Woods and Waters Adventures: Trapping Pete's Farm

Pete's Farm covered 400 acres of Ohio River bottomland at the foot of the Falls of the Ohio. The farm was the heart of an original 150,000 acre parcel of land granted to General George Rogers Clark and his militia after they captured control of the Northwest Territories from British forces.

In 1803, along the southeast riverbank of the farm, Meriwether Lewis met up with General Clark's brother, William Clark. Here, they began their famed expedition across the American West.

I was connected to Pete's farm by a long creek that ran past the end of the road where my parents lived. At the age of fourteen I began sneaking onto the farm to trap muskrats. For two miles, I waded the creek in old, leaky, chest waders, following the watery path through neighborhoods, behind warehouses, and under railroad bridges until I eventually made my way onto the farm.

At one time, Pete and his brother Ernie made a living farming the river bottom. But, as the years caught up with them, more and more of the farm was left alone. The land, no longer turned under by their plows, grew into a wild, tangled, mess, of heavy fields and thick wooded bottoms.

Beavers were free to build dams on the muddy creeks and ditches meandering across the farm, turning the low fields into wide, shallow marshes. Muskrats then scattered reedy dome houses across the shallow water. Mink and raccoon prowled the farm, and even though the place was surrounded by urban development, an occasional red fox hunted the fields.

Ernie passed away years before I began making my forays onto the farm, but the neighborhoods boys trembled with fear at the thought of Pete catching them on his property. Generations of boys passed down stories of how Pete handled trespassers.

"If the old man catches you on the place, he'll empty a twelve-gauge load of rock salt into your behind," the older boys warned the younger kids. "It'll make you burn like you was sitting on top of a stove."

Their words of warning weren't enough to keep me off the place, the pull of the farm was too great for that, but, as I roamed the farm I always kept a careful eye out for a man carrying a shotgun. Whenever I heard dogs baying off in the distance, I figured he was hot on my trail. More than once I hunkered down in some old muddy ditch, or hid in a thorny patch of briers, certain Pete was walking the farm trying to find me. Yet in three years of sneaking around setting traps, I never once saw the old man.

The year I turned seventeen I'm not sure if my conscience finally got the best of me, or if I just tired of being in a constant state of fear while trapping the farm, but I knew I could no longer sneak onto the place. With the passing of a few short teenage years, no more could I allow myself to trespass on the farm. However, the thought of letting a winter slip by without wading through the marshes was too much to bear, and I knew I had only once choice: I had to ask Pete for permission to trap the place.

"There is no way the old man is going to let you trap his farm," one of the neighbors told me. "He won't let anyone set foot on the place."

Nevertheless, opening day of trapping season found me at the old white farmhouse banging on the solid wooden door. From inside I heard Pete rustling about.

"Hold your horses! Give me some time!" His heavy voice sounded through the door.

Several minutes later the old door creaked open and Pete's eighty-plus-year-old frame filled the doorway. He stood a head taller than my six feet and his shoulders stretched wide across.

"What do you want, boy?" Pete commanded as he stared down at me with cold eyes.

Right then, at the sound of his voice, I thought about turning around and going back to the truck. But, somehow I mustered the courage to speak up.

"Pete, I know you don't know me," I began. "But, my grandpa Stanley used to live up the road and I think he helped you butcher hogs."

Years before, when my dad was just a boy, he lived down the road from Pete's farm. He told me how his dad and Pete had been friends, but that was long ago. Grandpa Stanley had died in a farming accident when my dad was only fourteen years old.

Pete's cold gaze continued to stare through me. "Anyway," I stammered on, "I would be real grateful if you would allow me permission to trap your farm."

For a long hard moment Pete continued his gaze, but I was certain his eyes were losing some of their coldness.

"So you're Stanley's grandson ya' say," he finally spoke. "Every Sunday afternoon Stanley would come over here and we'd pitch horseshoes. Once in a while, he even let me win."

The old man's eyes softened, and he continued. "I suppose if you want to get down there in that grown-over mess of brambles and briars and set some traps that would be just fine with me."

At his words my heart leaped in my chest and I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I had expected to be turned away with my tail between my legs.

"First things first, though," he added. "Some low-down varmint is killing off my chickens. Two nights ago I lost thirteen hens, and my red rooster is a nervous wreck.  I want you to put a stop to it."

I followed Pete out to the chicken yard, and after a thorough inspection I found a spot where I though something might be getting in under the chicken wire and I placed a trap in front of the opening. Two mornings in a row the trap sat empty, but nothing bothered the chickens. On the third morning, Pete was waiting for me outside the farmhouse.

"Those chickens was making an awful ruckus last night," Pete said. "I suppose either something got them, or you got something."

