Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper / Autobiography, experiences and observations of Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock during his fifty years of hunting and trapping.

by E. N. Woodcock

I also know of another party who dug out two nests of young mink and got nine young ones. The old mink escaped. I asked this man why he did not let them go until fall or winter, as these dens were near his mill? He informed me that he never fooled away any time trapping and had he left them go until fall the mink would have been gone and now he was $6.50 ahead. Now, this man had actually destroyed at least $30 worth of furs to get $6.50 in bounty.

While I think that the bounty on wildcats and weasel is all right, I do not think a bounty on fox and mink at all necessary. The high price their fur brings will induce the trapper to take all that the bounty would induce him to do, and at a time when the fur will bring more than a great deal of early caught furs would bring, including the bounty.

It is quite doubtful as to mink being very destructive to birds or their nests, and as to the destruction of poultry, it is a very easy and inexpensive matter for any poultry raiser to arrange his poultry house so as to take any prowling mink that should come about his premises.

Now, I would suggest to the bird hunter, or as he prefers to be called, "sportsman," that if he will leave his automatic gun and his bird dog at home, and merely take a good double-barrel breechloader and go into the bush, and "walk up" his birds, instead of having a dog to show the bird to him, he will do far more to protect the game bird than any bounty law will do! This the sportsman must do, or the game birds of this state will soon be a thing of the past.

About 1870, there was a move begun to check the slaughter of the deer in this state, but it was only in a half-hearted way. The writer circulated the first petition to get the law enacted prohibiting the hounding of deer. After some years the law prohibited the chasing of deer with dogs, but the law could not be enforced for the very reason that these same sportsmen wished to hound deer. He would go on to the streams where there were but few inhabitants, and hire all of the people living in the neighborhood to take their dogs to the hills and start them on the trail of deer. The "sportsman" would lay in ambush and shoot the deer when they came to water, providing they were able to see the sights on their guns sufficiently clear to get a bead on the deer.

These "sportsmen" would pay the natives a good sum for their services and would often buy hounds at high prices and bring them to the locality where they intended to hound deer and pay some one living in the neighborhood a good price to keep their dogs from one season to another. These "sportsmen" were sure to make the constable, whose duty it was to report this violation of the deer law, a present of a fine fishing rod or some other article which might be a ten or twenty dollar bill.

Now, under these conditions it was next to impossible to get any one who knew anything about the transaction to make a complaint, or even be a witness against those transgressors of the deer or hounding law. But in time the law was made sufficiently stringent as to virtually put a stop to this most cruel practice of deer hunting.

But now another bad thing came into vogue. Non-residents were allowed to go into the woods where they would camp from the first day of the open season for deer until the close and often some days after. Now, "the horse has been stolen." The deer in this state are virtually gone. "The door has been strongly locked, but it is now too late." This game rule applies to the game fish of the state and unless there are laws enacted which will apply more closely to the preservation of the game birds, than a closed season and a bounty or scalp law, the game birds will soon go the way of the deer and the game fish too.

I wish to say a word to our friends on the Pacific Coast as to the slaughter of game and especially that of deer. I saw a slaughter of deer in nearly all of the states west of the Rocky Mountains that was cruel. In California, in 1904, I saw men kill deer seemingly for no other purpose than the desire to kill, or as I put it, the desire to murder. I saw deer killed when the slayer positively knew that there could not be any use made of the carcass. I saw deer killed when only a fry would be taken from the ham, the remainder of the carcass left to lay without even the pretense of dressing. It was a common occurrence to kill deer for no other purpose than to feed dogs.

One day I was standing by a man on a sand bar on the bank of a river when we noticed a doe a few rods away looking at us. The man drew his gun to his shoulder in the act of shooting and I exclaimed, "My God, man, you are not going to shoot that deer, are you?" My words were not out of my mouth when the gun cracked. The deer was mortally wounded and ran directly towards us, making desperate efforts to keep its feet. It fell dead within ten feet of where we were standing. I walked away. The slayer of the innocent creature stood and gazed at it a moment and then with his foot he pushed it off the bar into the river. I hope I may never see another such sight. It was June and the doe was heavy with fawn and this man knew that he could make no use of this deer whatever.