e above counties
mentioned. Bears were more plentiful through this section than usual
this season, although they did not work north into the beech timber
until about the first of November, owing to a heavy crop of chestnuts
and acorns farther south.

Comrades of the trap line, if I was in a section of country where
large game was as plentiful as it was here fifty years ago, I would
not be able to get very far into tall timber, but as it gets
monotonous to write of skunk, muskrat and rabbit hunting of to-day, I
will tell of some of my experiences of fifty years ago, when it was
my custom to hunt deer and bear for profit and pleasure. In those
days I made it a point to be in the woods with my bear traps and
rifle by the middle of October each year, if health permitted.

In those days all that a trapper and hunter had to do was to get a
few miles out into tall timber, build a good log cabin and hit a
permanent job for the season. Deer, bear and fur-bearing animals were
so plentiful that it only required a small territory to find game
sufficiently plenty to keep the trapper on a lively gait all the
time. In those days we made it more a specialty of hunting deer for
the profit there was in it. We had built our cabin on the divide
between the headwaters of the Cross fork of Kettel Creek and the
headwaters of the East Fork of the Sinnamahoning. I had built a few
deadfalls and bear pens for bear and also had three or four steel
bear traps set, but beech-nuts, chestnuts and other nuts were so
plentiful that the bear would not take meat bait and I had no other
bait at hand. The bear would pass within a few feet of a trap and pay
no attention to the bait.

Now at this time, furs were so low that there was but little to be
made from the sale of the pelts of the fox, mink, skunk, etc. But it
was my custom to carry one or two steel traps in my pack sack and
when I killed a deer, I would make a set or two for the fox, marten
or fisher, whichever happened along first. As I have stated I spent
the greater part of my time in deer hunting. On this particular day I
was following a drove of four or five deer, but the wind was so
unsteady and whirling about in puffs so that as near as I could get
to a deer was to see his white flag, beckoning me to come on as they
jumped a log or some other object. Striking the trail of a bear that
had gone back and forth several times, nearly in the same place
within the past three or four days, since a