2 4 



torn 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. 



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 morn- 

 ing 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 01 even- 

 ing, 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 



