CHAPTER IX. 

 Bears in 1870, To-Day Other Notes. 



ONE not familiar with the conditions of a wild woods life 

 would naturally think that bears would diminish in propor- 

 tion to deer and wild animals. However, this does not 

 s-eem to be the case. Forty years ago, trappers of bear were 

 not as numerous as at the present time. People at that time, 

 hunted more for profit than sport and their forte was the slaughter 

 of deer. In those days it was nothing uncommon to see sleigh loads 

 of deer pass every day on the way to market. 



After the first tracking snows of the season, the deer killed in 

 this county (Potter) were hauled by team thirty and forty miles 

 to the nearest railroad station and shipped to New York and Phila- 

 delphia but this is not what we wish to write of. We only speak of 

 this to show that the man of forty years ago was of the trail, 

 rather than the trap line. 



Forty years ago, the writer was acquainted with nearly every 

 hunter and trapper who made a business of hunting or trapping 

 in this and adjoining counties. Men who made a business of trap- 

 ping bear as well as hunting deer could be counted on the fingers 

 of your hands, and the grounds on which they operated were the 

 counties of Clinton, McKean, Cameron and Potter. 



The names of these men who perhaps were the most interested 

 in bear trapping in the section above mentioned were, Leroy Lyman, 

 Horatio Nelson, Lanson Stephan, Isaac Pollard, Ezery Prichard and 

 one or two others, including the writer. 



The traps mostly used were bear pens and deadfalls. It was 

 considered a fairly good day's work for two men to build one 

 good bear pen or two good deadfalls. Most bear trappers, how- 

 ever, had a few steel bear traps for it may be said that nearly 

 every country blacksmith knew how to make a bear trap and how 



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