CHAPTER XXXI.

GOOD WAGES TRAPPING.

I questioned a couple of hunters (brothers) this summer, as to the results of their hunting adventures of the past season, and as I wanted to find out their positive net gains, I got the following figures from them.

They are just fairly good trappers and their success is about what two industrious men could do who had a knowledge of trapping. Their work was in two spells. Three months in the fall and early winter and a month and a half in spring.

The provisions they took inland for the three months (ascending one of the North Shore rivers) was the following with costs given: 160 lbs. pork, $20.00; 20 lbs. butter, $3.00; 360 lbs. flour, $6.40; 6 lbs. tea, $2.10; 24 lbs. sugar, $1.20; 2 lbs. soda, 10 cts.; salt and pepper, 20 cts.; $33.00.

Their canoe was pretty well laden when they left the coast, inasmuch as besides the foregoing gross weight of provisions their outfit of tent, axes, pots, kettles, guns, tracking line, poling irons, four dozen No. 1 traps, half dozen No. 3 and a quarter dozen No. 5 bear had to be added to the load, bringing the total weight approximately up to seven hundred and fifty pounds.

Even when a canoe is loaded and, at times, overloaded, yet there are a number of incidentals that have to be taken along, things that weigh and are bulky, yet are not considered in the estimate. For illustration these men had yet to load a pair and a half of blankets, two pairs snowshoes, a bag of extra moccasins, socks, duffle, warm underclothes, extra trousers, coats, mits and a hundred and one other things which men penetrating the wilderness for several months may require.

In an expedition like this one must not think only of things necessary, but also things that may be required when a man is two or three hundred miles away from civilization and cuts his leg. He has no drug store to get plaster from. A full list of all a couple of prudent men have to take with them is quite interesting.

To resume,--these men left on the 10th of October and got back to the coast (on foot) the 12th of January, being absent almost exactly 3 months. They cached their traps, canoe and surplus things inland ready for the spring hunt.

After spending a fortnight with their families cutting wood and choring about their abodes they then went to work in the lumber camps for February and March. On April 15th they made a start for the interior once more, this time each hauling a flat sled loaded in equal weight with the following provisions: 80 lbs. pork, $10.00; 10 lbs. butter, $1.50; 180 lbs. flour, $3.20; 3 lbs. tea, $1.05; 12 lbs. sugar, 60 cts; 1 lb. soda, 5 cts.; salt and pepper, 10 cts; $16.50.

With their other things this made a dead weight of about one hundred and eighty pounds per sled. On mixed ice and bush walking at the season when the snow is crusted a man will average, with such a load, twenty-five or thirty miles a day.

There are many hunters that are quite superstitious about parting with a single skin until the hunting or trapping season is over and then the whole collection is sold 'en-blac.' Other hunters again will sell their fall hunts less a skin. This reserved skin may be only a musquash. They keep this, as they say, to draw other skins when next they go trapping. The men I am writing about had no necessity to sell in the winter, and therefore kept all till the spring. The commencement of June is still considered spring in the North country.

The total catch and the prices realized are as follows: 38 martens at $10, $380; 10 mink at $2.50, $25; 1 beaver, $7; 2 bears at $7, $14; 3 bears at $20, $60; 4 fishers at $7, $28; 1 otter, $15; 120 musquash at 15c, $18; amount $547.00.

SUMMARY OF TRAPPING.

By total hunt, $547.00; to provisions, $49.50; sundries, 70 cts; 2 men's net earnings for 135 days at $1.84 equals $496.80.

The amount per diem clear to each of the brothers may not appear to the reader as very remunerative, yet compared to working in the shanties they did much better. The wages for good axe men last winter were from eighteen to twenty dollars per month.

Compared with the same length of time working in the lumber camps the figures would stand thus: 4 1/2 months lumbering at average wages of $22 equals $99; 4 1/2 months trapping, $248.40. In favor of trapping, say in round figures $150.00.

I submit the foregoing to the readers of H-T-T, hoping it may prove interesting.

* * *

It is no doubt ancient history, still it may be interesting to the readers to know the large hunts made by some of our Indians in the latter '60's. Referring to a note book kept in those days I find the hunt of one particular Indian recorded. His name was A-ta-so-kan--the only help he had, a boy of twelve.

This family left the Post in August and only returned the following June. His hunting grounds were just across the heights of lands going towards Hudson's Bay, from the headwaters of the Ottawa River. Game of all description was very plentiful then; so much so that, providing an Indian had a few pounds of flour and lard to get away from the vicinity of the station, his guns nets and snares kept him in abundance. A-ta-so-kan, altho having several children besides the boy took only fifty pounds of flour, ten pounds of lard, one pound of tea, and ten pounds of tobacco. Goods, however, he supplied himself well with--such as many of various bright-colored flannels, yards of duffle, yards of H. B. strouds, both blue and white, and several pairs of H. B. wool blankets. These people were brought up on country produce: i. e., fish and flesh, therefore found it no hardship to be without flour, etc.,--the white man's food. From that one man and his young boy I got at the end of the hunting season (first of June) the following furs:

96 Large Beaver Skins. 226 Small Beaver Skins. 32 Otters. 120 Martens. 35 Minks. 40 Lynxes. 1236 Musquash.

Making altogether four of our eighty pound packs of furs. This, of course, was an exceptional hunt--still we had several other Indians who ran A-ta-so-kan a close second.

What a difference in the stretching and drying of that man's skins, compared with those we get on the frontier. Each skin, apart from the musquash, was as clean as note paper, all killed in season and all dried in the frost or shade. On the line of civilization there is such keen competition among the traders to get furs, that the hunters stretch and dry the skins in any way. Beaver, for instance, which is bought by the pound, is frequently weighted with syrup, and sand rubbed into the hair and paws, and considerable flesh left on, all tells when three or four dollars a pound is paid.

The Abanakis Indians about St. Francis Lake, St. Peter, are noted for their tricks of the trade, and when you get a blue-eyed Abanakis, look out to be cheated. I call to mind on the St. Maurice River, when stationed there, one of these gents brought furs to sell at our Post. Among the lot was a beaver skin. According to its size, if well dressed, it ought to have weighed a pound and a half, or three quarters at most. Judge of my surprise when I found it tipped the scales at two and half pounds. This was phenomenal and uncanny, and I remarked to the hunter, that we would leave the skins in the store until after dinner before closing the trade.

During the mid-day hour I slipped out and examined the skin critically, and found the rascal had flinched up layers of the inner skin or "cutem," and had inserted small sheets of tea-chest lead, after which he had pressed the skin down flat and dried it in this state. This was insult added to injury, because about a month previous he had begged the lead from me to make bullets with. Verily there are more tricks with horses and furs than meets the eye.