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Show Volume III, Issue II THE OGDEN VALLEY NEWS Page 19 November 15, 2000 HUNTING cont. from page 18 waited until the smoke from the 45-90 rifle I shot had cleared and then decided we would take our two poles and go in and poke at the bear. We did this and as there was still no movement we knew that I had killed him. My aim had been good and just raised the skull. It was the largest bear I have ever seen, the skin covered the whole side of our cabin. I took the skin along with the others I had to Abe Kuhn to sell. He wanted to know how much I wanted for it. I told him I didn’t know. He offered me the same price as for the fox and martin skins I had, $65. The smaller bear hides I only received $5.00 and $6.00 each for, some I got $10.00 for. Abe Kuhn later told me and I don’t know if he was really serious or not, that he had prepared that large bear skin and took it to New York and a man there wanted it and paid him $3,000 for it. The French trapper shipped all his furs east to St. Louis where he got the best price for them. Another experience we had with bear was when we were walking along the trail and came to an incline at the bottom of which were a patch of white willows and some quaken asp lying cross wise, evidently from a fire some years previous. We saw a bear go down into the patch and the trapper told me to stay up on the trail and he would go down and take a shot at the bear and if he didn’t get him, for me to shoot him. I heard a shot and then he hollered, “Oh, Will.” I went running down the slope and when I got where I could see him, I took a shot at the bear and killed it. The bear was only about six feet from the trapper at the time I shot it and the trapper was nonchalantly sitting on one of the logs trying to get a shell that had stuck in his gun out with his pocket knife. He wasn’t a bit frightened. The one shot he had fired wounded the bear and I am confident the bear would have clawed him to pieces before he got the shell out of his gun. We loaded our own shells and I guess that one had been used too many times. One incident the trapper told me about was when we were watching some men haul bones down to a car a Piedmont for loading, evidently for use as handles of knives or probably fertilizer. I asked him what they were and he told me they were bones of elk that had been killed in the valley east of Henry’s Fork. He told me he had acted as a guide to a party of English hunters several years before. He led this party of ten or twelve Englishmen along with several Americans to the valley and they came upon this herd of elk. It was getting late in the season and they were feeding on the grass. The hunters decided to split and go different ways and circle the elk. The trapper told them it wasn’t at all necessary to shoot them like that because there were so many they could get all they wanted by staying together. They insisted on doing it their way and after circling the elk, opened fire on them and even after they had killed more than they could possibly ever get out of there, they kept on with the slaughter. Some of them ran out of ammunition and went back to the camp for more and upon their return continued firing until they had killed every elk in sight. He estimated they had killed around 500 head which sounds like an exaggerated number, and if I didn’t know him so well and know that you could rely on him always for telling the truth I wouldn’t believe it myself. He said he became so thoroughly disgusted with their ruthless slaughter that he packed up his outfit and left them, never waiting for his pay or anything. From that day on he never again acted as a guide for anyone. This trapper was a good cook and when we first went up to our cabin we killed four or five head of deer. After dressing and skinning them we hung some up for our immediate use and also smoked and dried some. He then showed me how to make a cache for some to keep until later on. He first put some coarse timber down over the foot or foot and a half of snow that was already in the gully and over this he put a lot of white willows. Then he placed the meat on these willows and used some to cover over the top. I noticed he left an opening on one side and it was so we could get at it when we needed the meat. On the top of all this he put some snow and during that winter the snow in the gully was from fifteen to twenty feet deep. About the latter part of March we were out of meat and he asked me if I thought I could locate it. I told him I wasn’t far off in my guess, but if we had started digging where I pointed out it would have taken several hours longer to reach the cache. He had it right in a direct line with two trees near the cabin. When we took the meat out it was as white as the snow, every bit of blood had been drawn out of it with the cold, but it hadn’t frozen at all and was very delicious. In 1904 or 1905 when I was buying and selling horses, a party came to me and told me of a woman named Bonamark who had some horses for sale. It seems she was the widow of John Ferguson who had a large ranch in the Deep Creek country and having recently remarried had decided to sell the ranch and all the horses. I went to her and she said there were more than 500 head of branded stock there when she left, but she did not know just what was there then. I asked her how much she wanted for them and we finally agreed that I was to pay here $500 for them unsight and unseen and I was also to do my own gathering of these horses and all the offspring. When I got down to the ranch I secured several Indians to help me. I think at that time that Antelope Jake was still alive but the leader of these Indians was younger and was able to speak English so I could understand him. I also secured the services of a rider called “Mormon” Jake, who was supposed to be a survivor of the cattle and sheep war from Wyoming several years previous. He had been tried in the courts of Wyoming for murder and in