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

CHAPTER II.
Early Experiences.

As I promised to write something of my early experience at trapping and hunting, I will begin by saying that I am now living within one mile of where I was born sixty years ago (this was written in 1904), and that I began my trapping career by first trapping rats in my father's grist mill with the old figure four squat trap. I well remember the many war dances that I had when I could not make the trap stay set; but I did not trap long inside the mill for father also ran a blacksmith shop and always kept a good man to do the work in the shop. I was soon coaxing the smith to make me a steel trap, which he did. I now began catching muskrats along the tail race and about the mill dam, but the spring on my trap was so stiff that when I found the trap sprung or found game in it, I was obliged to bring the trap to the house and have some one older than I to set it. Then I would carry it back to the creek and set it. Well this was slow work and I was continually begging the blacksmith to make me more traps with weaker springs so I could set them myself. After much coaxing he made me three more which I was able to set and then the muskrats began to suffer. Let me say at that time a muskrat skin was worth more than a mink skin.

Boys, I was like a man in public office, the more of it they have, the more they want. So it was with me in regard to the traps, but I could not coax the blacksmith to make any more. An older brother came to my aid in this way: he told me to go to town and see the blacksmith there and see if I could not sell some charcoal to him for traps, and he, (my brother) would help me burn the coal. Now this burning the coal was done by gathering hemlock knots from old rotten logs and piling them up and covering them like potato holes, leaving a hole open at the bottom to start the fire. After the fire was well started the hole was closed and the knots smoldered for several days. Well, the plan worked and by the operation I became the possessor of five more traps. By this time the vicinity of the mill dam and race was no longer large enough to furnish trapping grounds, and I ventured farther up and down the stream and took in the coon and mink along with the muskrat.

WOODCOCK, WIFE, SISTER-IN-LAW, RESIDENCE AND HIS DOG MACK.

We had a neighbor, Washburn by name, who was considered a great trapper, for he could now and then catch a fox. As time passed by, I began to have a great desire to get on an equal with Mr. Washburn and catch a fox. I began to urge him to allow me to go with him to see how he set his trap, and after a long time coaxing, he granted my request. I found what everyone of today knows of the chaff bed set. You may now know that it was not long before I had a bed made near a barn that stood well back in the field, and after much worry and many wakeful nights I caught a fox and I thought myself Lord Jonathan. As time went by, and by chance I learned that by mixing a goodly part of hen manure with plenty of feathers in it, and mixing it with the chaff, it was a great improvement on chaff alone. Next I learned of the well known water set. However, I perhaps set different from the most of trappers in making this set. Well as all trappers learn from long years of experience, so have I, and those old-fashioned sets are like the squat traps, not up-to-date. I will now drop the trapping question for a time and tell you how I killed my first deer.

Just outside of the clearing on father's farm and not more than fifty rods from the house was a wet place, such as are known to these parts as a "bear wallow." This wet place had been salted and was what is called a "salt lick." In those days it was not an uncommon thing to see six or eight deer in the field any morning during the summer season--the same as you will see them in parts of California today. It was not an uncommon thing for my older brother to kill a deer at this lick any morning or evening, but that was not making a nimrod of me. I would beg father to let me take the gun (which was an old double barreled flintlock shot gun) and watch the lick. As I was only nine years old, they would not allow me to have the gun, so I was obliged to steal it out when no one was in sight, carry it to the barn and then watch my opportunity and "skipper" from the barn to the lick. All worked smoothly and I got to the lick all right. It was toward sundown and I had scarcely poked the gun through the hole in the blind and looked out when I saw two or three deer coming toward the lick. I cocked the old gun and made ready but about this time I was taken with the worst chill that any boy ever had and I shook so that I could scarcely hold the gun to the peep hole. It was only a moment when two of the deer stepped into the lick, and I took the best aim I could under the condition, and pulled the trigger. Well of all the bawling a deer ever made, I think this one did the worst, but I did not stop to see what I had done but took across the field to the house at a lively gait, leaving the gun in the blind.

The folks heard the shot and saw me running for the house at break-neck speed (this of course was the first that they knew I was out with the gun). My older brother came to meet me and see what the trouble was. When I told him what I had done, he went with me to the lick and there we found a fair-sized buck wallowing in the lick with his back broken, one buck shot (or rather one slug, for the gun was loaded with pieces cut from a bar of lead); one slug had struck and broken the spine and this was the cause of the deer bawling so loud as this was the only one that hit.

The old shotgun was now taken from its usual corner in the kitchen and hung up over the mantle piece above the big fire place and well out of my reach. This did not stop my hunting. We had a neighbor who had two or three guns and he would lend me one of them. I would hide away hen eggs and take them to the grocery and trade them for powder and shot. Of course the man who owned the gun got the game, when I chanced to kill any, for I did not dare to carry it home. It was not long until father found that I was borrowing Mr. Abbott's gun, and he thought that if hunt I would, it would be better that I use our own and then he would know when I was out with it. He took the old flintlock to the gunsmith and had it fixed over into a cap lock, and now I was rigged out with both gun and traps.