On South River near Parkersburg, we got a good place to camp, and the people were very kind and neighborly. Mr. Green, the postmaster at Parkersburg, and his family, with whom we stopped a short time before going into camp, were very kind and generous. The young ladies, daughters of Mr. Green, gave us some fine music on the piano, accompanied with singing during the evenings.
About eighteen or twenty miles from Parkersburg on Turnbull Creek where we expected to do the greater part of our trapping, and where mink and coon were quite plentiful with considerable otter signs, we were unable to get a place to camp. The people objected to outside trappers infringing on what they apparently looked upon as their individual right.
At the junction of Cape Fear and Black Rivers in Bladen and Pender counties, there is a section of low swampy country, which is a wild country where there is deer and bear as well as furbearers such as otter, mink, muskrats and coon. The latter are quite numerous. There is also wild turkey, quail and ducks on the river. Now this section of the country had a colony of mixed whites and colored people (Mulatto) who lived in these swamps, other people rarely going into that locality.
We were informed that there was a good deal of illicit or Blockade Whiskey as the natives call it, made in these swamps. It is said that it is not safe for strangers to be caught in their domain too often. I found that one needs nearly double the number of traps to trap in the swamps or bays, as these swamps are called by the natives. There is so much ground that is covered with water so near alike that the animal has no regular place to travel, as is the case along the open streams. Instead the animals have vast areas of ground to travel over that is partially covered with water, so that the mink or raccoon travels anywhere and everywhere, as it is all alike to the mink and coon. Consequently the trapper needs more traps in order to make the same number of catches as would be possible in a locality where the streams did not spread over such a large scope of land.
While the trapper in the South has but little snow or ice to contend with, he will not find it all milk and honey, for the swamps are not a paradise with the gall berry brush, the bamboo briers, saffron sprouts and holly brush. As for game birds, they are not so plentiful, but quail in places are found in good numbers. Wild turkeys are found in small lots scattered all over the country, but by no means plenty: doves are quite plentiful.
As for fur bearers there are quite a number of opossum. Coons are not found late in the season to any great extent only in the swamps where they are quite plentiful. Grey foxes are plenty. There are many hunters in the South who hunt with dogs, and they do not take kindly to any other way of taking the furbearers. Otter signs are seen on nearly all of the streams but by no means are they plenty, and every slide is closely watched by trappers living nearby. The ever present razorback is an obstacle in the way of otter trapping, for the trap must be set under the water, and this is not always practical in otter trapping.
We must not close this short letter without stating that our friend and partner, Mr. A. L. Lawrence, who was a native of Randolph County, N. C, was an expert trapper, and especially on mink. Mr. Lawrence was a good cook as well as a good trapper. Mr. Lawrence was hard to beat on baking opossum and bread making, but when it came to boiling water without burning it, your humble servant could hold him a close second.
Say boys, I forgot to say that you will find Billy the Sneakum just as numerous in Dixie as he is in Pennsylvania.
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Comrades of the trap line, I am not in condition to write much at this time owing to my health, but, later I hope to be able to give a fuller account of my trapping experiences of 1912 in Alabama, northern Georgia, northwestern North Carolina and southeastern Tennessee. And Comrades, right here I wish to say that through the above mentioned sections of the south, I found nearly every trapper a reader and lover of the Hunter-Trader-Trapper, and many of these readers seemed like old neighbors to the writer, when he met them.