WOODCOCK AND SOME OF HIS CATCH.
We had caught while in camp one bear, ten mink, eight coon and some other furs as shown in the accompanying picture. After we left I set a few traps about home, catching three fox and a few skunk and four more mink, making fourteen mink in all. We got $4 and $4.50 for the fox, and $4 to $6 for the mink, and from 80 cents to $2.25 for skunk, and about the same for coon. We got 30 to 40 cents each for muskrats.
This will about complete the story of my trapping for the season of 1908. I am sorry that I am no artist, as I could have sent some fine pictures, consisting of the bear in trap, as well as many other animals in traps, and other pictures that would have been interesting had I been able to take them at the right time and place.
CHAPTER XVI.
Hits and Misses on the Trail.
Many years ago when deer were plenty in this section of the country (North Central Pennsylvania) and dogs were allowed to run deer at their will, there being no restriction by way of law against hounding deer, I started from the house about 10 o'clock in the morning to go to some traps that I had set for mink along the creek in a swamp not far from our place. There was an old road or path that led from the wagon road down through the swamp to the creek. Along this path it was thickly grown up with laurel and other underbrush that nearly shut out the path.
I was accustomed to follow this path to the creek when going to look after my traps. On my way up to the road I heard dogs barking as though they were on the trail of something, but thought nothing of it as it was a common occurrence to hear hounds running nearly every day. I was following this path and had got within a few rods of the creek and was just about ready to climb over a fallen tree that lay across the path.
The tree lay up from the ground about a foot or so and it was perhaps three feet from the ground up to the top of the log. I was just in the act of climbing this log when a good-sized buck deer went to jump the log also and we met, head on. I had no gun and if I had would have had no time to use it. I seized the deer by the horns and forced him back from the log with a startled cry at the same time. The deer, instead of trying to get away, seemed bound to come over the log to where I was, so I held to the deer's horns, not daring to let loose.