My First Real Trapping Experience.
When I was about eighteen, I received a letter from a man by the name
of Harris, who lived in Steuben County, New York, wherein he stated
that a Mr. Lathrop had suggested me as a suitable party to go with
him to the region known as Black Forest. This section extends through
four counties, the southern part of Potter and Tioga counties, and
northern part of Clinton and Lycoming counties, Pa. Every reader
knows or has heard of the Black Forest region.
This section was and is still (1910) known as a good bear country. I
thought it strange that Mr. Lathrop, a man of much note as a hunter,
would recommend me, merely a boy, to go with Mr. Harris and into a
region like the Black Forest. As Mr. Lathrop lived about four miles
from our place I lost no time in going there to learn who this Mr.
Harris was. I was informed that he was an old hunter and trapper
about eighty years old and that he wanted a partner more for a
companion than a hunter or trapper. Mr. Lathrop had met Mr. Harris
while on a fishing tour on the Sinnamahoning waters during the summer
and said that he knew nothing of Mr. Harris otherwise than what he
saw of him at this meeting and to all appearances he was a fine old
gentleman. I showed the letter to father and asked what I should do
about it and he replied that he thought I could spend my time to a
better advantage in school, but he did not say that I could not go
with Mr. Harris. I therefore wrote him that I would be ready at the
time mentioned which was the twentieth of October.
Mr. Goodsil, the gunsmith in town, had been at work for some time on
a new gun for me. Now that I was going into the woods to hunt in
earnest, I was at the gun shop nearly every day, urging Mr. Goodsil
to finish my gun which he did and in plenty of time. After I got my
gun the days seemed like weeks and the weeks like months. I was
constantly in fear that Mr. Harris would not come. But promptly at
the time set, in the evening just before sundown, a man with a one
horse wagon loaded with bear traps and other traps of smaller size
and with one of the worst old rack-of-bones of a horse that I had
ever seen, drove up to father's place, stopped and inquired if Mr.
Woodcock lived there. I immediately asked if he was Mr. Harris, as I
had already guessed who the man was. He replied that he was and said
that he took it that I was the lad who was going with him.
Mr. Harris said that "often an old horse and a colt" worked well
together and that we would make a good team. While we were putting
his horses away I asked him what he intended to do with the old horse
and he replied that he brought him along so that if we got stuck he
could hitch him on and help out. The other horse was a fine horse and
I was at a loss to know what Mr. Harris meant.
During the evening I thought father and Mr. Harris talked on every
other subject rather than hunting but I managed to put in a few
questions now and again as to what we were to do when we arrived at
the great Black Forest.
Mr. Harris was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a long beard nearly
as white as snow. We were up early the next morning and on our way
before daylight. Our route was over the road known as the Jersey
Shore turnpike but after the first four miles we went through an
unbroken wilderness for twenty miles, save only one house, then known
as the Edcomb Place, now called Cherry Springs. The next place, ten
miles farther on, was a group of four or five shacks called Carter
Camp, but known now as Newbergen. This was in the year 1863 and the
conditions over this road are the same today only the large timber
has been mostly cut away and there is no one living at Cherry
Springs. Five miles farther on we came to Oleana, where there was a
hotel and store, owned by Henry Anderson, a Norwegian, who came to
this country as the private secretary of Ole Bull, the great
violinist, and it was here where the much talked of Ole Bull Castle
was built.
Beg pardon, I guess I am getting off the trap line. We stopped at the
hotel for the night and the next morning purchased supplies
sufficient to last during the entire campaign, consisting of lard,
pork, flour, corn meal, tea, coffee, rice, beans, sugar and the
necessary salt, pepper, etc. I remember well when Mr. Harris ordered
fifty pounds of beans and asked me if I thought that would do? I
replied that I thought it would. In my mind I wondered what we would
do with all those beans. But now I wish to say to the man going into
camp on a long hunting and trapping campaign, don't forget the beans
as they are bread and meat.
We are now within about ten or twelve miles of where we intended to
camp, which was at the junction of the Bailey and Nebo Branches of
Young Woman's Creek. It was about the middle of the afternoon of the
second day we were out and Mr. Harris said that here would be a good
place to build the camp. We got the horses out as soon as we could
and Mr. Harris picked out a large rock; one side had a straight,
smooth side and was high and broad enough for one end of the shanty
and there was a fine spring close by. Mr. Harris pointed to the rock
and said that there we had one end of our camp already as well as a
good start towards the fire place.
He told me to begin the cutting of logs for the other two sides and
the other end. We cut the logs a suitable size to handle well and
about twelve and fourteen feet long. Mr. Harris did the planning
while I did the heavy part of the work.
That night we slept under a hemlock tree and were up the next morning
and had breakfast before daylight and ready for the day's work. We
could see scuds of clouds away off in the southwest which Mr. Harris
said did not show well for us. He had brought a good crosscut saw and
it was not long until we had logs enough cut to put up the sides,
about four feet high and logs for one end. We hauled the logs all up
with the horse so they would be handy. Then we began the work of
notching and putting up the logs.
About noon a drizzling rain started and kept it up all the afternoon.
We covered our provisions and blankets the best we could to keep them
dry and continued to work on the camp. We got the body up, the
rafters and a part of the roof on. We put up a ridge roof as Mr.
Harris said it would not be necessary to have the sides quite so high
with a steep ridge roof. We got our supplies under shelter and had a
dry place to sleep that night. It was still raining in the morning
but we continued to work on the camp like beavers all day and we got
shakes split from a pine stub to finish the roof and chinking blocks
to chink between the logs.
