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

The next morning Mr. Harris said that he would go and take the horse out to a farm house that was about six miles out the turnpike, known as the Widow Herod Place, or better known as Aunt Bettie. Mr. Harris said he would go while there was food enough to last the old horse a day or two until we were ready to use him. Then I knew that the old horse was doomed to be used for bear bait.

When Mr. Harris started away with the horse he cautioned me not to go off hunting, but to stick to work on the shanty which I did like a "nailer." When Mr. Harris returned I had the roof on, the chinking all in and the gable end boarded up with shakes and all ready to begin calking and mudding. It was some time in the afternoon when he got back and after looking over the shack to see what I had done he said that he thought I had done so well that I was entitled to a play spell and suggested that we take our guns and go down along the side of the hill and see if we could kill a deer, remarking that we could use a little venison if we had it. He told me to go up onto the bench near the top of the hill while he would take the lower bench and he would hunt the side hill along down the stream until dark.

Mr. Harris had a single barrel gun with a barrel three or four feet long which he called Sudden Death, and it weighed twelve or fourteen pounds. As for me I had my new double barrel gun which I have mentioned before. We had not gone far until I heard the report of a gun below me and soon I heard Mr. Harris "ho-ho-hoa," and I hurried to where the howling came from and found him already taking the entrails out of a small doe. I suggested to Mr. Harris that we take the deer down to the creek before we dressed it and that by so doing we probably could catch a mink or coon with the entrails. He consented to do so and after we had taken out the entrails Mr. Harris noticed a fine place to catch a fox or some other animal and pointed to a large tree that had fallen across the stream.

The tree had broken in two at the bank, on the side of the stream where we were. The water had swung the trunk of the tree down the stream until there was a space of three or four feet between the end of the tree and the bank. Mr. Harris took a part of the offal from the deer and carried it across to the opposite bank and placed the remainder on the side where we were. He then placed an old limb for a drag to the trap at the place where he wanted to set the trap. As we had no traps with us we went to camp and early the next morning we took two traps and went to this place and set them.

We put in that day finishing the camp, putting in the door and fixing the chimney to the fireplace and calking all the cracks between the logs and mudded tight between the logs and all the joints. Now the camp being completed we began setting the bear traps. The old horse was taken onto a chestnut ridge and shot, cut up into small pieces suitable for bear bait, and hung up in small saplings such as we could bend down. After the bait was fastened to the tree we let it spring up so as to keep it out of the reach of any animal until we had a trap set.

The way Mr. Harris set a bear trap was to build a V shaped pen about three feet long and about the same in height, place the bait in the back end of the pen and set the trap in the entrance. We had eleven bear traps and after they were all set on different ridges where bears were most likely to travel, we began the work of setting the small traps which was not a long job, as we had only about forty.

The next morning Mr. Harris said that I had better go down and see if the traps we had set had been disturbed and he said that he would rest while I was gone.

When I came in sight of the traps I could see a fox bounding around in one of the traps. I could see on looking at the trap we had placed across the creek that the drag had been moved closer to the log but I could see nothing moving. I cut a stick and killed the fox when I crossed over to see what was in the other trap and to my disgust there was a skunk. I was not particularly in love with skunks in those days, for while they scented just as loud at that time as now they were vastly lacking in the money value. I took hold of the clog and carefully dragged the skunk to the creek and sank him in the water. I now went back to the other side of the creek and set the fox trap and when I had the trap set the skunk was good and dead. I reset the trap and took the fox and skunk to camp without skinning. When I got to camp I found Mr. Harris busy making stretching boards of different sizes for different animals from shakes that we had left when covering the roof. Mr. Harris laughed and said that he knew that we would need them when I got back. The fox and skunk were skinned, stretched and hung up on the outside of the gable of the shack, and that was the starting point of our catch of the season.

We set the most of our small traps along the streams for foxes and mink, taking a few to the ridges to set in likely places to catch a fox, and at thick laurel patches where we were likely to catch a wild cat as there was a bounty of $2 on them.

After the small steel traps were set we began building a line of deadfalls for marten and fisher. After the deadfalls were built we divided our time between hunting deer and tending the traps.