GB Halliday Home Page      

STAN BISHOP—A TRUE SOURDOUGH 

FUR TRAPPING

Stan: The word I want is phases. I go from one phase to another. I go from agricultural to placer miner and a trapper--of course, we trapped every winter, and that is a whole story in itself.

Louise: I’d like to hear about that.
Stan: I had five cabins and it took me five days to make the round trip up to the Alaska boundary, where my upper cabin was. I trapped from the mouth of the Unuk River to the boundary and I made that trip about every two weeks.

And all these cabins I had stocked with food and sleeping bags and cooking utensils and tools and I didn’t carry any. I couldn’t because I had bait to carry. So in the fall I stocked all these cabins while there was no snow on the ground; I backpacked stuff in and stocked ‘em all up. I had everything prepared for my trapping season. If there was fish in the vicinity, I’d catch fish and smoke ‘em and put ‘em in a cache up in a tree for trap bait. And when the season opened all I had to do was go up the line and set my traps ‘cause I always left my traps hanging on a tree. Mostly martin traps. And we used an inclined pole to the tree with a flat spot on it to set the trap on so that your fur didn’t get covered with dirt and stuff and was always clean. Another thing was so that the animals wouldn’t get all wrapped up in chain and stuff.

[Sometimes I’d] get a wolverine in one of those sets, too. He would think he was smart and he’d make a mistake and hit the traps the wrong way. They’d slap at a trap and try to spring it. I tell you, wolverine was my nemesis in that country. I’ve had ‘em follow me, behind me, while I was baiting traps they’d want to be right along behind me...when I’d come back down river here his track would be right in my track and he’d been following right behind me, robbing all my baits and if there was a marten that was alive in a trap he’d kill him and eat him right there on the spot.

But I would make my trip up...I’d skin most of my fur at the boundary cabin--I had a pretty big cabin up there--and sometimes I’d rest a day if the weather was good and wasn’t threatening snow. But if there was a coming snow storm I would keep moving because the closer I could get to the mouth of the river the better it would be because I had to break trail. There were lots of times I had to break trail half a day from my cabin, then go back to that cabin and stay all night and the next day I’d have a chance to have a broken snowshoe trail half way and then I’d finish up and go to the next cabin the next day.

Louise: So all through the years you kept trapping?
Stan: Most of the time. It wasn’t work to me, it was a joyful thing. The smell of the autumn leaves, backpacking my stuff up the river, then stop at my cabins and sawing wood and splitting it and packing it in and smoking fish and my old dog was with me all the time and it was a happy time.

Stan: Jane Talbot used to come out to the Unuk when I was haying and tramp hay. I had her tramping hay on my hay wagon. I had a kind of half-sled and half-wagon that I used to haul hay with to the barn. And I had to get as much on this rig as I could, so I had to have the kids tromp it--and Jane used to come up and visit Betty. And Talbots gave me this dog. John Talbot--he says, “I’m going to give you this dog because we got him and didn’t realize he was going to be so damn big. The kids are crazy about him, but he’s too big. You take him to the Unuk with you and I don’t want the kids to see him back in town.”

So I did. But five or eight years afterward I started bringing him in when I came. I brought my dog to town one time and he was used to the smell of my clothes--I was trapping wolves at the time--and of course I had wolf smell all over me. And I kept him on a leash when I went uptown-- didn’t let my dog run like other people do--and we came up the slip there at Thomas Basin on this end of the Yacht Club and went onto the sidewalk and started up toward town. And here came a couple of big dogs from the other side of the street, just a growling and frothing at the mouth to get at my dog. And they got within about ten feet of me and skidded to a stop and let howl out of ‘em and took right off. They got a whiff of the wolf smell on my clothes and gee! that stopped ‘em dead in their tracks.

"Teddy” was my constant companion on the river. I’ve had a number of dogs and most of them were relying on me all the time for everything, so I told my dad, “This dog is going to learn to stand on his own damn feet. I’m not going to chase around and help him across this place and that place.” So I gradually started just leaving him in places that he thought was too bad to get across or something until he did his own job, and it gradually got to where he wouldn’t wait for me at all--I wouldn’t help him in anyway whatever.