someway the trail was moved to the Colorado courts and he was finally acquitted and turned loose. At this time he was building a corral preparatory to gathering some wild horses. It was nearly completed when I met him. I told him what I came for and he agreed to help me. We had gathered quite a number of the horses and taken them to the railroad about ninety miles distant and loaded them for shipment east. We kept on gathering them as I decided to keep some of the best saddle horses and sell around Salt Lake and Ogden. These horses were originally from California and though small in stature were well bred, grain-fed stock and made excellent saddle horses. After letting those that I didn’t want loose, I had about two hundred and twenty-five to take up to Salt Lake and Ogden. We kept them in the pasture until we were ready to leave. A man named Rathall and a young fellow, along with two or three Indians were to go with me. The route was over the Gold Hill from Deep Creek by way of Fish Springs and when we reached Fish Springs, we decided to cut over the Beckwith Trail over the Cedar Mountains into Skull Valley. The young fellow was in the lead of the horses and all at once something happened and he couldn’t control them. They stampeded and one bunch went one way and several others in different directions. My saddle horse was pretty tired so I unhitched one of the horses from the light rig we had with us and not stopping to saddle it just rode bareback after one of the bunches that had taken to the north to what was called the Wild Cat Mountain. The horses that I started after ran about twenty-five miles before I was able to overtake them and turn them back to the Granite Mountain where I had told Rathall to hold the others. We lost about forty or fifty head in the stampede, some dropping off all along the way. We started on and when we started to cross the Cedar Mountain our pack horse laid down and rolled over and in so doing, broke the water jug containing all the water we had, with the exception of what I thought I was carrying in my two quart jug. The boys had drank out of my jug when I was chasing the horses and not knowing it, I hadn’t stopped to refill it and when we needed the water we discovered it nearly empty. I had seemed to chase every bit of the moisture out of my body in my ride after the horses. We had gone about twenty miles without passing any water and figured we still had thirty miles to go to reach the Kanaha ranch. It was as close to go on as to retrace our steps, so we kept on. My tongue was getting so thick it was hard for me to talk or swallow. I finally told one of the Indians to go on and see if he could find water and, if not, to go on until he reached the ranch and then get a fresh saddle horse and bring us back water. He said he had heard of a spring around there but didn’t know just where so he went on to look anyway. It was still about eight or nine miles to the top of the mountain and he later told me that when he got to the top he decided which direction to go in and went on about four miles before he finally came to a spring. There wasn’t enough water in it to fill the jug and he had to take a stick and dig a hole and finally got the bottle in it so he could get some water in it. The water was muddy as there were tracks where horses and animals had been around in the mud, but I don’t think I ever welcomed anything as much as that drink of water. We weren’t able to drink a lot of it but rinsed our mouths and swallowed some. It was about nine o’clock that night when we came to a creek about a mile and a half from the ranch. I told the rest of them not to drink too much of it, but they were so thirsty they didn’t listen and they were sick that night. When we got to the ranch we had plenty of good water and I lay awake all night and every ten or fifteen minutes would take a sip of water. I have been thirsty since that time, but never so bad that my tongue was swollen and so thick I could hardly swallow, and I hope that I never go through that experience again or that no one else does. I cannot think of a worse death than that of dying of thirst. About ten years ago my three children, William, Ida and Catherine, found a baby beaver on the banks of the Ogden River in South Fork Canyon near our ranch. It was nearly dead and evidently only a few days old. The children fed it milk with a teaspoon and then with a bottle and a nipple. We had to experiment with its diet and the food it liked the best was boiled potatoes and bread. It ate celery for about a year and then got so it very seldom ate vegetation of any kind. It also loved fruits like strawberries, raspberries and prunes. It ate cheese and candy, particularly all day suckers. The girls would give it a bath about every other day in the laundry tubs in the basement and it got so it would go out of its pen and over to the tubs and turn the faucets on by itself. It would never turn the tap off though and many times we would find the basement floor covered with water. It would take bottles or anything it could find and push around to build a dam with. It was a great pet and never once bit anyone, even letting the girls comb its fur. It would whine like a puppy and shake its head. When we got fresh straw for its pen we just put it on the floor and the beaver would push all the old straw out of its pen and put the fresh straw in by itself. When it was about four years old, someone shot it. This was one summer when we had it up on the ranch in South Fork Canyon. It would wander a little ways from the cabin and evidently someone thought it was going to bite them when it wanted to play. The girls could call it and it would come right away. It was several days before they found it had been killed and they felt very bad. Note: Mr. Anderson was an ardent fisherman and hunter and during his work as an employee of the state, devoted both time and money to better conditions and laws for the protection of the fish and game. dickd@wardleygmac.com |