OCK.

CHAPTER I.

Autobiography of E. N. Woodcock.

I was born on the 30th day of August, A. D. 1844, in a little village
by the name of Lymansville, Potter County, Pennsylvania. Lymansville
was named after my grandparent, Isaac Lyman, or better known as Major
Lyman, having held office of that rank in the Revolutionary War. It
is from this limb of the family that I inherited that uncontrollable
desire for the trap, gun and the wild.

At a very early age it was my greatest delight to have all the mice,
squirrels and groundhogs and in later years young raccoons, young fox
and every other varmint or wild animal that I could catch or could
get from other sources, and at times I had quite a menagerie.

I began trapping at a very early age, the same as many boys do who
live out in the country where they have an opportunity. My father
owned a grist mill and a sawmill. These mills were about one-half
mile apart and it was about these mills and along the mill races and
ponds of these mills that I set my first traps for muskrats, mink and
coon. Before I was stout enough to set a trap which was strong enough
to hold the varmint, it was necessary for me to get some older person
to set the trap. I would take the trap to the intended place and set
for the particular animals I was in quest of, whether mink, coon or
rat.

In those days clearings were small, woods large and full of game.
Deer could be seen in bunches every morning in the fields and it was
not uncommon to see a bear's track near the house that had been made
during the night. Wolves were not plenty though it was a common thing
to see their tracks and sometimes hear them howl on the hills.

Like other boys who lead an outdoor life, I grew stronger each year
and as I grew older and stronger my trap lines grew longer and my
hunts took me farther into the woods. Finally as game became scarcer
my hunts grew from a few hours in length to weeks and months camping
in a cabin built in the woods in a section where game was plenty.

At the age of thirteen while out with a party of men on a hunting and
fishing trip, I killed my first bear. While I had now been out each
fall with my traps and gun, it was not until I was about eighteen
years old that I took my first lesson from an old and experienced
trapper, a man nearly eighty years old and a trapper and hunter from
boyhood. The man's name was Aleck Harris. We made our camp in the
extreme southeastern part of this (Pott