S62 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 12, igoo. 
Gens des Bois. 
N't, _ 
V. — EUjat SlmoDck. 
Of all the old pioneers who link an age of simplicity 
and sturdy strength to the twentieth century with its key- 
note of compromise, I know of no finer example or one 
more worthy of immortalization by the pen of some great 
writer than Elijah Simonds, the Adirondack trapper. Had 
Simonds lived in Revolutionary days his name would no 
doubt appear on the honor roll of American history — 
not perhaps as a great leader of men, but in the more 
fascinating guise of a scout, a spy, or a crafty tactician 
in connnand of a handful of rangers, harassing the enemy 
in a thoroughly practical way dnd without needless ex- 
posure, though ready when occasion demanded to run any 
risk or make any sacrifice to advance his cause. 
Simonds' features are of the Revolutionary type, clean 
cut and strongly chiseled. The nose is Roman and 
dominates the face, particularly the part between the 
chin and nose. The eyes, though mild, are shrewd and 
sarcastic. 
Returning from a successful hunt one night, T stopped 
to leave the old hunter a tribute of venison cut from a 
deer that had been raised on one of his favorite trapping 
grounds, and accepted Simonds' invitation to stop to 
supper. During the evening I learned something of his 
life. 
First Teapptog Ezpeviences. 
"My father and his father before him were born in 
Rockingham or Charlestown, in what was then New 
Hampshire, but now Vermont State," said Simonds. 
"They crossed Lake Champlain on the ice one winter and 
came back into the Adirondacks on snowshoes. Reach- 
ing the rocky knob which is called Mount Discovery, they 
climbed it, and from the summit looked up the valley of 
the Boquet River and over the site of the present village 
of Elizabethtown. The country was so pleasing that they 
called the valley 'Pleasant Valley,' and it has been called 
that ever since. On the southern edge my grandfather 
Ttlade a clearing, on what is now known as Simonds' Hill, 
'way back in seventeen hundred and something. Where 
the Valley House now stands my father once caught a 
white saple, and he killed a moose no great distance off 
on the other side of Lewis. 
"I was born on Simonds' Hill in the town of Elizabeth- 
town in 1821, and was named Elijah for my grandfather. 
1 can remember him, though I was only a little lad when 
he died. I began my trapping on Simonds' Hill before 1 
was eight years old, more than seventy years ago, and I've 
been trapping ever since. 
"At eight I caught my first foxes. When I was ten I 
killed two deer. The spring after that I shot a bear, and 
then I thought I was quite a hunter. The next year I 
ketched two bear off by myself in the woods, and in com- 
pany with my brother I got five more. My brother was 
older than I, but he depended on me mostly to do the 
trapping. 
In the Pine Woods Couotry^ 
"When I was seventeen I went to Michigan and trapped 
one winter and spring. I went to Detroit and then fifty 
miles west to Spring Harbor, near Jackson. There were 
only two or three houses there then, and I could have had 
land for fifty cents an acre that is worth $100 now, 
but" — and Simonds srniled — "I don't care much about 
land when I am catching rats and foxes. 
"I've been five times to Michigan and Wisconsin — Lake 
Superior and that way — but then I never liked it as well 
as the Adirondacks. 'Taint in the shape that the Adiron- 
dacks are. You can go ten or twenty miles in flat pine 
woods and half as much again in a swamp — there ain't 
any diversity about the country like there is here. Then, 
when you get there, game ain't more plenty. I've seen 
more saple sign here in two hours than I've seen there in 
a day. 
"In that country there's some beaver, mink, muskrat and 
other fur, and plenty of deer — at least for a spell they were 
plenty. 
"In Michigan I first learned to trap for otter. I and my 
Uncle caught eight that first trip. We trapped for otter 
in the spring and in fall, and in winter for foxes and 
saple. When the snow is deep, and there is a hard 
crust, is the best time. Beechnut years about all 
the wild varmints are in the hardwood timber. Foxes 
eat beechnuts, and so do saple. I don't know anything 
that won't. Before they shuck out, bears climb the trees 
and break off the limbs and bend them in so that they can 
get the nuts. They break limbs as big as my arm that 
way. 
