HUNTING" AND TRAPPING IN CAMERON COUNTY. 153 



an extra lunch, did you?" When I told him I had the extra 

 lunch, and also a bottle of tea (Bill being a great hand for tea). 

 Well, said Bill, "then we are all right, once more." We now 

 hung the deer saddles up, and went back after the bear. After 

 setting the bear trap again, .as Bill did not have time after he 

 had killed the bear, we started to carry the bear to camp whole. 

 We soon found it too heavy to carry that way, so skinned it and 

 hung up the foreparts and took the skin and hindquarters. 



The next morning, we went back after the deer. We went 

 to where Bill had left the fore parts of the deer; then we went 

 to where the fore parts of the bear were left, intending to take 

 them as far as where the deer saddles were and leave them there, 

 and take the deer saddles to camp. When we got to where the 

 bear meat had been left, we found that a cat had been there, 

 and filled his shirt on bear meat. It was not far to where we 

 had a steel trap setting. I told Bill to go on slowly with the 

 deer meat, and I would go and get the trap and set it for the 

 cat. Bill said that he thought that would be the right thing to 

 do, as there was a two dollar bounty on wild cats. He said we 

 could carry the pelt of the cat a great deal easier than we could 

 tote the beat meat; he thought that the cat skin and the bounty 

 would even things up for the bear meat. 



I soon had the trap set for the cat, ;and then hurried on to 

 catch Bill. We went to camp with the deer and the next morning 

 we took the bear and deer saddles to Emporium and shipped them 

 to New York. The distance that we toted those saddles must 

 have been ten or twelve miles. Say boys, won't a man do more 

 hard work to get thirty cents out of a coon skin, or a saddle of 

 venison, or bear, than he would to get thirty dollars in some other 

 way? As it had been three or four days since we had been over 

 a good part of the trap line, we now got back to regular business, 

 each one taking up his line of traps. Each night when he came 

 to camp, we would have some kind of pelts to stretch, either two 

 or three coon, a mink or two, as many more fox, with now and 

 then a marten. It would take the evening to stretch the pelts 

 and tell our day's experience just what particular trap we got that 

 or this fox in, or that mink or coon; just how clever some shy 



