer ever made, I think this one did the worst, but
I did not stop to see what I had done but took across the field to
the house at a lively gait, leaving the gun in the blind.
The folks heard the shot and saw me running for the house at
break-neck speed (this of course was the first that they knew I was out
with the gun). My older brother came to meet me and see what the
trouble was. When I told him what I had done, he went with me to the
lick and there we found a fair-sized buck wallowing in the lick with
his back broken, one buck shot (or rather one slug, for the gun was
loaded with pieces cut from a bar of lead); one slug had struck and
broken the spine and this was the cause of the deer bawling so loud
as this was the only one that hit.
The old shotgun was now taken from its usual corner in the kitchen
and hung up over the mantle piece above the big fire place and well
out of my reach. This did not stop my hunting. We had a neighbor who
had two or three guns and he would lend me one of them. I would hide
away hen eggs and take them to the grocery and trade them for powder
and shot. Of course the man who owned the gun got the game, when I
chanced to kill any, for I did not dare to carry it home. It was not
long until father found that I was borrowing Mr. Abbott's gun, and he
thought that if hunt I would, it would be better that I use our own
and then he would know when I was out with it. He took the old
flintlock to the gunsmith and had it fixed over into a cap lock, and
now I was rigged out with both gun and traps.
I will now tell you about the first bear that I killed. I was about
thirteen years old, and it was not so common a thing for one to kill
a bear in those days as it is now (1904), for strange as it may seem,
bears are far more plentiful here today than they were at that time.
Two of my brothers and three or four of the neighbors went into the
woods about twelve miles and bought fifty acres of land. There was no
one living within six or seven miles of the place. They cleared off
four or five acres and built a good log fence around it. They also
built a small barn and cabin. Each spring they would drive their
young cattle out to this place, stay a few days and plant a few
potatoes, and some corn. About once a month it was customary to go
over to this clearing and hunt up the cattle and bring them to the
clearing and salt them, then have a day or two of trout fishing,
watch licks and kill a deer or two, jerk the meat and have a general
good time.
I was allowed to go on one of these expeditions, and the first night
the men watched one or two licks and one of the men killed a deer,
but I had to stay in camp that night with a promise that I should
watch the second night.
During the first night we heard wolves howl away upon the hills. The
next morning the men talked very mysteriously about the wolves and
said that it would not be safe to watch the licks that night, that no
deer would come to the licks as long as the wolves were around. I
took it all in and said nothing, but was determined to watch a lick
that night. Finally one of the men, John Duell by name, said that I
could watch the lick that he had and he would stay in camp. The one
that I was to watch was only a short distance from the clearing. When
the sun was about one-half hour high, I took the old shot gun, this
time loaded with genuine buck shot and climbed the Indian ladder to
the scaffold which was built about twenty feet from the ground in a
hemlock tree.
I sat quiet until sundown and no deer came. I thought I would tie the
gun in the notches in the limbs, which brought the gun in proper
range to kill the deer in the lick, should it come after dark. I got
one string tied around the barrel and the limb when a slight noise to
my left caused me to look in that direction and I saw a dark object
standing in the edge of the little thicket, which I took to be a
black creature I had seen down near the clearing when I came to the
lick. My thoughts were that I would tie the breech of the gun fast to
the limb, and then I would climb down and stone the animal away, so I
went on tying the gun fast. On looking up I saw that the supposedly
black heifer had turned out to be a black bear, and that it was going
to go above the lick and not into it. My knife was out in an instant
and the next moment I had the strings that held the gun cut. I raised
it carefully to my face and about this time the bear stopped, turned
his head around and looked back in the direction he had come. This
was my chance, and I fired both barrels at his head and shoulders,
and immediately there was a snorting, snarling, rolling and tumbling
of the bear, but the maneuvers of the bear was no comparison to the
screams and shouts that came from me. I was still making more noise
than a band of Indians when Mr. Duell arrived on the scene and took
in the situation. The other men who were watching other licks thought
I had surely been attacked by the wolves by the unearthly yell I was
making and the whole party were soon on the ground. The bear was soon
dressed and the men gave me the cognomen of the "The Great Hunter of
Kentucky" and so ended the killing of my first bear.
I am still in hopes to take the pelts from one or two this fall and
winter and later, I will tell of some of the incidents I have seen
and experienced while trapping and hunting among them. Perhaps, how a
brother of mine got a tenderfoot to ride the carcass of a deer down a
steep and hard frozen mountain when there was about two inches of
snow on would be interesting.