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 wish to insinuate upon those that do use scent, but for me,
I would not give a cent for a barrel of so-called fox decoy. I boil
my traps in soft maple bark, hemlock boughs or something of that
nature. I do not do this because the fox can be any more readily got
into the trap, but because it forms a glazing on the trap and thereby
prevents them from rusting and the trap will then spring more
readily. It makes no difference how rusty the trap is, so far as
catching the fox is concerned.
No boys, no scent for me, the fox soon learns to associate the scent
business with the man, then you are up against it. With me there is
nothing mysterious about trapping. It is simply practical ways of
setting the trap, learned from many years of experience.
* * *
I have had fifty years experience as a hunter and trapper. I have
netted wild pigeons in the Adirondack Mountains, in New York, to the
Indian Territory, so you know that the articles in H-T-T are very
interesting to me. I would say that no young trapper should be
without this journal, although I would advise them not to take too
readily to scents and decoys.
As to the discussions that have been in H-T-T, one writer says he has
twenty ways to catch the fox; now I have just as many different ways
as there are different conditions. I would say that no one can become
a successful trapper until he learns to comply with the natural
conditions, which will differ with almost every trap he sets when
trapping fox, mink, etc.
I will tell my brother trappers what I have been doing this fall
(1902) along the line of trapping. In August I took a trip through
portions of Montana, Idaho and Washington, to look up a site to do a
little trapping this winter. There is much more game here than in the
East, but nothing like you hear talked of. I found the mountains too
steep and the underbrush too thick and from what I could learn, I was
afraid the weather was too cold for one of my age and condition of
health, but, oh boys, what trout fishing I found in the Clearwater;
this is a branch of Snake River and empties into that river at
Lewiston, Idaho.
As I found things, I thought I would return to old Potter County,
Pennsylvania, and have a little fun trapping the fox and skunk as
that is about the only game there is in this section when we have no
beechnuts, for that is the only mast we have here. We have no
beechnuts this season and most of the fur bearing animals have
migrated south of here where there are chestnuts, acorns and hickory
nuts.
Brothers, I will tell you where my camp is, and you will always find
the latch-string out. My camp stands at the very head of the
Allegheny River, 1700 feet above sea level. From the cabin door you
could throw a stone over the divide to where the water flows into the
west branch of the Susquehanna. In a half hour a person can, from my
camp, catch trout from the waters of the Allegheny, and the
Susquehanna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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