CHAPTER III

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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.

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