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
Now to make this matter plainer, I will give my experience of the
last two seasons. In 1910 I trapped here in Pennsylvania the first
two weeks of November before going south. So shipped my camp chest by
express to Cameron, N. C, started it four days before I started so as
to be sure that it would be there by the time I arrived. But when I
got to Cameron there was no express matter for Woodcock.
Five days later while I was standing on the depot platform at Cameron
waiting for the eleven o'clock express train, along came a freight
train, stopped and put off my camp chest. Now, the express charges on
this chest was something over ten dollars on 180 pounds.
The next season I concluded that I would not give the express company
another rake-off, so started my camp outfit by freight for Madison,
Alabama, four weeks before I started, so as to again be sure that it
would be there when I arrived. Mr. Ford met me at the station nine
miles from his place with a conveyance to take baggage and camp
outfit to his place. And boys, imagine my feelings when I was again
told by the station agent that there was nothing there for Woodcock.
About a week later, I got the goods. So boys, take the hint and start
the outfit well ahead if you wish to get it on time. I have had other
similar experiences.
On our way back to Mr. Ford's place the day he met me at the station,
he called my attention to several different places along the road to
mink tracks in the ditches and in the road. I thought that it would
be no trick at all to take three or four mink each night, but I was
not reckoning on the disadvantages I had to contend with.
This section of the country is very thickly settled with colored
people, and each family keeps from one to three dogs, which are out
searching for food all the time. These people never think of feeding
their dogs. Nearly every night these colored people are out hunting
in droves of five or six, and with six or eight dogs. They think it
no more of a crime to steal a trap, and anything found in the trap,
than they would consider it a crime to eat a baked 'possum. A trapper
must keep a good lookout when setting his traps to see that there is
no "dark object" anywhere in sight. If there is, you may expect that
that particular trap will be missing the next time you come that way.
In setting a trap, the first thing to do is to select a place where
the trap is to be set, then look carefully around to see that no
"dark object" is in sight; then go into the bush and get the trap,
stake and everything that you will use in making the set. Then you
will again look carefully for that "dark object," and will proceed to
make the set, provided that yourself is the only human being in
sight, stopping your work often to look about you. Do not think that
this caution is not necessary, for it sure is. The writer had nine
traps taken at one time within an hour after he had been over the
line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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