Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper Part 26

After following the creek a distance of about one mile I left the creek and went up a long narrow sawtooth point to cross the divide to the Cross Fork waters where I had some bear, fox and marten traps set. When I was about two-thirds of the way up this point I stopped at the side of a large rock which would shelter me from the cold wind. The point was covered with low laurel. I had been watching down the side of the hill to see if I could not catch sight of some animal on the move, but I had not got a glimpse of even a squirrel.

I had about finished my lunch, when I saw the motion of something move in the laurel, forty or fifty yards below me. I picked up my gun and stood watching, when I again caught sight of the animal and in a moment I saw the horns of a deer. I could get the outline of the deer's body so I said, "Now or never," and let go the best I could at the bunch, but when the smoke from the gun was gone, I could neither see nor hear anything but stood ready with my gun to my shoulder. I again saw a part of a deer move in an open s.p.a.ce in the laurel. I again fired at the bunch with the remark that I guessed that I could drive him out of there after a while.

I left the bear skin and knapsack at the rock, knowing that the rock would be a good landmark to find them by and went down through the laurel to see what effect my shot had. When I got to where the deer were, when I shot, I readily saw plenty of blood on the green laurel leaves and I only had a few steps to go when I saw the buck lying dead. I cut his throat and stood waiting for the blood to stop flowing and saw a trail that was fresh. I could readily tell by the way the leaves and ground were torn up that the trail was of some animal that was having a hard time to keep on its feet. You can imagine my joy and surprise to get two deer so unexpectedly. I had only a few rods to go when I found a good big doe dead.

Well, you may guess that I lost no time in getting the entrails out of these two deer and swinging them up as I had the other two for it was getting well past noon. I would be a good five miles from camp when I got to my first marten trap.

After I got to the top of the divide, I made the best time that was in me. I looked at several fox and marten traps but none had been disturbed. When I got to the first bear trap on the divide I had an occasion to scold and scold hard, but all to no purpose. I found the limb of a tree jammed in between the jaws of the trap. Of course, I thought some hunter had done me the favor and having as hard a stunt ahead of me, you can guess that the trick was not pleasing to me.

Well, here I learned how foolish it was to fly off the handle before you know what has been doing. Now, after a little investigation, I found that the limb had been broken from the tree by the wind and it so happened that it fell right onto the pan of the trap and sprang it. Setting the trap, I hurried on to the next bear trap and here I had another chance to be disgusted, even more than in the first case.

This time it was a porcupine in the trap but there was nothing to be done, only reset the trap and hurry on again. None of the other traps were disturbed, neither the small traps nor the bear trap until I came to the last marten trap which had a marten in it. It was now too dark to see to skin it so I was obliged to dump the carca.s.s into the knapsack and tote it along with the c.o.o.ns and mink pelts.

I had about one mile to go to reach the road, then four miles to camp and I often thought what a hunter and a trapper would endure and call it sport. It must have been nearly nine o'clock when I got to camp, where I still found the hunting party. They had taken a part of their outfit to their camp grounds and had worked on their camp until nearly night when they returned to my camp to stay for the night and get the balance of their outfit.

Well, I was pleased to find them still in camp for they volunteered to go with me the next day and help me get the deer and bear out to the road in return for venison and bear meat. This ended one of the luckiest and hardest day's work that I ever did on the trail or trap line.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

A Mixed Bag.

I promised some of my old trapper friends back East, that I would let them, who were fortunate enough to be subscribers to the H-T-T, hear from me. I will say that this is a mountain region of the first magnitude. A man that cannot mount a donkey and ride over a trail where the river is hundreds of feet below, or as it looks to be nearly under him, and the trail not more than twelve inches wide, hewn out of the solid rock, he had best remain in the East.

This is a sportsman's paradise, and the trapper will find here prey in the way of bear, both black and brown, fisher, mink, racc.o.o.n, fox, otter, panther, or as the natives call them, mountain lion, wildcat, skunk, civet cat and many other fur bearing animals and all quite numerous. Deer seem to be very abundant. I counted thirteen in a lick this morning, and it is not an uncommon thing to see from ten to twenty in the licks at one time.

