We caught three bears, two fisher, which were very scarce, as I do not think that fishers were ever very plentiful in this state, a good bunch of marten, foxes, four or five wildcats and killed twenty-two deer. The last days of December Mr. Harris said that we would prepare to go home as the deer season closed the first of January. Although the law gave until the fifteenth to get your deer we had dragged the most of ours up to the Bailey Mill at various times. We got all those around the mill and sent them to Jersey Shore by freight teams to the railroad, then shipped them to New York. We got 15 cents for saddles and 10 cents for the whole deer.
Mr. Harris had brought an auger with him so that he could make a sleigh to go home with and from birch saplings we made one and on the thirteenth of January I went and got the horse. He was as fat as a pig and felt like a colt. We hitched him up to the sleigh and got our stuff up to the Bailey Mill where we loaded the wagon onto the sleigh and piled on the furs and the rest of our outfit and early on the morning of the fourteenth we started for home. This ended my first real experience as a hunter and trapper.
I received two or three letters from Mr. Harris, the last one in which he stated that he was not feeling very well and I never heard from him again.
CHAPTER IV.
Some Early Experiences.
In 1871 or 1872 I had several bear traps made by our local blacksmith and I started in as a bear trapper and went it alone. After being out with Mr. Harris I had taken some valuable lessons on trapping bear and other animals. I built a good log camp on the West Branch of Pine Creek and went to trapping and hunting without either partner or companion, but after being in camp the first season I bought a shepherd dog that was a year old and broke him for still hunting and trapping. I found that a good intelligent dog was not only a companion but also a valuable one. I have noticed that some trappers do not want a dog on the trap line with them, claiming that the dog is a nuisance. This is because the dog was not properly trained.
To get back to the bear trapping: In the locality where I was trapping, bear were not very plentiful except in season, when there was a crop of beechnuts, although there was but little other shack, such as chestnuts and acorns. However, some seasons there would be an abundance of black cherries which the bears are very fond of. I set three traps at the head of a broad basin where there were three or four springs and the next day I set the balance of my bear traps; then I built a few deadfalls for coons and set a few steel traps for fox.
As I had seen several fresh bear tracks crossing the stream, where I had been setting the coon traps, on the morning of the third day after I had set the first three bear traps, I thought that I would go and look after them. They were about a mile and a half from camp and when I came in sight of the first trap I saw that I had a bear. You may be sure that I again felt like a mighty hunter. I was more pleased over this one bear than I was over the eight bear we had caught when I was with Mr. Harris, because now I was the trapper and not Mr. Harris. The bear was a good sized female. She had become fast only a short distance from where the trap was set. I shot and skinned the bear then cut the carcass into quarters, bent down a sapling and hung a quarter of the bear on this. With a forked pole I raised the sapling up until the meat was out of the way of small animals that might happen along.
After hanging up three of the quarters in this manner, leaving one to take to camp, I took the lungs and liver and put them in the bait pen. The bait had all been eaten and I was quite sure it had been done after the bear was caught, as a bear immediately loses its appetite after placing its foot in a good, strong trap. I really expected to find another bear in one of the other traps as they were not far away, but the other traps were undisturbed.