58 FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER. 



before they were ready to start out to the lick we heard a wolf 

 howl away off on the hills and they (the men) put up the wolf 

 scare on me and said that there would be no deer come to the 

 lick so long as wolves were in the neighborhood. I took their 

 stories all in but insisted that I would watch a lick all the same. 

 There was a lick only a few hundred yards from camp, but for 

 some cause deer rarely ever worked it. When they saw that I 

 was going to watch a lick in spite of thunder storms, wolves or 

 all the rest of the excuses that they could make, they finally said 

 that I could watch the lick which I have mentioned and get eaten 

 up by wolves. 



There was a blazed line from camp to the lick and when the 

 men started for the licks that each one had decided on watching, 

 I started to the lick that was given me to watch. 



There was one man left in camp to watch the horses and to 

 keep camp. This man said that when he heard me shoot he would 

 come up and help me bring in the deer. 



. The blind at the lick was a scaffold built up in a tree twenty 

 or thirty feet from the ground. I climbed to the scaffold and 

 placed the old gun in the loops that were fastened to limbs on 

 the tree to give the gun the proper range to kill the deer, should 

 one come to the lick after it was too dark to see to shoot. 



Nothing came round the lick before dark, but as soon as it 

 got dark I could hear animals walking and jumping on all sides 

 of me and one old inquisitive porcupine came up the tree to see 

 what I was doing. He perched himself on a limb not more than 

 two feet from my face and sat there arid chattered his teeth until 

 I could stand it no longer. I took the large powder horn that I 

 had strung over my shoulder with a cord and gave the porcupine 

 a rap on the nose that sent him tumbling down the tree. I re- 

 member well how other animals scampered from under the tree 

 when the porcupine tumbled down. At that time I wondered what 

 it all was, but later I learned that all these animals were only 

 flying squirrels, rabbits and porcupines, but I imagined that the 

 noises were made by anything but squirrels and rabbits. 



Well, about eleven o'clock I heard something coming towards 

 the lick with a steady tread like that of a man and again I was 



