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
Well, comrades of the trap line, as I am getting well up to the
seventy notch, and as the chills of zero weather chases one after the
other up and down my spinal column, like a dog after a rabbit in a
briar patch, and as I am unable to shake off that desire for the trap
line, I concluded to go south again to trap. I began an inquiry in
several different sections, in states of the South, and finally
decided upon Alabama, where a gentleman and a brother trapper by the
name of Ford had invited me to come. On the last days of October,
1911, I arrived in Alabama where I met Mr. Ford, whom I found to be a
gentleman in all respects, and a member of the M. E. Church.
My first day's outing after reaching Mr. Ford's place was on the
Tennessee River, raising fish nets, and putting out a few mink traps
to ascertain what the complexion of the inner side of a mink's coat
was. I got a mink the first night, which I found to be of fairly
light color, but not quite light enough to my liking. The setting of
more traps was delayed for a few days and we spent the time in
tending the fish nets.
I have whipped the streams and drowned earthworms for brook trout and
other fish, from my childhood days to the present time. I had never
done any fishing in large rivers with nets, so you can imagine my
feelings when one net after another was raised which contained many
fish of different kinds, such as yellow cat, channel cat, buffalo,
pickerel, pike, carp, suckers, black bass (called trout in the South)
and many other kinds. These fish ran in weight all the way from
one-fourth pound up to twenty pounds each, and occasionally a buffalo or
yellow catfish much larger. Mr. Ford informed me that often on trot
lines they got sturgeon, weighing more than one hundred pounds.
We intended to put out a trot line and catch a sturgeon that I might
get some oil. It is said that the oil from a sturgeon is a sure cure
for rheumatism in the joints, but it rained so much, keeping us busy
adjusting our traps, that we did not get any time to get the bait and
put out the trot line. So I did not get to see one of those large
fellows.
Mr. Ford pointed out corn and cotton fields where the corn and cotton
was still ungathered and told me that he had trot lines set out all
through these fields last spring and caught hundreds of pounds of
fish--it hardly seemed possible as the water was then fifteen of
twenty feet below the banks of these fields. But in December when it
began raining nearly every day, and the water rose so suddenly that I
was obliged to leave many of my traps where I had set them around
ponds and banks of streams and in the swamps, I could then readily
see that it was perfectly possible for the fish to get out into the
corn and cotton fields to feed.
The rainy season set in nearly a month earlier this season than
usual, causing the rivers and streams to rise so as to flood the
whole bottoms (it is called the tide by the people in Alabama).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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