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
When we reached the top of the second ridge and the trap was in the
hollow beyond, I heard some sort of a noise where the trap was
setting, but I was unable to tell what it was. Smoky was behind
somewhere on the line, but while I stood listening he came on in
great haste. He had heard the same noise and was hurrying up to
inquire what it was.
I told him that I was unable to tell just what it was, but was afraid
that some dog had got caught in the trap as the sound came from the
direction in which the trap was. Smoky said that it was a different
noise than he had ever heard a dog make.
I told Smoky that I feared that it was some hound that was in the
trap and was making the pitiful sort of a howl and that we must hurry
on and get him out of the trap. When we were half way down the side
of the hill, the noise ceased, but I could now see that the noise
came from some distance farther down the run than where the trap had
been set and I knew that no dog could move the trap and clog. We now
went a little more quietly. I soon got sight of Bruin rolling and
tumbling in a bunch of small birch saplings where the trap clog was
fast, good and stout.
Smoky had not got his eye onto the bear yet, when I stopped and
pointed in the direction of the bear and said, "Smoky, there is the
gentleman that you have been so anxious to see." Smoky had not yet
got his eye onto the bear and he said, "That's no darned dog that
makes that noise. What is it? I don't see anything." "No, Smoky, it
is no dog; neither is it a porky; it is a bear this time all right."
I pointed at the clump of yellow birches and said, "Don't you see him
down in the gulch there?" When Smoky got his eye on the bear, you
should have seen them sparkle. This was the first bear that Smoky had
ever seen outside of captivity. When I told Smoky that we would go up
close to the bear and he (Smoky) should shoot it, he again reached
the gun to me and again insisted that I should shoot it, saying that
he would surely miss it, the same as he declared in the case of the
porcupine. I told Smoky that he had plenty of cartridges and that it
would be some time before it would be too dark to see to shoot and
that he must shoot the bear. It took a great deal of urging to get
Smoky to shoot, he declaring all the time that he knew he would miss
it.
I said, "Smoky, you must not shoot at the bear but at the base of the
bear's ear," which he finally did and Bruin was out of his trouble
almost before the smoke from the rifle had cleared away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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