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
I do not remember whether I have told the boys of the H-T-T the story
of the white deer, which I had the good luck to get, and the picture
of which was shown in one of the sporting magazines a few years ago.
The picture was sent to the magazine by Mrs. Prudence Boyington,
Roulett, Pa., who was the owner of the deer at the time, and I
believe a daughter of Mrs. Boyington still has the deer.
It was in the spring of 1878 or 1879 that a doe and a white fawn were
seen on the hill just south of Lymansville. The fawn and its mother
were seen almost daily in some of the fields near the village, and
often were seen in some one of the pastures with the cows. The fawn
would run and play about like a lamb.
It was plain to be seen from week to week that the fawn was rapidly
growing, and as the open season for hunting of deer drew near it was
generally understood that the white fawn and its mother should not be
killed. When the winter came on, the fawn and its mother were all at
once missing. The general supposition was that they had been killed,
but when spring came the doe and the white fawn (now a yearling deer)
again appeared on its old haunts of the year before. They had merely
gone back into the more dense woods to winter.
Along in June it was noticed that there were three deer instead of
two. Another fawn had appeared on the scene, this time an ordinary
spotted fawn. They were again daily seen during the summer the same
as they were the year before. Now it had been strongly urged by the
people all about the country that these deer should not be killed,
and there was none that was more strongly in favor of this than I
was. The deer were regularly seen again all summer and up to the last
days of October, when they again disappeared and all were anxious for
spring to come to see if they would return as usual. When spring came
the deer came back as before, but in June "the whole bunch came up
missing," and it was generally thought that they had changed their
haunts or they had been killed. The latter was strongly suspected.
I had taken a scout through the woods on the hills back of the
locality where these deer had been frequenting and had seen signs
that convinced me that the white deer, at least, was still alive,
although it had not been seen for a number of weeks. Here I wish to
explain that Coudersport is two miles from Lymansville and it is on
the hill between the two places that the white deer had been seen
most, and it was in the former place that the loudest cry for the
protection of this white deer came from.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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