He was now thirty-six, and his oldest boy was sixteen. With this son and a young man named Abram Henry, Davy started in the spring of 1822 to look at the Obion River region, then reputed to be full of game. It was a long tramp across an unsettled country, nearly one hundred and fifty miles in a bee-line, and the three led a single horse which carried their scanty outfit of food, blankets, and ammunition. There were many streams to cross, including the Tennessee. In what is now Carroll County they struck the head of the south fork of the Obion River, and this they followed to a place about ten miles south of where the small settlement named after Crockett now is situated. Here they found themselves in a wilderness, abounding with game. The three nearest cabins were seven, fifteen, and twenty miles distant. The one seven miles away was that of the Owens family, and it was on the other side of the Rutherford Fork of the Obion, a tortuous stream, then in flood and over its low banks for half a mile on either shore. The water was chilly, the depth uncertain, and the crossing difficult and full of danger. There was nothing to do but to take to the water, and after hobbling the horse, so that he could graze till they returned for him, they went at it “like so many beavers.” When the water was too deep to go ahead, Davy felt the way over the shallower bottom by using a pole. His boy often had to swim beside them, and progress was slow. When the river channel was reached, they found that a tree had fallen and lodged in a pile of flood-trash near the middle of the main stream. The water was deep at this place, and there was no way of crossing without some kind of a bridge. A large buttonwood tree stood upon the near side of the river, and the two men began cutting it down with Davy’s tomahawk. They managed to do this so that it fell above the flood-trash, and when it had been washed against it the bridge was ready. “When we got over this,” says Davy, “it was still a sea of water as far as the eye could reach. We took into it again, and went ahead for about a mile, hardly ever seeing a single spot of land, and sometimes it was very deep. When at last we came in sight of land, and got out, it was but a little way before we saw the house, which was more pleasing even than the sight of land. I felt mighty sorry when I would look at my boy, and see him shaking like he had the worst kind of an ague, for there was no time for fever then. As we got near the house, we saw Mr. Owens and several men that were with him, just starting away. They saw us, and stopped, but looked much astonished until we got up to them, and I made myself known. The men who were with him were the owners of a boat which was the first that ever went that far up the Obion River, and some hands they had hired to carry it about a hundred miles further up, by water, though it was only about thirty, by land, as the river is very crooked.”