The next morning Mr. Harris said that he would go and take the horse
out to a farm house that was about six miles out the turnpike, known
as the Widow Herod Place, or better known as Aunt Bettie. Mr. Harris
said he would go while there was food enough to last the old horse a
day or two until we were ready to use him. Then I knew that the old
horse was doomed to be used for bear bait.
When Mr. Harris started away with the horse he cautioned me not to go
off hunting, but to stick to work on the shanty which I did like a
"nailer." When Mr. Harris returned I had the roof on, the chinking
all in and the gable end boarded up with shakes and all ready to
begin calking and mudding. It was some time in the afternoon when he
got back and after looking over the shack to see what I had done he
said that he thought I had done so well that I was entitled to a play
spell and suggested that we take our guns and go down along the side
of the hill and see if we could kill a deer, remarking that we could
use a little venison if we had it. He told me to go up onto the bench
near the top of the hill while he would take the lower bench and he
would hunt the side hill along down the stream until dark.
Mr. Harris had a single barrel gun with a barrel three or four feet
long which he called Sudden Death, and it weighed twelve or fourteen
pounds. As for me I had my new double barrel gun which I have
mentioned before. We had not gone far until I heard the report of a
gun below me and soon I heard Mr. Harris "ho-ho-hoa," and I hurried
to where the howling came from and found him already taking the
entrails out of a small doe. I suggested to Mr. Harris that we take
the deer down to the creek before we dressed it and that by so doing
we probably could catch a mink or coon with the entrails. He
consented to do so and after we had taken out the entrails Mr. Harris
noticed a fine place to catch a fox or some other animal and pointed
to a large tree that had fallen across the stream.
The tree had broken in two at the bank, on the side of the stream
where we were. The water had swung the trunk of the tree down the
stream until there was a space of three or four feet between the end
of the tree and the bank. Mr. Harris took a part of the offal from
the deer and carried it across to the opposite bank and placed the
remainder on the side where we were. He then placed an old limb for a
drag to the trap at the place where he wanted to set the trap. As we
had no traps with us we went to camp and early the next morning we
took two traps and went to this place and set them.
We put in that day finishing the camp, putting in the door and fixing
the chimney to the fireplace and calking all the cracks between the
logs and mudded tight between the logs and all the joints. Now the
camp being completed we began setting the bear traps. The old horse
was taken onto a chestnut ridge and shot, cut up into small pieces
suitable for bear bait, and hung up in small saplings such as we
could bend down. After the bait was fastened to the tree we let it
spring up so as to keep it out of the reach of any animal until we
had a trap set.
The way Mr. Harris set a bear trap was to build a V shaped pen about
three feet long and about the same in height, place the bait in the
back end of the pen and set the trap in the entrance. We had eleven
bear traps and after they were all set on different ridges where
bears were most likely to travel, we began the work of setting the
small traps which was not a long job, as we had only about forty.
The next morning Mr. Harris said that I had better go down and see if
the traps we had set had been disturbed and he said that he would
rest while I was gone.
When I came in sight of the traps I could see a fox bounding around
in one of the traps. I could see on looking at the trap we had placed
across the creek that the drag had been moved closer to the log but I
could see nothing moving. I cut a stick and killed the fox when I
crossed over to see what was in the other trap and to my disgust
there was a skunk. I was not particularly in love with skunks in
those days, for while they scented just as loud at that time as now
they were vastly lacking in the money value. I took hold of the clog
and carefully dragged the skunk to the creek and sank him in the
water. I now went back to the other side of the creek and set the fox
trap and when I had the trap set the skunk was good and dead. I reset
the trap and took the fox and skunk to camp without skinning. When I
got to camp I found Mr. Harris busy making stretching boards of
different sizes for different animals from shakes that we had left
when covering the roof. Mr. Harris laughed and said that he knew that
we would need them when I got back. The fox and skunk were skinned,
stretched and hung up on the outside of the gable of the shack, and
that was the starting point of our catch of the season.
We set the most of our small traps along the streams for foxes and
mink, taking a few to the ridges to set in likely places to catch a
fox, and at thick laurel patches where we were likely to catch a wild
cat as there was a bounty of $2 on them.
After the small steel traps were set we began building a line of
deadfalls for marten and fisher. After the deadfalls were built we
divided our time between hunting deer and tending the traps.
We caught three bears, two fisher, which were very scarce, as I do
not think that fishers were ever very plentiful in this state, a good
bunch of marten, foxes, four or five wildcats and killed twenty-two
deer. The last days of December Mr. Harris said that we would prepare
to go home as the deer season closed the first of January. Although
the law gave until the fifteenth to get your deer we had dragged the
most of ours up to the Bailey Mill at various times. We got all those
around the mill and sent them to Jersey Shore by freight teams to the
railroad, then shipped them to New York. We got 15 cents for saddles
and 10 cents for the whole deer.
Mr. Harris had brought an auger with him so that he could make a
sleigh to go home with and from birch saplings we made one and on the
thirteenth of January I went and got the horse. He was as fat as a
pig and felt like a colt. We hitched him up to the sleigh and got our
stuff up to the Bailey Mill where we loaded the wagon onto the sleigh
and piled on the furs and the rest of our outfit and early on the
morning of the fourteenth we started for home. This ended my first
real experience as a hunter and trapper.
I received two or three letters from Mr. Harris, the last one in
which he stated that he was not feeling very well and I never heard
from him again.