st the lick. I cocked both
barrels of the gun and raised it carefully to my shoulder, and,
breaking a little dry twig I had in my hand caused the bear to stop
and turn his head around so as to look down the hill. This was my
time so I leveled on his head and shoulders and let go both barrels
of the gun at once.

The bear went into the air and then began tumbling and rolling down
the hill towards the tree that I was in, bawling and snorting like
mad. But if the bear made a howl from pain he was in, it was no
comparison to the howl that I made for help and it did not cease
until the men in camp came on the run thinking that I had
accidentally shot myself. Well, this was my first bear and it was the
greatest day of my life.

We took the bear to camp, skinned and dressed it and then went to
bunk for the night, but it was very little I slept for I could only
think what a mighty hunter I was (in my mind).

The men came in in the morning with no better luck than they had the
night before, and they all declared that if I had not been with them
they would have had to go without venison.

The men said that we had meat in plenty now and that we would not
watch the licks any more that time, so they put in their time jerking
the venison and also some of the bear meat. They built a large fire
of hemlock bark, and when it was burned down to a bed of coals so
that there was no longer any smoke, they made a rack or grate of
small poles, laid in crotches driven in the ground, so as to have the
grate over the coals, and then laid the slices of venison on this
grate and stood green bark about the grate to form a sort of an oven.
The strips of meat were first sprinkled with salt and wrapped up in
the skin from the deer and allowed to remain wrapped in the skin for
a few hours until the salt would strike through the meat so as to
make it about right as to salt.

The men remained in camp about a week. They would shoot at a mark,
pitch quoits and have jumping contests and other amusements,
including fishing, eating trout, venison and bear meat along with
toasted bread and coffee and potatoes roasted in the ashes.

* * *

The time had arrived when I thought that I must take to the taller
timber to trap and hunt. I searched among the boys of my age, in the
neighborhood, for a partner who would go with me to the Big Woods, as
the section where I wished to go, was called. I finally found a pard
who said he would go with me and stay as lo