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The City of DuBois
Chapter 4
Page 027
CITY OF DUBOIS Page 27
day, and skunks and weasels by night. Crows pulled out the young
corn and
coons ate it when in roasting ears. Wolves killed his sheep. Bears
loved pork
and killed his pigs. One incident is given of a pioneer wife, who,
upon hearing
a commotion among the pigs went to see what the trouble was. She
found a bear
in the pen, and although she had but one hand she siezed an axe and
killed the
bear.
Trapping bears was one of the methods of destroying that animal. A
pen
was built of round logs, about three feet wide in the clear, and six
feet long.
On this was erected a heavy deadfall of logs. The trap was baited
with meat and
when the bear entered it sprung the trap and the lid fell down and
held it a
prisoner until the owner of the pen came along and killed it.
As late as the winter of 1868 a trapper by the name of Robert Taylor
set
his traps in the fall in that little valley known as "Benson's Run",
to the
left of the B. R. & P. Railroad, going east at Salem station. In the
early fall
Mr. Taylor constructed his "fox beds", which were made by collecting
from the
farmers buckwheat chaff or chaff from clover, in which was placed
cracklings
from rendered lard and other offals. When the snow came foxes
learned there was
food in these places. Mr. Taylor then carefully set his traps in
these beds,
carefully covering them with chaff. During the winter of 1868 and
1869 he
caught fifty-two foxes and two wolves in two fox beds, about one
quarter mile
apart, in this location.
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