We also built a number more deadfalls for marten on different ridges farther up the stream where I had not set any the fall before. We built a number of deadfalls along the streams for mink and coon. It was now getting well along towards the last days of October, so we put in a couple of days hunting deer, as we had to have bait to set our marten and other traps with.
The first day's hunting we did not get a deer, though we each got a running shot but missed. The second day I did not see any deer but Bill killed a good sized buck before noon. We now began setting the traps that we had built. Bill baiting and setting the deadfalls, while I commenced on the steel traps. We had not baited and set any of the deadfalls that we had built up to this time. The steel traps we set for fox and wildcats, as there was a bounty of two dollars on wildcats at that time.
In setting out the fox traps the knowledge that I had got of the locality was of much benefit to me. I had kept a watch out for warm springs and other good likely places to catch a fox or other animals. After we had all the deadfalls and steel traps out but three or four otter traps, we set one or two at the drift where I caught one the fall before. The others we set where we found otter signs.
While setting the traps we got a marten or two, as well as one or two mink and coon. We had had one or two little flurries of snow, but we did not leave the traps to hunt deer. Now that the traps were all set, we divided up the trap lines as best we could for each one to attend to while hunting deer. In dividing up the lines in this way we saved much time, as we would not both be working the same territory.
Now business began to get quite lively, and we were seldom in camp until after dark, and we were up early and had breakfast over and our lunch packed in our knapsacks. The lunch usually consisted of a good big hunk of boiled venison and a couple of doughnuts and a few crackers, occasionally the breast of a partridge, fried in coon or bear oil. Sometimes the lunch would freeze in the knapsacks and it would be necessary to gather a little paper bark from a yellow birch and a little rosin from a hemlock, black birch or hard maple tree and build a little fire to thaw the lunch. This, however, was quickly done, and was a pleasure rather than a hardship. I have delighted in eating the lunch in this manner for many a winter on the trap line or trail, as have many other hunters and trappers.
Bill and I always had our lunch packed and ready to take up the trail at the first peep of day. Sometimes when we would get in late, tired and wet and our clothes frozen, I would suggest to Bill that we shut up camp and take a wood job, just to see what Bill would have to say. He would say that there would be time to take a wood job in the spring or after he had killed a certain large buck which is usually called "Old Golden." There were but a few days but what we either caught some fur or killed a deer, though sometimes we would have a bad streak of luck by wounding a deer, or having some animal take a foot off and escape, but this would make us all the more eager to follow the trail or trap line.
WOODCOCK ON THE TRAP LINE.
As we had gotten by this time several deer and had caught three bear (one in one of the deadfalls that I had built the fall before, that Will Howard called that "dashed dinged riggin'," when he found the bear in it) we wanted to get them out to Kane, that being the nearest point to a railroad. We started early one morning, Bill taking an axe and I carrying the saw, so that if we found any large trees across the trail that we had cut out the year before we would have the saw to do it with.