24 FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER. 



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 t 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 bee? 

 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 