"We caught two or three hundred rats, a lot of mink, 
besides the otter, and I ketched twenty-two beaver alone. 
I came back here, and the next spring after that I went 
over to Loon Lake in Franklin county and trapped seven 
otter, not counting one I got over here on Black Mountain. 
My last otter were caught three years ago over by Lewis. 
I got three then. I am going over by Poke-o'-Moonshine 
in a few days to try my luck again, as they say there are 
some otter there now. 
"The last time I went to Michigan I went to Hough- 
ton Lake, near St. Ignace, and packed over toward Lake 
Superior eleven days with my uncle's boy. Once in a 
while we saw a bear track, or a deer track, and once in a 
while some fisher or saple sign, but that was all. You 
can see more game within three miles of here than 
anywhere in that country. The Adirondacks is the best 
natural game country that a man could find anywheres. 
Hooting fof Market, 
"When I first went to my uncle's cabin at Tupper 
Lake I counted fifty-two deer in sight feeding one night. 
Deer were everywhere. I sent two sleigh loads of venison 
off to the New York market at one time — 102 saddles that 
weighed a good two tons. I sent them to Bennett & 
Brokaw. Broad street, New York, and got nine cents a 
pound for the meat. After that I shipped venison nearly 
every week for ten or twelve years. The last batch I ever 
sent went down in March— must 's' been about 1868 or 
somewheres along there — brought the biggest price. I 
got sixteen cents a pound for that, I think. 
"I first began market-hunting for deer up the Boreas 
River, and on the Branch. I hunted that out, and then 
went to North Elba, and after that to Long Lake, and 
hunted with Helms. 
"I came back here for a while, and in the sixties I and 
my wife went to Tupper Lake and hunted with Graves 
and killed sixty deer or so. x\fterward I built a shanty 
ten miles or so above Raquette Lake,' and didn't come 
home till June. Then I went to the headwaters of the 
Beaver River. I trapped Smith's Lake when old Dr. 
Brandreth used to be in there. He had two log houses, 
and one was always left open for strangers. 
Killed Six Deee at One Place wtt^a a Pistol, 
"Once when I was hunting on the Schroon River 
Branch I shot six deer in one place, and never stirred 
out of my tracks. It was in one of the dry hills along 
the Schroon River Branch. What I call a dry hill is one 
that has been burned over and the evergreens killed off. 
There ain't much if any water on them, 
"This hill had grown up to raspberry bushes, and was a 
great place for deer. The deer were feeding there, and 
1 crawled up back of an old spruce stump and shot the 
six one after another, dropping down back of the stump 
each time to reload. 
"I killed them all with a pistol. It shot forty round 
balls to the pound, and had a 14-inch barrel. I rested 
it on an old root, but I could shoot it off-hand just as 
well. In those days I generally managed to get my game 
any way I shot. Now I can't hardly hit a skunk 3 feet 
away with a pistol. That pistol would smack a deer a 
good deal better than these little small-bore deer rifles. 
At North Elba I shot a deer once with a small-bore rifle 
and it kept ahead of the dogs three hours after that, and 
came back to the same stand. That was on the river 
below Scotts. 
"Hounding there I shot four deer in succession, and a 
fifth deer came down afterward that I shot at. I lost 
that one, though, on account of the bullet hitting an alder 
branch and glancing. 
"I and Draper once at Little Tupper Idlled seventeen 
deer, and over at Corey's Sam Dunning and I got twelve. 
Houoding Disastrous to tbe Deer Supply. 
"I used to hound, but I was foolish then. Now I 
don't. If there had never been a hound in the Adiron- 
dacks the deer would be everywhere now. The deer are 
scarcer now than they were twelve or fifteen years ago, 
and there ain't one deer now where there used to be ten. 
For one thing, they keep on hounding. If there was a 
dozen deer on Raven Hill to-day, they'd take hounds up 
there and to-morrow there wouldn't be one. What deer 
they didn't shoot would be all pegged out, so that even a 
little farm dog could ketch 'em, and between the men 
and dogs, the last one of them would be run into Lake 
Champlain or killed. 
