earing and camp a week, killing as many deer as they
could make use of, jerking a good portion to take home with them and
having a general good time feasting on trout, venison and other game,
and amusing themselves shooting at marks, pitching quoits, etc. I
will add that the main reason they went to this camp was for a good
time rather than the game, as game was plentiful right at their homes
in those days.

Well, it was at one of these outings that I killed my first bear. I
was about thirteen years old, and, of course, in my own mind, it made
a mighty hunter of me, not to be compared with Esau of old. It was in
June and shortly after we got to camp there was a heavy thunder
storm, but it all passed over before sundown, the sun coming out nice
and bright. I was determined to go with some of the men to watch a
lick (there were three or four licks not far away), but none of the
men cared to have my company, and they said it was likely to rain
again and made many excuses why I should not go to watch a lick with
them. Just before they were ready to start out to the lick we heard a
wolf howl away off on the hills and they (the men) put up the wolf
scare on me and said that there would be no deer come to the lick so
long as wolves were in the neighborhood. I took their stories all in
but insisted that I would watch a lick all the same. There was a lick
only a few hundred yards from camp, but for some cause deer rarely
ever worked it. When they saw that I was going to watch a lick in
spite of thunder storms, wolves or all the rest of the excuses that
they could make, they finally said that I could watch the lick which
I have mentioned and get eaten up by wolves.

There was a blazed line from camp to the lick and when the men
started for the licks that each one had decided on watching, I
started to the lick that was given me to watch.

There was one man left in camp to watch the horses and to keep camp.
This man said that when he heard me shoot he would come up and help
me bring in the deer.

The blind at the lick was a scaffold built up in a tree twenty or
thirty feet from the ground. I climbed to the scaffold and placed the
old gun in the loops that were fastened to limbs on the tree to give
the gun the proper range to kill the deer, should one come to the
lick after it was too dark to see to shoot.

Nothing came round the lick before dark, but as soon as it got dark I
could hear animals walking and jumping on all sides