Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper: Autobiography, experiences and observations of Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock during his fifty years of hunting and trapping. — John Shaqi
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
This time we were in "swacks," and I will try to tell what luck we
had some time, but one thing we did was to put a window in the camp
and make the door large enough so that one did not have to get down
on all fours to get in or out. Will and I stayed in camp while
Charley went out to Kane and sent in the team to take out the venison
and the furs and the camp outfit. We got home for Christmas and found
all well.
CHAPTER VII.
My Last Hunt on the Kinzua.
As this hunt was about 1868, before there were railroads in this
section, we went to Emporium, Cameron County, Pennsylvania, and there
took the train to Kane, in McKean County, then by team and bobsled
route to camp. This making the journey much farther, we concluded to
go by wagon the entire distance, which would shorten the distance
nearly one-half.
This time conditions were different than on previous occasion. While
there were three in the party before and every one hunted on his own
hook, this time I had a partner and we were to share alike in profit
and loss. My partner's name was William Earl, and he had recently
moved from Vermont, or, as he would jokingly say, from "Varmount." He
was somewhat older than myself, and a man who was ever ready to carry
his end of the load at all times.
We hired a team and took a full line of grub and the camp outfit,
with about sixty small traps and eight bear traps. We went by way of
Port Allegheny, Devils Blow and Smithport, taking three days to get
to camp, as we had to cut out the road a good part of the distance of
the last day's travel. They had just begun to operate in the oil
industry in the neighborhood of what is now the city of Bradford, and
as they used wood altogether for fuel to drill with, there was a
great deal of wood being cut for the purpose. Bill, as my partner was
familiarly called, used to say that if we could not get fat on
venison and bear meat we would take a wood job, but we found plenty
to do without the wood job.
On reaching the camp the first thing noticeable was that the old
hollow elm that I had used for a dryhouse to hang up skins in, had
met with foul play, for it lay on the ground, having blown down. This
made it necessary to build a sort of leanto against one side of the
shanty to hang up our furs, as we did not like to have them hung up
in the shanty where they would get more or less smoked.
But the first thing we did was to enlarge the door, for it will be
remembered that we were obliged to get down on all fours in order to
get in or out of the shanty. As we had a good crosscut saw, it did
not take long to enlarge the doorway so that one could go in standing
up, man fashion. We next cut a window-hole large enough to take a
single sash window. Then we replaced the chinkings that the
porcupines had gnawed out, calked and mudded all cracks. When this
was done, Bill looked it over and said, "By gum, don't it look like
living?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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