He looked like a great black ball as he rolled about. We lost no time in putting him out of his trouble. We skinned the fore parts and hung them up in a sapling to use for bait for fox and marten and took the saddles to camp, skinned them out and stretched the skin on the shanty. Later we shipped the saddles to market.
The next day we looked at the balance of the bear traps but found them undisturbed but we concluded to leave them set a few days longer. On going the rounds of the smaller traps, we got a fox or two also a marten or two, but as I remember it, we got no mink or otter at this time. We now had the traps all looked after, so we put in the time hunting deer as the time for deer hunting was soon to close. The weather had turned and frozen so that it had formed a sharp crust and we were compelled to use the driving method of hunting. One of us would stand on the runways, in the beds of basins and in low places on the ridges while the other would follow the trail and drive the deer through to the hunter. I wish to say right here, that I do not like this way of hunting deer but little better than I do of hounding and running deer with dogs. The dog is all right but I want no dogging of deer for me.
We would get a deer nearly every day. It was now the first of January and time to get our venison to camp or out to the road where we could pick them up on the way out to Kane. After we had gathered up the venison and had gone the rounds of the traps that had not been tended while hunting, we went to Kane. Here we engaged a team to come in after the venison and bear and bring in a grub stake to last us until the middle of March when we would break camp and go home. We both went back to Kane with the team to assist in getting over some of the rough places and see that our venison and bear meat was tagged and shipped all right. Then we came back to camp to put our entire time in tending to the traps which we did to good advantage. We had found other good warm springs while hunting, and some that we thought were lasting springs, had gone dry or had frozen up, so we shifted a good many of the traps to the other springs.
Then we took it a little easier only going the rounds of the traps as we considered it necessary and on such days as the weather was favorable. We waited for February when we knew that the old dog coon would begin his rounds of calling on his friends.
We managed to pass the time away fairly well as we would get a fox, mink, marten or something nearly every day so that we busied ourselves. About the middle of February we had several warm days and the time had now come for us to get busy and we were out as soon as it was light. We would follow up all the spring runs until we found the trail of a coon, then follow it up until it went into a tree. Sometimes it bothered us which tree to cut down for the coon would go from one tree to another so that it was hard to tell which was the tree that was the home of the coon (some call it a den). One day we chopped down a great large oak, three or four feet in diameter and nearly sound all the way through and nary a coon to be found. I asked Bill why he did not say cuss words and he said he thought we had spent enough wind in chopping the tree down, without wasting any unnecessarily.
Well, as I said, the coon had been up and down so many trees that we did not know which one was the most likely one. We went to a large basswood tree that had only one track going to it and one away from it but when we pounded on it with the axe, we saw that it was very hollow. I suggested to Bill that we chop it down. Bill thought there were no coon in it and I had but little faith myself but I told him that as he had been wanting a wood job, here was his opportunity and Bill agreed with me, so we laid off our coats and went to chopping. The tree was only a shell. We soon had it down and to our surprise, coon began to run in all directions. Not having had much hopes of finding any coon in the tree we had not prepared ourselves with clubs to kill the coon. We used the axe handle as best we could but one coon got away and went into a hollow stump which we had to cut down. We got five coon. We then took up the trail of the coon that left the tree and after following it about a mile it went into a large hemlock tree that had a hole in it close to the roots. Pounding on it we discovered that it was hollow.
There had been several coon tracks both out and into the tree. We circled around some distance from the tree and found no tracks leading away from the tree farther than a small spring a few rods away. As it was getting well on towards night we did not fell the tree but went back to the old basswood where we had left the coons and took them and went to camp. Bill said that he had a dash-dang sight rather chop wood than to tote those three coons. I carried two and told Bill not to complain and I would let him skin all of them when we got to camp. He said, "Oh, you are a clever jade, aint you?" We skinned the coon that evening but did not stretch the skin until the next afternoon after we had gone out and cut the hemlock and got three more.
We kept up this coon hunt as long as we could find any tracks. It was now getting along into March and we had written home for a team to come in and take our camp outfit and furs out. As we had not been out over the road through the woods, the way we came in, we made a trip out to the main wagon road so that the man who came after us would have no trouble in following the trail to the camp. We now began to spring all the deadfalls that we had set for marten, mink and coon and take up all of the steel traps as we had written to the man to be there about the fifteenth of the month. I think it was a day or two later when the team came and our hunt on the Kinzua was ended.
We got some thirty odd deer and either five or six bear and I think four otter. I do not remember the number of fox, mink, marten and coon, but we did well for there had been but very little trapping done in that locality at that time and furbearing animals were quite plentiful. I have never been back to that camp since. I gave the camp to a man by the name of Ball.