Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper: Autobiography, experiences and observations of Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock during his fifty years of hunting and trapping.Woodcock, E. N. (Eldred Nathaniel)
General
Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper: Autobiography, experiences and observations of Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock during his fifty years of hunting and trapping.
Woodcock, E. N. (Eldred Nathaniel)
Hunting; Trapping
We made a sort of a litter or drag rack with which we managed to haul
the bear down the hill to an old lumber road where it could be
reached with a team.
Not long after this I received a copy of the Williamsport Sun
containing the report of a monstrous bear captured by Mr. Jacobs in
the wilds of Cameron County. It was a bear story equal to the one the
prophet relates when the children called him Baldy.
When I got to camp I found Bill stretching a couple of mink skins. He
had also got a fox or two, and said that a bear had been in one of
the bear traps, but had escaped, leaving two toes in the trap. Bill
was considerably down at the heel over the escape of the bear, and
said that if he had attended to the trap the day before, that the
bear was then in the trap; that he had put up a hard fight before he
had made his escape.
When Bill called for my report I took out a marten skin and the money
that I got for the bear and layed them on the table and told Bill
there was my count. Bill said that I got the marten from one of the
deadfalls, but he was dog-on sorry if he could tell where I caught
the money. When I told him about Mr. Jacobs and the capture of the
bear, Bill said he would have given a summer's work to have been
there and seen the man sweat.
I said that I would relate how it happened that I got even with Bill
for the bear that he killed on my watching grounds.
Well, after we had gone the rounds of the traps, we again put in our
time still-hunting. Bill had gone south of camp, while I went east. I
had traveled until the middle of the afternoon without having any
luck or seeing any deer. So I shifted my course to the west and
worked my way in the direction of a "burn-down" that was in the head
of a hollow. As soon as I came to the brow of the ridge and looked
down into the basin I saw four deer feeding and working towards me.
The wind was blowing directly from the deer towards me, so I stood
quiet and in a few minutes the deer fed up within easy range. I
pulled the gun onto an old doe in the lead, and broke her down almost
in her tracks. The three remaining deer made a few jumps in my
direction and stopped and looked back, which gave me a good shot at a
yearling buck, which also went down in my sight. The other two deer
ran close by me and over the ridge into the green timber. I had
hardly cut the deers' throats when Bill called out, "This is a dog-on
pretty trick that you have played me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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