nd then catch a fox. As time passed by, I
began to have a great desire to get on an equal with Mr. Washburn and
catch a fox. I began to urge him to allow me to go with him to see
how he set his trap, and after a long time coaxing, he granted my
request. I found what everyone of today knows of the chaff bed set.
You may now know that it was not long before I had a bed made near a
barn that stood well back in the field, and after much worry and many
wakeful nights I caught a fox and I thought myself Lord Jonathan. As
time went by, and by chance I learned that by mixing a goodly part of
hen manure with plenty of feathers in it, and mixing it with the
chaff, it was a great improvement on chaff alone. Next I learned of
the well known water set. However, I perhaps set different from the
most of trappers in making this set. Well as all trappers learn from
long years of experience, so have I, and those old-fashioned sets are
like the squat traps, not up-to-date. I will now drop the trapping
question for a time and tell you how I killed my first deer.

Just outside of the clearing on father's farm and not more than fifty
rods from the house was a wet place, such as are known to these parts
as a "bear wallow." This wet place had been salted and was what is
called a "salt lick." In those days it was not an uncommon thing to
see six or eight deer in the field any morning during the summer
season--the same as you will see them in parts of California today.
It was not an uncommon thing for my older brother to kill a deer at
this lick any morning or evening, but that was not making a nimrod of
me. I would beg father to let me take the gun (which was an old
double barreled flintlock shot gun) and watch the lick. As I was only
nine years old, they would not allow me to have the gun, so I was
obliged to steal it out when no one was in sight, carry it to the
barn and then watch my opportunity and "skipper" from the barn to the
lick. All worked smoothly and I got to the lick all right. It was
toward sundown and I had scarcely poked the gun through the hole in
the blind and looked out when I saw two or three deer coming toward
the lick. I cocked the old gun and made ready but about this time I
was taken with the worst chill that any boy ever had and I shook so
that I could scarcely hold the gun to the peep hole. It was only a
moment when two of the deer stepped into the lick, and I took the
best aim I could under the condition, and pulled t