5o FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AN;> TRAPPER. 



spent, sleeping, cock'ng and eating until it was again time to go 

 to the licks, as the men wished to get another deer so as to have 

 plenty of venison to take home with them. When the men were 

 about ready to start to their watching places, one of them inquired 

 of me what I would do as there was no further use of watching 

 the lick where I had killed the deer, as it was blooded from the 

 deer I had killed. 



The man who had watched the lick nearest the camp, and quite 

 an old man, said that I could watch the lick that he had watched 

 and he would stay in camp. (The men now acknowledged me as 

 a thoroughbred hunter, you see.) Well, I was getting there pretty 

 lively, I thought, when an old hunter would give up his lick to 

 me, when only the evening before none of the men thought that 

 I was up to watching a lick at any price. 



I was pleased to again have a place to watch. Taking some 

 punk wood to make a little smoke to keep off the gnats and 

 mosquitoes, I started for the lick and climbed the Indian ladder 

 to the scaffold, built in a hemlock tree. 



I had barely got fixed in shape to begin to watch when I 

 chanced to look towards a small ravine that came down from the 

 hill a few yards to my left and saw what I took to be a black 

 yearling steer. I will add that the woods in that locality were 

 covered with a rank growth of nettles, cow cabbage and other 

 wood's feed, and people would drive their young cattle off into 

 that locality to run during the summer. I thought I would get 

 down from the scaffold and throw stones at it and drive it off 

 lest it might come into the lick after dark and I might take it 

 for a deer and shoot it. 



As I started to climb down I again looked in the direction of 

 the steer, and this time I saw what I thought was the largest 

 bear that ever traveled the woods. He had left the ravine and 

 was walking with his head down, going up the hill and past the 

 lick. I cocked both barrels of the gun and raised it carefully to 

 my shoulder, and, breaking a little dry twig I had in my hand 

 caused the bear to stop and turn his head around so as to look 

 down the hill. This was my time so I leveled on his head and 

 shoulders and let go both barrels of the gun at once. 



