he trigger. Well of
all the bawling a deer ever made, I think this one did the worst, but
I did not stop to see what I had done but took across the field to
the house at a lively gait, leaving the gun in the blind.

The folks heard the shot and saw me running for the house at
break-neck speed (this of course was the first that they knew I was out
with the gun). My older brother came to meet me and see what the
trouble was. When I told him what I had done, he went with me to the
lick and there we found a fair-sized buck wallowing in the lick with
his back broken, one buck shot (or rather one slug, for the gun was
loaded with pieces cut from a bar of lead); one slug had struck and
broken the spine and this was the cause of the deer bawling so loud
as this was the only one that hit.

The old shotgun was now taken from its usual corner in the kitchen
and hung up over the mantle piece above the big fire place and well
out of my reach. This did not stop my hunting. We had a neighbor who
had two or three guns and he would lend me one of them. I would hide
away hen eggs and take them to the grocery and trade them for powder
and shot. Of course the man who owned the gun got the game, when I
chanced to kill any, for I did not dare to carry it home. It was not
long until father found that I was borrowing Mr. Abbott's gun, and he
thought that if hunt I would, it would be better that I use our own
and then he would know when I was out with it. He took the old
flintlock to the gunsmith and had it fixed over into a cap lock, and
now I was rigged out with both gun and traps.

I will now tell you about the first bear that I killed. I was about
thirteen years old, and it was not so common a thing for one to kill
a bear in those days as it is now (1904), for strange as it may seem,
bears are far more plentiful here today than they were at that time.

Two of my brothers and three or four of the neighbors went into the
woods about twelve miles and bought fifty acres of land. There was no
one living within six or seven miles of the place. They cleared off
four or five acres and built a good log fence around it. They also
built a small barn and cabin. Each spring they would drive their
young cattle out to this place, stay a few days and plant a few
potatoes, and some corn. About once a month it was customary to go
over to this clearing and hunt up the cattle and bring them to the
clearing and salt them, then have a day or two of trout fis