CHAPTER XIV. 

 Hunting and Trapping in Cameron County. 



TT will be remembered that when Mr. Earl (or Bill, as I pre- 

 ferred to call him,) and the writer followed the bear from the 

 Kinzua in McKene County, through Cameron County, that we 

 saw signs of bear, deer, marten and other game quite plentiful 

 in the region of Baley Run, Salt Run and Hunt's Run, and that 

 we concluded to pitch our camp in that quarter. As there were 

 no huckleberries in the vicinity of our homes, we decided to kill 

 two birds with one stone, that was to pick some huckleberries and 

 build our camp for the next season's hunt. 



Accordingly about the last days of July, we took a team and 

 our outfit for camp building and started for Hunt's .Run by way 

 of the Sinnamahoning and Baley Run. At this time the country 

 in that section was an unbroken forest of pine, oak and hemlock 

 with a goon sprinkling of chestnut. As the saying was in those 

 days, "God owned the land in that section," so all we had to do 

 was to go into the woods, select our camp site and proceed to 

 build. (Boys, let me stop long enough to say it is different now- 

 adays ; you must go through a whole lot of red tape and get a 

 permit to camp and the permit only lasts two weeks, when you 

 must get a renewal.) 



The site we selected for our camp was on the left-hand branch 

 of Hunt's Run. We rolled up the usual box log body, about 10 x 14 

 feet. We put up a bridge roof, putting up about four pairs of 

 rafters and then using three or four small cross poles for roof 

 boards. We then peeled hemlock bark, making the pieces about 

 four feet long, which we used for shingles to cover the roof with. 

 After the roof was completed, we felled a chestnut tree which 

 we split into spaults about four feet long. With these we chinked 

 all the cracks between the logs, striking the axe into the logs, close 



141 



