Trappers Shelter
I noticed under the head of Short Letters in January number of H-T-T where one Bacellus of New York wishes to know something more about camps in the woods, or how to keep dry and warm in cold and wet weather, writes a Michigan trapper. This is how I build a camp along a trapper’s trail:
A Line Shanty
I cut the logs about 9 feet long, cut them small enough so one man would be able to handle them. If cut from dry cedar or other light wood, they can be of good size. I lay the logs up on three sides until the walls are about 5 1/2 feet high, then I procure two stakes about 8 or 9 feet long with a crotch on one end; the other end I sharpen so it can be driven in the ground outside the open end of the camp. There are also two shorter stakes placed inside of the camp just opposite the outside ones and tied together at top with a withe, wire or piece of rope — these stakes are intended to hold the ends of the logs together, and also act as a support for the roof, which is made shanty fashion. I next place a pole about 5 inches thick by 10 feet long across from one crotched stake to the other. Now from the back wall to the top hole I place scoops made out of split logs hollowed out with axe. They are placed split side up and another scoop placed over the first two. Short pieces of logs are put in under the last outside scoops and every crack is mossed up tight, and a bunk placed across the end about a foot from the ground, and fire built in the center of open side. By placing 2 crotched stakes in the ground like the first pair about 5 feet from them, and placing a pole across the tops and then two short brace pieces between these two top poles. After this, straight poles ten feet long, about what one man can handle, are taken and placed all around the outside or open end of camp. This prevents the smoke from whirling ’round the camp, and it goes up straight.
End of Steel Traps