CHAPTER II. 

 Early Experiences. 



I promised to write something of my early experience 

 at trapping and hunting, I will begin by saying that I 

 am now living within one mile of where I was born 

 sixty years ago (this was written in 1904), and that I 

 began my trapping career by first trapping rats in my father's 

 grist mill with the old figure four squat trap. I well remember 

 the many war dances that I had when I could not make the trap 

 stay set; but I did not trap long inside the mill for father also 

 ran a blacksmith shop and always kept a good man to do the 

 work jn the shop. I was soon coaxing the smith to make me a 

 steel trap, which he did. I now began catching muskrats along 

 the tail race and about the mill dam, but the spring on my trap 

 was so stiff that when I found the trap sprung or found game 

 in it, I was obliged to bring the trap to the house and have some 

 one older than I to set it. Then I would carry it back to the 

 creek and set it. Well this was slow work and I was continually 

 begging the blacksmith to make me more traps with weaker springs 

 so I could set them myself. After much coaxing he made me 

 three more which I was able to set and then the muskrats began 

 to suffer. Let me say at that time a muskrat skin was worth 

 more than a mink skin. 



Boys, I was like a man in public office, the more of it they 

 have, the more they want. So it was with me in regard to the 

 traps, but I could not coax the blacksmith to make any more. An 

 older brother came to my aid in this way : he told me to go to 

 town and see the blacksmith there and see if I could not sell 

 some charcoal to him for traps, and he, (my brother) would help 

 me burn the coal. Now this burning the coal was done by gather- 

 ing hemlock knots from old rotten logs and piling them up and 

 covering them like potato holes, leaving a hole open at the bot- 



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