May 2i, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
809 
I have known of several cases where cubs were 
taken from their mothers, and in one instance 
a charge of shot was fired into a bear’s face, but 
in none of these instances did the bear defend 
her cubs as a cat would have defended her kit¬ 
tens. I think the case is about as a noted natu¬ 
ralist, the late Edwin Carter, told me once at 
Breckenridge, Colorado: “Partner, when any¬ 
body meets a grizzly bear someone has got to 
run, and if you do not, he will.” I have never 
seen a grizzly, but my opinion is that if a man 
lives till he is killed by a Maine black bear he 
will be so old as to be past any usefulness. 
As the bear was too heavy for me to handle, 
after cutting his throat I started for the camp. 
My knee had some blood on it, so I rubbed on 
black muck as if I had fallen, and I washed my 
knife handle perfectly clean. 
Rufus had dinner ready, and after eating I 
said: “Now, Rufus, go out and help get my 
bear.” 
“You haven’t got any bear; I looked at your 
knife handle when you came in. I could have 
heard your rifle if you fired.” 
The reason that he did not hear it was that 
I was over the divide. Finally I convinced him 
that I really had a bear and we went out and 
got him skinned and the meat into camp. He 
was a very large bear and very fat, giving us 
a good supply of excellent meat. Rufus had 
brought a ten-quart tin pail on purpose for try¬ 
ing out oil and we made a gallon can of oil bed¬ 
sides some in other dishes. In years when bears 
feed on berries the fat will cool like hog’s lard. 
I have seen it where it could not be told from 
lard. When they feed on beechnuts the fat 
makes oil. This oil is as good as lard for fry¬ 
ing doughnuts or for any other of the uses of 
lard, and only prejudice would keep anyone from 
substituting it. 
“Oct. 9. Sunday. Snowed all day and two 
inches remained on the ground. 
“Oct. 10. Went up Avery Brook to carry 
Rufus, who is going to bait up our Baker Lake 
line. He carried a st<jel trap and promised me 
a beaver. He also carried for the first time his 
ten-inch rifle pistol in the use of which he is 
very expert. He never carries anything when 
we are together, as he prefers that I should do 
the shooting. At the place where I left him I 
set and baited a single trap for mink.” 
It was a bright sunny day, and as the water 
had fallen considerably as I was passing over 
the pool where I had lost the beaver trap on 
Sept. 23, I let the canoe drift. As I leaned over 
the side I thought I could see something white 
swinging slowly deep down in the water. I 
paddled back and, drifting over it again. I saw 
that it was the end of the trap stake, and below 
I could distinguish a dark mass which I thought 
must be my beaver. I had a stout fish line in 
my leather ammunition bag ( pitsonungan ) which 
I wore on my belt, so paddling back again to the 
head of the pool I let the canoe drift side to, and 
leaning over the side I lowered my line and tried 
to hook the dark object that I could see below. 
Several times as I drifted over I tried unsuccess¬ 
fully, but at last I made fast to something. The 
strain on the line was about all it could bear, 
but at length the mass began to rise slowly and 
finally I got it alongside. It was a very large 
beaver, covered with mud and slime. Loaded as 
it was with mud it must have weighed over fifty 
pounds. Just as I had thought, the fork of the 
stake had held in the ring of the trap chain and 
I had seen the cut end of the stake. 
On getting home I skinned the beaver, think¬ 
ing to make a pistol case of the skin, as I sup¬ 
posed that the fur would all slip, as it had been 
under water so long; but on washing it thor¬ 
oughly and stretching it, the fur did not pull 
and it made a perfectly good skin, although it 
had been under water at least seventeen days. 