I was so anxious I could barely stand walking up to the chicken yard at Pete's slow, time-eating pace. But, he said he wanted to see if I had caught anything, and I though it would be rude of me to run ahead. In Pete's time he had been a trapper, too, and I knew he was enjoying the anticipation that comes with checking traps as much as I was. When we finally got there, we were both amzed at the size of the possum that lay dead in the trap.

"Well," Pete amusedly said. "I ain't never heard of a chicken-killin' possum, but I ain't never seen a possum that big before, neither."

For another week I left the trap out. Nothing else was caught, and no more chickens were killed. Pete then gave me permission to trap the whole place. But this time, he threw in these words:

"You see anyone else down there, you tell 'em to git the hell out!"

From that day on, instead of walking tow miles each way, I drove my dad's old Chevy pickup right onto the farm. Each time I pulled off the main road onto the dirt track leading back into the marshes I felt like the king of the farm.

Upon Pete's order, anytime I caught a mink I was to stop at the old farmhouse so he could see it. He told me of a little hidden drainage running out of one of the marshes where he thought I would be certain to catch one. I set a trap there and the next four mornings in a row the trap held a raccoon. But, on the fifth morning, the trap held a large buck mink. As soon as I finished checking the rest of my traps I ran straight to Pete's house.

"I used to love to trap mink," Pete said, cradling the dead mink in his weathered, time-hardened hands, gently running them over the silky, still-wet fur. "There ain't no better bait in the world for a mink than a dead redbird. Them minks love to eat redbirds."

I'd never heard that before, but as I waded through the marshes, Pete's words became evident. Every so often I would find a bunch of red feathers spread out under a low hanging bush where a mink had made a meal of a cardinal, protected from the deadly grasp of a hungry hawk or owl.

Every so often, I would stop at the farmhouse to visit with Pete. I would tell him the state of the farm, and what the animals were doing there. Then he would tell me his own stories about the times he spent rambling across the same places.

"One cold winter back in the forty's, everything was froze sold," Pete began. "The Ohio River was a sheet of solid ice, and I could've walked clear to Louisville if I wanted to. One morning, after a fresh fallen snow, my brother Ernie and me went out rabbit hunting. We hadn't seen a thing when we found an old culvert pipe lying in a ditch. A bunch of rabbit tracks went in, but none came out. I know this sounds like quite a story," he continued, "but it's the God honest truth. Ernie carried that old single-shot twelve gauge leaning against the wall there, and we only had six shells between us. Anyway, I picked up one end of that pipe and began lifting a little at a time. One by one, them rabbits tumbled out and made a run for it. Well, ten rabbits came out of that old pipe and six of 'em went home with us."

Every trapping season on Pete's farm, I knew I was enjoying something special. Wading through a marsh filled with dried cattail stalks and marsh grass has a way of growing on a person. With each step, I would stir the decomposing vegetation of seasons past lying hidden under the water. Tiny air bubbles would come oozing to the surface of the water, drifting a pungent, surprisingly pleasant, smell to my nose. Each season brought a memory I will never forget.

One frosty fall morning, just as the sun was breaking the horizon, I waded out of a small feeder creek into the biggest marsh on the farm. A veil of fog hung low over the marsh, and spilled out around it, hiding me in a shroud of mist.  Through the fog, I looked out across the water and it appeared that every square inch was covered with some type of waterfowl. A lone mallard hen spotted me and began to swim in a tight circle, not quite sure what to do. When she decided to take flight, she set every other bird into panic, and the marsh came alive in one great big explosion of cackling birds, slapping water, and whistling wings.

I had never seen anything like it before, and I'm certain I will never see anything like it again for as long as I live.  Thousands of ducks and geese darkened the sky over my head, casting a shadow over me that made it seem as if the sun had gone back down. Those birds still on the water frantically swam in circles, wating for the first available air space so they, too, could take wing. Ten minutes after the mallard hen lifted off ducks and geese were still flying overhead.

Every November I made my way back to the farm. Even though, in Pete's time, the skyline filled with tall buildings from the city across the river, he chose to live in a different time. He made do without running water or electricity. In the wintertime, he heated the old farmhouse with wood and coal. With every visit to the farm, I felt as if I was going back to a simpler, better, time.

I wa living in California years later when my mom called to tell me that Pete had died -- I have not stepped foot on the farm again. Though there was nothing more between us than a few hunting and trapping stories, we had somehow connected thrugh our experiences on the farm, and I felt the loss.

Another decade has passed since Pete's death. The State of Indiana bought the farm and posted it off limits to trapping. Every November I drive past the place. I still get the urge to sneak in again and wade through the marshes. I know of a hidden little drainage where I would be certain to catch a mink. But, I don't think the state would like that very much.

"Besides," I tell myself, "maybe there's a teenage kid from up the creek, going against his better judgement and sneaking onto the place, anyway."

I hope there is -- I guess there's worse things a boy could do than wade through those marshes trapping a few muskrats.