"A man by the name of Martin let two dogs run one 
winter in the woods over by Cold River, and from what 
I saw I presume they killed two hundred deer. Around 
Euba five dogs were let run all winter long on snow, and 
the next year there were no deer in all that country. 
"On one of our hunts I and Draper thought we'd get 
some moose on a crust. He'd brought along a dog, and 
it got away, and it wasn't fifteen minutes before it killed 
six deer. We went up on Nippletop, and he killed more 
deer, and before we got back he had killed seventeen. 
They made bear bait, that's all," added Simonds, re- 
flectively. "We ketched two or three bears with them 
next spring." 
Bear Lore. 
Simonds was interested to hear of the burning of the 
lumber shanties at North Hudson. That he had no love 
for the lumberman was sliown by his comment, "Ought to 
have been burned before they ever went in there." 
"In 1870," said Simonds, "T hunted bears in that coun- 
try. They were as thick there as deer are now. There 
was one place there where the tops of the beech trees 
were broken for a mile. The bears had worn the deepest 
path I ever saw running through a notch back there. It 
was different from a deer's runway, for each bear stepped 
in the foottracks of the one ahead, and went that way 
sometimes for ten rods. I used to set traps for them 
in the places where the bears stepped. Sometimes, of 
course, there was a regular path, but generally it was a 
succession of these foottracks, sunk right down in the 
ground 4 inches or so, as a result of all the bears that had 
traveled over it. 
"I have never yet found out why bears bite trees, un- 
less it is a sign and means something to them. I have 
seen a tree half-eaten through where the bears had a path 
near Lily Pad Pond. They bite spruce and cedar trees 
mostly. 
"I have ketched four or five bears in my lifetime that 
had lost a whole foot in a trap, but mostly it is only 
the claws or a part of the foot. A bear, of course, bites 
his foot off below where the jaws of the trap pinch him, 
because it don't hurt him so much as if he was to bite 
it off above. I have ketched bears by a hind foot, but 
they generally get into the trap forward." 
Devotion in Bears. 
I had heard a report that a boy named Johnny Soper, 
living near Elizabethtown, had an encounter with an old 
bear and two cubs when going after the cows one night, 
and that his dog had killed one of the cubs, and after- 
ward saved the boy by the narrowest kind of a margin 
from the claws of the enraged mother bear. When a 
hunting party was organized next day. the dead cub could, 
not be found, though the tracks of the old bear and 
remaining cub were easily recognized. It was thought 
the old bear had buried the cub somewhere. Simonds 
dissented from this view, saying that he had never known 
a bear to bury anything. "A panther will bury its dead 
and a bear will dig up things," he said. _ "I generally 
bury my bait when setting a trap — they think somethihg 
has hid it, and a bear would rather steal a thing than have 
it given to him. 
"I can tell you sometlung that would indicate bears 
don't bury their cubs. I once caught a cub bear in one 
of my traps, and the old bear puUed it out of the tj-ajp 
trying to save it. She killed the cub doing it, and when I 
found it, it lay there on a log where she l^d left it, 
"Another time when I had a she bear caught in a 
trap a big old he bear tried to get her out, and pulled one 
leg most off doing it, and killed her. 
Bean in Dens. 
"Bears like beechnuts and venison best of anything. 
An old horse makes a pretty good bait. He comes in- 
handy too to carry your traps back where you want 
them, before you make bait of him, 
"Bears most always den up by the 28th of November 
hereabouts, but in warm weather in winter they are apt 
to come out almost any time. I don't know how it is, but 
most all contrive it some way to go in before a storm. 
Their denning up is a curious thing. I think they have 
their dens picked out mostly before they need them, A 
bear will be traveling straight along, and suddenly back 
track forty rods or so and step off to one side, and there 
will be his den. They den up generally among rocks, 
though they will take all kinds of places. 
"I killed two once in a den on a side hill in the King- 
dom, right back of a saw mill that was running, and not 
forty rods from a traveled road. I took the trail on 
a first snow and found them in under a ledge. I had a 
little dog with me, and he brought out the first bear, but 
after I had settled that, the next one was afraid, and 
dasn't come out. 