Beaver skins are stretched in hoops. We take 
two small trees about an inch through at the 
large end and five feet long—spruce if it is to 
be got, if not, cedar—and whittle down a foot 
or more of the large end of each until the two 
flat sides when placed together will be the size 
of one of the original sticks. These ends we 
FIG. 6—BEAVER SKIN STRETCHED ON HOOP. 
bind together tightly by winding with bark, 
usually cedar or elm bark. Then we interlock 
the small ends so as to make a hoop, but we 
do not tie them at first. Then we fasten the 
tail end of the beaver—the tail itself of course 
having been cut off—to the hoop where it is 
spliced, and holding it up we let the skin drop 
down its full length, either loosening or draw¬ 
ing in the lower part of the hoop until the nose 
of the beaver skin will just touch the lower edge 
of the hoop. Then we tie the small ends, know¬ 
ing that our hoop has just the diameter to make 
a round skin. The skin is then sewed in tightly 
all around the hoop by making small holes with 
a knife in the edges of the skin and sewing with 
bark. After this every particle of meat or fat 
is scraped off. Of course in stretching a beaver 
this way there is only one cut made from the 
chin to the root of the tail, the legs being turned 
out and cut off inside at the paws, not split. 
Hoops are made to fit the different sizes of 
beaver. (See Figs. 5 and 6.) 
Our Maine beaver weigh from eight to 
ten pounds for puss beaver up to about forty 
pounds for a very large fully grown beaver, but 
I have bought skins taken on the Columbia River 
which came from much larger beaver and I 
should not doubt that some of those beaver 
weighed more than fifty pounds. 
“Went to the bear trap and found a sable in 
it. We had kept a prop under the pan to pre¬ 
vent catching any small animal, but the last time 
I looked at it, seeing that some animal had been 
troubling the bait, I took the prop out.” 
I worked till probably nearly midnight (my 
watch having stopped weeks before) skinning 
and stretching the beaver and sable. By my 
knife slipping I cut one of my fingers very badly. 
Finding that I could not stop the blood I satu¬ 
rated some oakum with fir balsam from a fir log 
in the wall of the camp, and then opening a large 
fir blister and biting the finger to stop the blood 
I darted it quickly into the balsam and rolled it 
up in the oakum. It pained me so that I did not 
sleep much, but rose early and salted a lot of 
our bear meat. We had found a large butter 
tub at a last year’s lumber camp and I got some 
salt out of one of their old pork barrels. Rufus 
put some new ash hoops on the tub and we had 
let it soak tight. I clarified the pickle, which I 
made in Rufus’ large tin pail, by skimming it 
several times. I cut up about fifty pounds of 
bear meat into pieces weighing from four to six 
pounds and packed them tightly into the tub, 
pouring the pickle over them. Then I cut a 
wide cedar split to fit inside the tub and laid on 
a heavy rock to keep the meat u,nder the pickle. 
Aftef breakfast I started to bait up our line 
west of the camp. Found a live sable in the bear 
trap. I went clear to the end of the line and 
baited up nearly fifty traps. We use about two 
ounces of meat or fish to bait each trap set for 
sable or mink, using a much larger bait for 
fisher. We also scent all our traps with the sub¬ 
stance which comes from the oil glands of the 
beaver. We brought in with us some preserved 
in brandy, but as soon as a beaver is caught we 
prefer to use the fresh. We commonly call this 
“beaver castor,” but it is not the real castor, as 
a beaver, besides the sacks which contain the 
castor (which is solid), has two oil or scent 
sacks just as a male muskrat has in the spring, 
but the beaver of both sexes have them and at 
all seasons. We carry one of these sacks with 
us. It is full of a thick liquid which looks like 
very thick cream. To scent a trap we chew the 
end of a small stick, thrust it into the scent sack 
and place it in the trap. This scent will attract 
every fur-bearing animal which we have in 
Maine. I have seen where a wolf went quite a 
distance out of his course drawn by this scent 
which was at a mink trap. 
On the way home I took out two more sable. 
One of these was the darkest furred one I ever 
saw taken south of the St. Lawrence. I havt 
had much darker ones taken up the Labrador 
