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

After staying two or three days and making arrangements with a young man to come to camp every Saturday and bring mail and word from Charley, I returned to camp, where I found things all right. While out to town I bought a pair of snow shoes. I had never used them, and for the first few days it was who and who to know which would be on top, myself or the snow shoes. I finally mastered them and found them a great help in getting about in the deep snow. It kept me pretty busy attending to the traps.

One night after Charley had been gone about three weeks, on nearing camp, I saw a big smoke coming out of the chimney. I first thought the cabin was on fire, but I soon saw that that was not the case, and knew some one had started a fire. When I got there I saw some one had been there with a team. When I rapped on the door Charley called out, "Come in, I am running this camp now." Well, I tell you I was pleased to hear that voice call out, "Come in." It was some time before we thought it best for Charley to go out very much, but he could keep camp and I had company. We stayed in camp until the middle of May, thinking that we would have a big catch of bear in the spring, but were disappointed for we only caught three; but we caught quite a lot of coon. We did not trap any for muskrat.

My next trip to Michigan was to Kalkaska County, and I had two partners, Moshier and Funk by name, and both were residents of the state. Our camp was on the Manistee River near the Crawford and Kalkaska County line. This trip was some ten or twelve years later than the one previously mentioned, probably 1878. We killed some thirty odd deer, and Mr. Moshier having some friends living down close to the Indiana line, he shipped our venison down to his friend and he sold it for us. I do not know where he sold it but the checks came from a man by the name of Suttell, N. Y. We caught 11 bear during the fall and spring. We caught a good number of mink, coon and fox, also a few marten.

I should have said that on my trip on Thunder Bay River we caught several beaver, but on the Manistee we saw no fresh beaver signs but plenty of old beaver dams. We would make an occasional trip on to the Boardman and Rapid Rivers for mink. On Rapid River two or three miles above Rickers Mill was a colony or family of three or four beaver, but we did not try to catch them.

My third trip to Michigan was to the Upper Peninsula, in Schoolcraft County. A pard of mine by the name of Ross and myself had a boat made at Manistique, and started the first of September. We poled and rowed the boat up the Manistique River for a distance of about a hundred miles, according to our estimate. The boat was heavily loaded with our outfit, and we were nearly a month making the trip up the river to where we built our camp on a small lake about one-half mile from the main river. We found mink, marten, beaver and coon quite plentiful, but from what I read bear and wolves are more plentiful there now than they were about 1879. At that time there was not a railroad in that section, nor scarcely a tree cut in the northern part of the Upper Peninsula, with the exception of up about the Iron Works where they were cutting timber and burning coke and charcoal. In fact, I found bear more plentiful in Lower Michigan.

About the fifteenth of October we had the camp in shape and a big pile of wood cut and piled close to the door. We now began to explore the country for the best sites to set our traps, mostly Nos. 2, 3 and 4, besides seven bear traps, all Newhouse. We would build deadfalls along the line, for we would not set a steel trap only where we were quite sure that we would make a catch. We used the water set mostly for wolves and fox, and of course, for mink and coon.

Good springs were not so common where water sets could be made as in Pennsylvania. We could find occasionally a good log crossing where we could get in a set for wolf, but suitable places of this kind were not plentiful. We worked for beaver all we could. We would break a notch in their dams and then set a trap just on the edge of break in water just deep enough so the beaver would spring the trap. It was while trapping here that I learned to make the bait set for beaver. This is to use the kind of wood beaver were feeding on for bait.

We caught three or four wolves on the ice close to the bank. Sometimes the ice would settle along the banks and the water would run over the ice too close to the shore and then freeze. This made a good path, or rather place for the wolf to travel. Now, where a spruce or cedar tree would fall into the lake so as to leave a narrow space between the boughs on the tree and the bank, was a good place to set. We would watch the weather and when it began snowing we would go to one of these trees from the ice or water side, cut a notch in the ice, put in some ashes or dry pulverized rotten wood. The notch cut in the ice must be just deep enough to let the trap down level with the surface. The clog was concealed under a bough of the tree.

Now, I wish to say that I was never able to catch a timber wolf unless I was able to outwit him, and in order to do this the conditions and surroundings must be perfect for making the set. Where we found good places to make a set of this kind we would place the carcass of a deer several yards from shore out on the ice. This would entice the wolves to come around, and of course increase our chances of making a catch.

We were bothered some by having a wolverine follow a line of deadfalls, tear down the bait pen and take the bait, but we did not allow him to do his cussedness long before we would put a trap in the way.