And that nearly turned to tragedy for him because I went across a big log jam on the main Unuk--it was just logs all crisscrossed and jammed up and fast water flowing through between these logs. And I went across on top of these logs and I looked back and he started, but he disappeared. And I waited and called, but I couldn’t see him anywhere, so I was really down in the dumps. I thought, well, poor old bugger he’s gone, because anything that fell in the river in those logs like that you’d figure they’d never get out of it. And I got almost to the other side and here come old Teddy out of the water and ran up to the trail and he came down the trail to meet me. He’d gotten through all this mess of logs and stuff ahead of me and he got to the trail and came back to meet me! That was one time I was sure happy to see the old bugger.

Louise: I bet! Where’d you sell your furs when you came in?
Stan: I started sending ‘em to Seattle Fur Exchange and I was so disillusioned by them that I decided I’d try Canada, so I sent ‘em to Vancouver, BC, to a buyer there, and I got good prices and from then on that was where I sent my fur every year. The Seattle Fur Exchange, they tried to put stuff over on me, and I wouldn’t stand for that at all, a little competition’s all right, but when they started getting that way, the best thing to do is stay away from them. So I had my best years out of Vancouver.

Louise: And you trapped mostly marten?
Stan: Mostly marten. Later years...when I first started trapping we were lucky to get $25 a piece for ‘em, and there was a fur buyer at Billingsley’s. Joe something-or-other, he had a little shop in Billingsley’s. He would buy our fur, even if it was doubtful it was legal. But he had a way with him, he was so fast and so quick--he made quick decisions--you took a fur into him, he would whip through ‘em, clickety-click, and give you so much for it. ‘Course he graded them all right, but he’d figure up in his head and he made a snap decision and gave you the cash and you...he didn’t want anything to do with you and you didn’t want anything to do with him. The deal was over right there. And we were lucky to get $25 apiece for good marten. And some of the last I sold I got $80 apiece for it, ‘course I was taking better care of my fur and prices had come up fantastically in those 20-30 years I’d been trapping. But at the very last I could hardly believe it was real.

Don: Did you get mink also?
Stan: Very few. There were very few mink that would venture up in that country ‘cause they had nothing to eat. Mink is a salt-water animal.

Don: How about moose in that country?
Stan: There’s moose around almost anytime. You’re very particular about killing a moose because you can’t take care of it. If you’re busy, you know, trapping or something, you got to consider that you’ve got a responsible job, you got to be there, you can’t leave a trap line for an extended length of time, you got to take care of it. And we were very particular about killing a moose...if we did it was more of an organized deal than anything, we’d have things all set up so that if we did happen to run onto one and kill one, everybody’d get together and utilize him before we had to get back to our regular work.

Louise: What kind of snowshoes did you have?
Stan: I used State of Maine snowshoes which I sent back to Bean’s for. There was no type on the Pacific coast that’s suitable because you got to have something that resists moisture. The interior Alaska, they can get by with snowshoes that are made with just plain babich because the snow is dry and powdery. But in this country you have to have something that won’t soak up water, and this moose hide, that’s cowhide, and they’re varnished. We kept our shoes varnished. ‘Course we didn’t have acrylic in those days. I would have had acrylic spray if I’d of had it, but it wasn’t even known then. The nearest for anything like that was varnish. And that didn’t even prevent it from getting soaked up before the end of the day if the snow was wet.

And you start out with shoes that are so light you don’t even know you got ‘em on your feet and before you get to the next cabin you’re just dragging ‘em out of the snow and pushing ‘em ahead. And then a lot of times you’ve got to take your walking stick and lift ‘em up and rap ‘em with the end of your walking stick before you dare set ‘em down because if you don’t do that snow keeps building up on ‘em ‘til they get so heavy you can’t lift ‘em with your instep.

I’ve spent many years and many hours on snowshoes and that’s what’s wrong with my knees today. The doctors told me, “The only thing wrong with you, your right knee, is you’re rubbing bone on bone. It’s just worn out. Constant slogging, day after day after day after day. And especially with snowshoes because you’re lifting. Your instep is lifting a heavy weight. At the end of the day your snowshoes get soaked up with water and you’re lifting all that extra weight.

* * * * * * * * *

GB Halliday Home Page

Related Alaskan stories:

"Stan and the Milk Run"

"Tales of Yes Bay, Alaska"