The fishing is said to be the best in the spring and fall. It is not an uncommon thing to catch salmon, weighing from six to thirty-five pounds, and as it is only thirty-five miles to the Pacific Ocean, they are of the very best quality. Mountain trout are plentiful.

Another animal that is plenty is the mountain goat. Bear, mountain lion, and other signs are as numerous as those of rabbits in the East. I am not prepared at this time, to say how shrewd these animals are to trap, but if they take bait as readily as they are reported to, they must not be very hard to catch. There is a bounty of $4.00 on wolves and the writer has seen numerous signs of them.

Will say to my friends in the East that while on my way from the coast to the ranch, a distance of only fifty miles, and the most of the way over mountain trails, I stopped often to watch the deer feeding along the side of the trail. When they saw you they would trot off a short distance and begin feeding again.

Only last evening, Mrs. Evie Newell, shot and killed a large mountain lion that started into the yard after a pig. It seems to me panthers are thicker here than wildcats in Pennsylvania.

I have experimented with scents for years and have found scents of no particular benefit for trapping the fox. I have tried the skunk and muskrat scent, the matrix of the female fox taken at the proper time.

I have had a female fox and have lead her to my trapping place, and I have tried many so-called fox scents and all to no purpose. Fox urine may, in some particular places, be used to some slight advantage. It is not so with other animals in regard to scents, for they do not use the same acute instinct that the fox does.

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 a.s.sociate 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.

As we have no beechnuts we have no bears, so I have not set my bear traps. This will cut my sport considerably short. I have put out but about sixty small traps, so I spend my time about equally between camp and home.

I will send a picture of myself and my old dog Mage, who I believe knows more about trapping than some families. But poor old Mage is 13 years old and is following the down trail very rapidly. He is quite deaf and gets around with difficulty. Poor fellow, he is nearly to the end of the trail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WOODc.o.c.k AND HIS OLD TRAPPING DOG--MAGE. THE BEST TRAPPING DOG THAT EVER TROD THE EARTH.]

The furs shown in the picture are my first four days' catch with forty traps: 9 fox, 2 c.o.o.n, 1 mink and 7 skunk. My catch to date, November 25, in thirteen days is 14 fox, 27 skunk, 9 c.o.o.n and 1 mink.

Brothers, I will give some reasons why I do not write more of my experience as a trapper. First, I am not much given to writing.

Second, my experiences in trapping are so different from so many trappers who write, that I thought it best to say but little or nothing about trapping. I could call myself, "Old Honesty," and then write or cause it to be written and published in some of the sporting papers, that I had caught 300 fox this season, as I see one trapper did, but I would not feel good about it after I had done so.

Fifty-seven fox are the most that I ever caught in one season.

A brother was down to see me and I was pleased to meet him, I wish to say, brother trappers, that if you should have an opportunity to meet Brother Stearns, you will find him a gentleman in every respect. But, Brother Stearns and I could not agree on the scent question, and he did not like to believe that I handled my traps, bait and all pertaining to the setting of the trap, bare-handed. He went so far as to hint that I was cold-blooded, and even felt of my pulse to see if my circulation was all right. Hold on, I am mistaken, it was my hands that he felt of to see if they were not cold, but he p.r.o.nounced them all right. He then related a story about an old uncle of his and a crow, but shook his head and said it did not do any harm to wear gloves if it did not do any good. That is all right, but we do not like to be carrying unnecessary weight.

One word with Brother Chas. T. Wells. No, brother, I do not go much on scents. Perhaps you would have caught more than 15 fox, but I do not like to own that you could have done so. Now the first ten days that I was in the woods, there were hundreds of head of cattle in the woods, and the woods were full of men gathering them up, and one could do but little or nothing in the way of trapping. Neither did the 15 include the five that were stolen, nor the two that broke the chains and went off with the trap. By the way, Brother Stearns could tell you of a chase I had with one of those that carried off a trap, the worst jaunt I have had in many a day. No brother, the only scent I use is the urine of the fox and I only use that in certain places.

