Great thread. Love it!
I wish I had photos to share unfortunately for most of my trapping carrier I didn't have a camera of any sort. I couldn't afford such luxuries back then.
I do have this one, but it doesn't really show what the spring hunt was for us.
It was big. One of the biggest events of the year, right up there with the fall harvest.
Here's a small glimpse.
That's my bud skinning one of more then twenty we took that day. It was a slow day.
We did two types of spring hunt.
The hunt that produced these beaver was our river hunt. Every spring the two year old beaver leave home and go looking for a mate and a home territory. They leave the colony and head down the nearest stream to the bigger streams which they then follow for a ways before heading up another feeder stream.
We would set traps along the main river and every other day from ice out to the middle of April we'd make a run along the main river checking traps and shooting any beaver we found along the way.
On a good day we could bring home upwards of fifty beaver. Twenty in a day was okay but not great. A poor day we'd get a dozen or less.
Although the numbers where high the quality was not. Those travelers would get to fighting when they met and by the second week of the hunt the pelts would be starting to show large wounds from the fighting.
By the end of that week they would be too chewed up to be worth going after and they would be getting sun burnt from not having a lodge or hole to spend the daylight hours in.
Our preferred spring hunt involved finding a group of beaver colonies close enough together to hunt from one location.
Then as soon as there was any open water on those colonies we'd set up a camp at a central location and each morning and evening we'd each choose a colony to hunt.
If we got four in the morning and two in the evening out of one colony we'd move to another for the next hunt.
Six to eight beaver a day was about average but the quality was usually close to the best of the year. What I like the most was the time in camp fixing hides, telling stories and enjoying the great outdoors.
And the adventures. Oh the adventures.
There was the evening my big brother had commented that he hadn't seen a bear yet that year. Big mistake!
You want to see bears says our friend, I'll show you bears. With that he reached over to the campfire and took the frying pan we'd cooked a mess of bacon in that morning and he upset it over the hot coals.
A blue cloud of oily smelling smoke belched out of that fire and drifted off down the stream beside our camp.
An hour later the first bear strolled into camp. The second was a few minutes behind him. The third wouldn't come in but we heard him arrive about half an hour later. At dark they were still coming. And they were getting bolder by the hour. By nine that night we were firing shots into the air every time we heard something move in the bush.
The last two showed up just after midnight. We were running low on ammunition and our nerves were about shot as well.
We had decided that if we were to get any sleep that night we'd have to shoot a few to convince the rest to leave us alone.
We had no artificial light but big brother and mr. frying pan figured they could see well enough by moonlight to make a killing shot.
They set up on a beaver dam that crossed the steam next to camp.
The plan was to catch the bear in the open and silhouetted against the moonlight reflecting off the water. They figured that would give them the best chance at hitting their target.
Well it allowed them to see sure enough. They saw well enough to see the hump on the bear crossing the dam in the moonlight.
That's when they decided that maybe they didn't want to shoot a bear in the night after all.
That was the second to last bear to come in that night. Turns out it was the second to last bear we saw on that trip.
We didn't get any sleep till the next afternoon.
Who could sleep with all that excitement. With dozens of beaver drying on hoops (bear candy) outside our tents and bears wondering among the tents we felt more like swapping stories then like sleeping anyway.