26 FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER. 



the old flintlock to the gunsmith and had it fixed over into a cap 

 lock, and now I was rigged out with both gun and traps. 



I will now tell you about the first bear that I killed. I was 

 about thirteen years old, and it was not so common a thing for 

 one to kill a bear in those days as it is now (1904), for strange 

 as it may seem, bears are far more plentiful here today than they 

 were at that time. 



Two of my brothers and three or four of the neighbors went 

 into the woods about twelve miles and bought fifty acres of land. 

 There was no one living within six or seven miles of the place. 

 They cleared off four or five acres and built a good log fence 

 around it. They also built a small barn and cabin. Each spring 

 they would drive their young cattle out to this place, stay a few 

 days and plant a few potatoes, and some corn. About once a 

 month it was- customary to go over to this clearing and hunt up 

 the cattle and bring them to the clearing and salt them, then have 

 a day or two of trout fishing, watch licks and kill a deer or two, 

 jerk the meat and have a general good time. 



I was allowed to go on one of these expeditions, and the first 

 night the men watched one or two licks and one of the men killed 

 a deer, but I had to stay in camp that night with a promise that 

 I should watch the second night. 



During the first night we heard wolves howl away upon the 

 hills. The next morning the men talked very mysteriously about 

 the wolves and said that it would not be safe to watch the licks 

 that night, that no deer would come to the licks as long as the 

 wolves were around. I took it all in and said nothing, but was 

 determined to watch a lick that night. Finally one of the men, 

 John Duell by name, said that I could watch the lick that he had 

 and he would stay in camp. The one that I was to watch was 

 only a short distance from the clearing. When the sun was about 

 one-half hour high, I took the old shot gun, this time loaded with 

 genuine buck shot and climbed the Indian ladder to the scaffold 

 which was built about twenty feet from the ground in a hemlock 

 tree. 



I sat quiet until sundown and no deer came. I thought I 

 would tie the gun in the notches .in the limbs, which brought 