No, I believe that one good method is much better than scents in trapping the fox. If one wishes to use scents, they will find none better than some of those advertised in the H-T-T.

Now brothers, while I do not believe that any one man is so cute he cannot find his equal, I do not like to believe but that I can catch as many fox as the next one--all things being equal. For the last ten years I have not set traps over a scope of territory to exceed two or three miles square and if Brother Stearns had been on the ground that I trapped on, a few days before I began trapping, he would have seen but few fox signs. I usually trap on a different piece of ground each year. I know of some trappers here that begin trapping the first of September and they are good trappers too, but they are so greedy, they are willing to kill the "goose that lays the golden egg."

Several years ago, through the courtesy of Mr. John Shawl, one of the Tide Water Pipe Line Co's telegraph operators, I was allowed the use of one of their offices for camping purposes during the trapping season. Now, do not think that this office was located in a town, for it was not. On the contrary, it was located in the largest wooded section of this locality, and on the old Jersey Sh.o.r.e Turnpike. There was a path or sort of a woods road at the point where this office was located, leading from this road to another road, a distance of more than four miles and making a cut off for people who wished to go on to the waters of the Sinnamahoning or Kettel Creek in Northern Pennsylvania.

It was customary for me to stay in camp for a week or ten days and then go home and stay two or three days. One day on returning from one of my trips home, I had rather better luck than coming, getting 5 fox, 3 c.o.o.n and 1 wildcat. I usually hung my furs on the side of the building close up under the eaves until I went home, then I would take them home on the following morning of the day I had caught them.

There was a rap at the door about five o'clock in the morning and on going to the door, I found two men with a lantern; one man of middle age, the other a young man. There had just been a fall of snow of about four inches, and the men were going onto the Cross Fork of Kettel Creek, deer hunting. They had stayed at a farm house on the other road and had started from this house between three and four o'clock in the morning. Seeing a light in the office, they thought they would come in and stay until daylight.

The old gentleman inquired what I was doing there. I informed him that I was trying to trap a little. He said that he should not think it would pay me, but if I could catch a fox it would be different, as he had seen several tracks along the road by the light of the lantern. He also told me that he had a recipe for making fox scent, that was a dead sure thing, and as I lived so far from his place, I would not be liable to interfere with his trapping, he would knock off one-half his usual price and sell me a recipe for five dollars.

I said I would see what luck I had while they were gone, and it might be possible that I would buy his recipe when he came back. He said, delays were dangerous, and that I was losing the greatest opportunity of my life, that he might not come back that way. I thanked him, but told him I would chance it.

It was now daylight, and as the hunters stepped outside they noticed the carca.s.s of a wildcat, and I told them if they would step to the corner of the building, they would see what I got yesterday. They did so, and gazed for one second at the pelts, then the older of the two said, "Come, Charley, let's be going," and they left without even bidding me good morning.

Comrades you do not know how I enjoy your letters as given in this splendid magazine, especially so this winter (season of 1905-6) as I have not been able to trap. But I have no kick coming for this is only the third time in fifty years, but what I have been able to be out with the traps and gun.

I know that the readers of the H-T-T would be pleased to read articles from old veterans. The H-T-T has about reached the height of perfection so far as the trapper is concerned. There is none of the high top boot, fashionable, corduroy suits and checkered cap business about the H-T-T. Success to all.

Boys, you know how we all like to gather around a camp fire and talk over our hunting and trapping experiences, of how we caught a certain mink, fox, c.o.o.n or bear, or how we killed a certain deer. So while we are out fishing I thought I would like to have a chat with the trappers. And boys, all you who have not camped out for a week and had a good time fishing, do not know how much you have lost, especially those who need the care of a doctor.

Yes, boys, take your camp outfit and go out into the woods among the hills, streams and lakes. There you will find one of the most competent doctors and nurses that ever treated the ills of human family. Do not forget to take a few copies of the HUNTER-TRADER-TRAPPER along and other sporting magazines, as well as some of the Harding Library, so while you are resting in camp you can visit with the trapper boys all over the Union.