The Start of Trapping

The Start of Trapping
I am not sure when I got the urge to start trapping, but it was early 70’s I guess. Back then Brian Giles and I at age twelve were exploring the banks of Meadow Brook in Bangor and watching Atlantic salmon in the pool next to what is now the Humane Society. We would see beaver, otter and muskrat on our travels. The start of this brook was from the bog off Stillwater Ave and Rudnicki’s farm. It also was known for a few trout in the spring. Now the brook is turned in to culverts, flows under the Bangor Mall parking lot, which adds gas and oil from run off, then crosses Hogan Road before ending the at the Penobscot River.
It might have been Dale Fugal, a son in law of Tom Davis of the Kittredge Road, maybe O’connor or Alton Bartlett, I am just not sure. But I was reading all about trapping and wanted to get started. Fugal suggested I start with water trapping on Meadow Brook and move to land traps. Thus I was under way. Traps were purchased through the mail, at Sears, from a relative of Fugal, Robert Pomery and later from Tom Stevens at Mowatt Fur in Brewer.
As I progressed from the water to land trapped, I wanted to trap fisher, fox and coon, but where. Soon I was knocking on the door of a large farm house at the end of the Kittredge Road. I was around fifteen or so, when this woman answered and invited me in to visit. Her name was Hazel Clark and her friend was Al Grass. Hazel was a relative of Don and Eleanor’s owners of Deans Landing and grandmother to Craig. Grass was from Vanceboro area, where Hazel had a camp on the head waters of Lambert Lake. I would soon learn that Clark was suing the City of Bangor, using Swift Tarbell for taking her land for the dump and her husband has passed away while trying to clear snow the big plow left in her driveway. She was convinced it was payback for her suit.
From this first meeting, she became like a second mother to me. I would spend days and days with her, talking, learning, playing cards, fishing, cooking and hunting.
My trap line continued into college and allowed me to get a good number of fisher on her property, which was college money. At the time fisher was worth $180 a pelt. There were also plenty of deer on her property and always visiting her pastures. Now Clark had no money, there was no life insurance, only a small disability. Needless to say there wasn’t much food, especially steak or hamburger. I recall wheeling into the drive one day, only to hear the crack of a rifle from the house. I looked up and there was a rifle barrel with Hazel at the second story window shooting out into the pasture. “Al get the truck now” she commanded. Trust you did what Hazel said. The truck was a two wheel drive mini Nissan. Down across the field they went. Al jumped from the truck, threw the two deer in the back and never missed a beat. He was a rugged, woods wise guy. It was a like a processing center, back to the barn, hang up, gut em, skin em, quarter and off into the kitchen for the nigh to package the meat. She never threw away a thing and only shared with those that might need. But you could rest assured, if you had stew or steak at Hazels it was moose or deer.
Money was so tight she started selling her lands, and then wanted to cut cedar posts and haul it to the mill. Mister that was work for a kid, but Al and I managed to make it through the snow and cut a tractor trailer load. We hauled the wood out on this tracked snowsled that was like a tractor and the part you sit on was towed behind, I think it was a Lombard or something like that. What a rig, rap the rope around the recoil and hold on. It had like a lawn mower bar handle and you steered it like a push mover with throttle. It was always in a state of constant repair.
Before long I was visiting Al and Hazel at her camp on Lambert Lake that is a book in itself.
When they talk about Maine woods woman, they can talk about Fly rod Crosby being the first guide, but let me tell you they don’t and haven’t made them like Hazel Clark.
These adventures would lead me into trapping with John Fahey and few others. Here it is thirty five years later and still trapping.