TRAPPING THE THREE RIVER ZONE 
AN AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT OF TRAPPING LIFE ON THE HEAD¬ 
WATERS OF THE ATHABASCA IN NORTHERN ALBERTA —Part Five 
K NOWLES and I spent most of the 
summer at the Baptiste and Atha¬ 
basca Ferries. After the close of 
the trapping season Knowles’ 
father had come out to the Athabasca and 
we boys bought the outfit from Jim Hind- 
marsh, so in consequence we had the two 
ferries to look after. Knowles spent a 
good part of his time on the trail, freight¬ 
ing for Rapelje, and his father and I 
tended the ferryboats at rare intervals, 
whenever a traveler happened along. 
As fall drew nigh I saw that young 
Knowles wasn’t very anxious about trap¬ 
ping another winter, so we put the whole 
outfit together and sold everything but 
traps, rifles, etc., to Mr. Rapeje, and he 
moved from the Baptiste back to the 
Athabasca. Knowles went to town and I 
took my outfit up to the Ninety Mile 
House and threw in with a fur trader 
by name of Theodore Walters. 
Walters was a native of Michigan but 
came to Canada when but a young fel¬ 
low. He had knocked about this country 
for fifteen years; hunting, trapping, trad¬ 
ing and lumbering. He was an average- 
sized man and so dark that at first glance 
one would have taken him for an Indian 
or Breed. In that respect he was some¬ 
what akin to me, and I have sometimes 
been asked pointblank if there was any 
Indian blood in me. Walters had been 
well educated, but he was thoroughly at 
home in the wilderness and wanted noth¬ 
ing to do with the outside world. His 
location at the Ninety Mile was certainly 
ideal. 
To the west, north and east stretched 
a vast wilderness trapped by a scattering 
bunch of native Crees, with whom Wal¬ 
ters traded; and yet they never trapped 
within considerable distance of the 
Ninety Mile, cheerfully alloting this to 
the trader. There was all the trapping 
territory two men could well handle, even 
with an outfit such as Walters’ and mine, 
as I intended trapping south to within ten 
miles or so of the Baptiste. 
About the middle of October we had 
an extremely heavy fall of snow with an 
accompanying cold snap that augured 
well for a long hard winter. This snow 
had taken us unawares; it being a little 
early in the season we had no traps set 
out. The only thing we could do was to 
get after the beavers. There was a large 
number of these animals in the neighbor¬ 
ing streams. Right past the Ninety Mile 
House flowed the Iosegun River and but 
a few miles east it emptied into the Little 
Smoky. All along these streams were 
different families of beavers. 
The Indians regard the beaver as a 
sort of weather prophet; if the beaver 
gathers a heavy store of poplar, alder, 
willow, etc., early in the season, it is 
taken as a sign that winter is due in short 
order. Oh the other hand, if the amphi¬ 
bians show no haste in amassing their 
Page 172 
By RAYMOND THOMPSON 
food caches, the first col 1 snap is sup¬ 
posed to be a false alarm, and a late fall 
results. Although the river was frozen 
over so that we could drive across it, the 
beavers had not completed their caches, 
and we were therefore looking to see nice 
weather. 
By now I had come to consider myself 
something of a trapper, and indeed I had 
progressed fairly well for a youngster. 
But I soon discovered that Walters knew 
more about beaver trapping, in fifteen 
minutes, than I knew in a whole year. 
Catching these amphibians seemed to be 
his chief forte. There was one wise old 
..inn.1.1.Hill.Illl.. 
Although tending a trapline day after 
day is a rather commonplace affair there 
are many adventures to relieve the 
monotony. In this installment the au¬ 
thor and his partner have some rather 
unusual experiences. A monarch beaver 
gives them considerable trouble and a 
huge grizzly supplies them with some 
exciting moments. They have an in¬ 
teresting encounter with a large pike of 
ferocious mien and meet a strange wan¬ 
derer who stumbles into camp and turns 
out to be a fugitive from justice. All 
these happenings are the highlights in 
a narrative of compelling interest that 
treats primarily with the life of a trap¬ 
per in the wilderness and is replete with 
practical hints on the taking of fur 
bearers. 
iiilllllillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 
fellow that had his home in a back chan¬ 
nel on the Little Smoky, a mile or so 
above the mouth of the Iosegun. I tried 
to catch that beaver for upward of two 
weeks and got both of his front feet, 
where he had left them in tearing out of 
two of my traps, all in the same night. 
These traps had been weighted with' 
heavy drowning stones and I could not 
figure how he was able to drag them up 
on the bank and twist off his feet. In 
later years I have reasoned the matter 
out in the following manner: In selecting 
my drowning stones I did not figure on 
what buoyancy they had, that is, while 
there was enough dead weight in one of 
these stones to seriously handicap a 
strong animal on land, there was enough 
buoyancy in them to offset at least half 
their weight, as long as they were in the 
water. After I saw through this I al¬ 
ways tested a stone in the water before 
fastening a trap to it. The test may be 
made by lowering the stone in the water, 
by means of a stout cord attached to it, 
and taking an account of the pressure it 
requires to raise it. 
At any event, I had to give up this par¬ 
ticular beaver, so Walters went after 
him. When he saw what the beaver had 
done to my traps he realized that here in¬ 
deed was one larger than the ordinary. 
He took a number 5 Newhouse Bear 
Trap, and after displacing one of the 
springs, set it carefully for Mr. Flat Tail. 
The second night he got him way up on 
the hip. This beaver was the largest I 
have ever seen, and a number of Indians 
who saw the pelt said it was a very rare 
one. I do not remember the exact size 
but I do recollect that it was easily six 
inches in diameter more than any other 
we had in the entire lot of what we 
caught and traded for amongst the In¬ 
dians. 
W ALTERS was one of the most 
generous-hearted fellows I ever 
met and he did everything in his power 
to make my winter with him both plea¬ 
sant and profitable. I had a fair number 
of traps, but he took me into his store¬ 
room where he had several hundred more 
and told me to help myself. Besides he 
had a team of cayuses, equally good in 
the harness or with the pack saddle, and 
abundant feed for them stacked in mead¬ 
ows below the house. In order to cover 
all the ground possible in the shortest 
time we put out our traps together and 
often placed them almost opposite one 
another on the trails. We trapped north 
to Mile 108; west up the Iosegun; east to 
Buck Lake, and south to within ten miles 
of the Baptiste. 
You will remember I said something 
about the beavers as weather prophets. 
Well, it was true in this instance, and in 
the early part of November the snow 
practically all left and it was real warm. 
In setting out our line of traps south 
toward the Baptiste, Walters and I took 
his team, hitched to a light sleigh. This 
was a pretty slick way of setting traps, 
and we made good time. We stopped for 
dinner at the Little Smoky Crossing 
(Mile 78 on the trail), as we were using 
the old deserted stopping places as a 
trapping cabin. About two o’clock, just 
as we came up out of the Smoky valley, 
we noticed where an enormous bear had 
crossed the trail, evidently headed for a 
high ridge some ten miles east of there. 
On inspection we decided that it was a 
grizzly and as the snow was not very old 
we figured on finding where he denned. 
We tied up the horses to a neighbor¬ 
ing tree and after sorting out our load, 
dumped all the hay on the ground and 
turned the ponies loose. We Aere not at 
all sure of getting back that night, in fact 
we hardly expected to, so left the horses 
free to go back to the Iosegun or stay 
there, as they liked. We packed enough 
grub to last three days, as well as a 
blanket each. 
For three or four miles the trail led 
