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

They said they would give me a clean title to all the bear I could catch, but they did not care to invest. So I took the axe and some bait and went to the head of a small draft where the boys had seen the bear tracks. I found at the head of this hollow what seemed to be a bear runway or crossing, for three or four bears had passed around the head of this basin in the past few days.

With some hard work and heavy lifting I got another good deadfall built that day. The next day I went the rounds of the marten and mink traps, and I think I killed a deer and got two marten. I remember that at this time we had a good snow to hunt on, and that it was not an uncommon thing for us to cut wood for the camp long after dark, and sometimes it was pretty scant at that. I think it was the third day after I had set the first bear trap when Will came in, shortly after Charley and I had got to camp, and as he stuck his head through the hoghole (as I called the substitute for a door) he says, a fool for luck.

I suspicioned what was coming and said, "Well, what kind of luck have you had?"

Will said, "It is not me that has had the luck, but you have got one of the Jed-blasted bears up there in that rigging you built, you ever see."

I remember that I had some kind of a hipo that night, so that I would laugh every now and then "kindy" all by myself. I do not think that I slept much that night, though it was not the first bear I had ever caught. I thought it was beginning to look as though the laugh was coming my way all right.

In the morning the boys went to the trap with me and helped get the bear out of the trap and helped set the trap again, and then went on with their deer hunting. I went to skinning the bear, and it was all I did that day to skin that bear and stretch the skin on the shanty. I told the boys when they came in that night that I thought we were going to have a hard winter, and so I concluded to weatherboard the camp with bear skins. The carcass of the bear was, of course, a complete loss, and that is a serious objection to the deadfall as a bear trap.

I think that it was about this time that Will met with an accident in his foot gear, so he went out to Kane after a pair of gum shoes. At this time we had several deer so thought it best to have the team come in and take them out and ship them.

When Will came back that evening he said that some kind of an animal had crossed the path about one-half mile from camp, dragging something. He said that he could not make up his mind what it was, but thought it was some kind of an animal in a trap, but we knew of no one trapping in that locality.

I did not know but it might be possible that some animal had gotten in one of my otter traps and had broken the chain and gone off with the trap. Early in the morning I went down the creek to look at the traps and see if they were all right. When I came to the Spring Run I saw that my otter (or at least I called it my otter), had again gone up the run, on his usual round of travel. When I came to where the trap was it wasn't there at all.

I had fastened the trap to a root that was two or three inches under water and a root that I supposed sound. I was mistaken, for the root was pretty doty and the otter had broken the root and gone with my trap. I lost no time in taking up the chase. The trail led up this run to its source, then over a spur of ridge and down the hill again into a branch of the main stream, then up this branch for a distance of a mile or more, where I came up with him.