"I cut a pole and crawled in the den, and poked the 
bear. He'd growl, but wouldn't stir. After a while I got 
tired of poking, and held the pole where I could feel 
the bear, and put my rifle right alongside it and fired and 
killed the bear. I was lucky enough to hit him in a vital 
spot. My gun was a double-barrel rifle, made by Lewis, 
of Troy, and was one of the first double rifles made. 
The Deer's Defective Vision. 
"At North Elba I killed three or four bears, still-hunt- 
ing them like deer. Bears have little, small eyes, but 
they are sharp, and they will see what is going on about 
as quick as anything there is. 
"A deer, on the other hand, doesn't get much benefit 
from his eyesight. Scent counts for everything with 
him. Deer will stand right in a road and look at people 
as long as they don't get* their wind. .1 was going once 
across a little pond twixt Long Lake and Raquette and 
there were five deer feeding in a little open meadow at 
one side. I paddled right around the pond as much as 
half a mile in plain sight, and they never paid any atten- 
tion to me till I got to where the wind carried my scent 
to them. Of course, every hunter knows this. It is the 
same with all animals more or less. In high mountains 
the wind most always blows down hill, and that makes it 
worse for still-hunting. 
"When I was still-hunting at North Elba there were a 
good many panthers there. I've ketched quite a number 
in traps. I killed one once at Moose Pond, and might as 
well as not have had the bounty on two more. She had 
,two little cubs. They were small — just hatched after she 
got in the trap, and were spotted like a leopard with dark 
spots, and kind of striped look. I sent one to the 
Smithsonian Institute in Washington. 
Old-Timera. 
*'I knew Johh Cheney and Tobe Snyder, who used to 
hunt with him over at the Lower Works. They thought 
they owned the hunting country over that way, and they 
didn't like me to come in. They told me I'd better leave, 
but I said I'd got as- good a gun as any of them, and 
stayed. 
"The first time I went to Long Lake there were only 
two families living there, by the name of Plumley and 
Keller. A third man,- Sergeant, got to the shore of the 
lake and died, tired out and worried out from wandering 
round in the woods. The poor fellow 'd been lost. 
One of John Brown's niggers got lost and worried to 
death, you know. When they found .him, he'd pulled his 
compass to bits trying to make it point to suit his idea. 
"Then there was Miss Avery, started to go across 
where Ames lived, and got off the path. They found her ' 
bones up aside a tree where she sat down. I always carry 
a compass with me. There are times when any man will 
get turned around. 
Four Partridges at One Shot. 
"At Tupper lake I once killed four partridges with one 
shot. McLaughlin was rowing me along the shore, and 
they sat on a log at the side. Another time I shot at a 
partridge sitting on a knoll in the woods with a pistol and 
killed it, and when I went up to get it a second partridge 
lay dead 15 feet further on, killed by the same bullet. 
"I only killed two deer with one shot once. That was 
at Moose Pond. They were down next the water, and 
one sank out of sight, while the other lay dead on the 
bank. 
"The wolves and the moose have all gone now, and the 
panthers are about gone. I never caught beaver in this 
country, though when Bartlet died a few years ago, he had 
seven or eight skins. Once I shot a silver gray fox, and 
when I was a boy I trapped a black fox. Two years ago 
I saw another black fox. I've ketched eight or ten bears 
in the last few years in Lewis, though nothing lately. 
Went up the other day and fetched in five or six traps, 
and went out yesterday and set eighteen or twenty skunk 
traps. 
"Guess I've ketched three thousand or four thousand 
foxes. For a few years back I haven't got more than 
fifteen, but before that 1 used to get about a hundred a 
year." 
Simonds is passing, his old age in an ideal home under 
Little Raven Hill, within a few miles of the place where 
he was born, and in touch with the game and fur-bearing 
animals that yet remain. He is still an active and suc- 
cessful trapper, and carries the burden of his seventy-nine 
years so well that he can walk faster and further than 
many much younger men. Something more than a year 
ago he lost one of his thumbs, cut off by a cord by 
which he was leading a cow, and he suffered more or less 
from the injury since. 
To a marked degree he possesses the faculty of making 
himself invisible in the woods, and he does not like much 
hotter to be noticed by men than by the wild creatures he 
