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FUR GAME IN NORTH CAROLINA | |
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By CLE STORMES
I have trapped and coon hunted for the last fourteen years and in several different states. I spent two years in Michigan and found some of the biggest coons that I have ever seen. But with your permission I would like to tell of my experience in the South, where there are enough coons to make a story interesting.
My partner and myself landed in North Carolina about January 1, 1915. My partner knew the country pretty well and in three days we were landed and had camp up in one of the best game countries a man wants to get into. The side of the river where we were camping was high, probably forty feet above the water. We found quail here in abundance, also rabbits, but the fur and big game we found on the other side of the river. The natives called it the low grounds. It is probably fourteen feet above the low water mark.
These lowlands are covered with big timber such as gum, oak, cypress and pine. The pine is found only on ridges and the cypress prows in swamps. The gum swamps are inhabited by hundreds of wild ducks all winter. It was no trick to get ducks, but we killed only what we wanted to use.
We soon had our trap lines out through the swamps and on the many gutters that run to the river. The first morning on the trap line we caught several opossums, coons and one mink. I also saw a gang of turkeys but as I was without a gun I had to watch them trot off through the brush. But I took to carrying my 2o-2u rifle with me and in about a week I killed a 20i pound gobbler. The same week I killed three more, the largest weighing 24 pounds.
I will now tell of an unexpected turkey hunt I had one morning. I had passed several traps and had turned around the edge of a canebrake in sight of a gum swamp where I had some traps set. As I neared the swamp a pair of ducks sneaked up within 200 feet of the swamp and I shot the male bird. I then bagged him and walked on down the edge of the swamp. As I neared the other end I heard a big noise off to my right. I stopped and pretty soon a big gang of turkeys came sailing over my head and a big hen lit in a gum near the opposite side of the swamp. I walked up to a tree and raised my rifle. As I fired she rolled off and sailed to the ground on the other side, but was dead when I picked her up. I now decided to take my game to camp. So I put the duck and turkey in a sack and started back to camp. I had not gone over twenty rods when all at once a big gobbler rant out of a bramble patch within twenty-five feet of me. As he started to fly I dropped my pack and took a hurried shot, and missed. The turkey was seventy-five feet away and twenty feet off the ground, when I took a second shot. I drew a bead on him this time and he rolled in a heap to the ground. I put him in my sack and went on to the camp without seeing any more, and believe me I had all I wanted to tote on that mile of canebrakes and swamps that lay between me and the camp.
Another time about a week later I had been over my line and had started back to camp. As I was making my way down a big gutter bordered with canebrake I looked off through the woods and saw a big gobbler. It had rained all morning, but the sun was now shining and he was standing there with his head back over his back cleaning and drying his feathers and wings. He made a pretty sight standing there in the warm sunlight. I dropped on one knee and drew a bead on him. As I fired he began to flop around on the ground and I saw his mate flying off through the brush. It was so thick there, that I had not seen her before. When the gobbler had quit flopping I found I had broken his neck. I tucked my rifle under my left arm and with my other hand took him by the legs and threw him over my shoulder. I had my morning's catch in a sling sack at my side, consisting of two mink and four squirrels. I toted this load two miles to the camp and when I got there I was all in, down and out.
We had some fine coon hunts while there, also, but as I have taken so much space I will only tell of one short hunt we took.
It was in February on a very dark night. We waited until nine o'clock and then with our only dog (Old Ring) rowed across the river. Ring had a coon going before we got the boat tied. He soon treed him in a big den tree so we called him off and went on. The next time we treed a big opossum. We shook him out and after the dog had killed him he trotted off about thirty feet and struck another coon trail. It was not very warm so we sat down on a log to smoke and wait for him to figure it out. In about an hour he treed in a yellow gum about a half-mile away. As I was trying to shine him, Pard had a lantern looking around on the ground. Suddenly he said, "Say, look around here at the tracks." I turned my light on the ground and if there was one coon track under that tree there were a thousand. We failed to shine our game, so branding it a den, we went on. We hunted until about twelve o'clock and returned to the boat with two opossums and three coons.
There are thousands of gray squirrels there in the low grounds; also for fur there is coon, mink, opossum, fox, muskrat and a few otter. For game there is deer, wild turkey, squirrel, quail, rabbits, ducks and geese. Our catch up until March consisted of two fox, sixteen mink, several muskrats, and over a hundred possums.
Hunter-Trader-Trapper. October: 1921,
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