A YOUNG TRAPPER'S EXPERIENCE. 



By JOHN P. HUTCHENS.* 



My earliest recollections are of the forest. My father was 

 an experienced hunter and trapper, and when I was but five 

 years of age I accompanied him on one of his expeditions into 

 the great Maine wilderness in search of game and fish. I 

 have a dim recollection on that occasion of hooking on to a 

 very large fish, and of being unable, with my slender strength, 

 to get him into the boat in which I was seated. This childish 

 disappointment made quite an impression upon me, and I used 

 anxiously to look forward to the time when I should be a 

 match for any of the beasts of the woods, or the fish in the 

 waters. 



I was sufficiently old to endure the hardships of forest life, 

 when my father took up his abode on the southern border of 

 the great New York forest, sometimes called " John Brown's 

 Tract." There we prosecuted the business of trapping in 

 earnest. We stretched a line of traps nearly forty miles in 

 length directly into the heart of the wilderness, over rivers, 

 mountains, lakes, and plains ; and along this line we dili- 

 gently trapped the otter, fisher, marten, mink, muskrat, and 

 raccoon. 



To give an idea of the management of a practical trapper 

 in the woods, I will describe in detail the operations by which 

 we subsisted, and took our game while in the woods. 



As our line of traps was about forty miles in length, and 

 of course involved a journey of eighty miles to and from our 

 home, our outfit became at once a very important considera- 



* A member of the Oneida Community. 



