Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Kit Carson biography ???

No, some things are best left to more traditional methods. But here's a photo taken with my phone of a decoy I carved.

That sir is impressive work. I think I would hate to paint that.

Hemi ... nothing to hide. Yes it was above the upper Bear River reservoir .. between there and the Hwy 88 ... That's where the old Dufrene cow camp was. I believe that family was / is from Ione ... I hiked that country hunting, fishing and as a Scout through the '60's and actually spent alot of time in '50's up there as my Mothers family moved to Fiddletown area in the '40's from Oklahoma. They logged and hunted / fished that country allot and we would have a huge family get together and Snyder Cow camp every Deer opener.

I had ran into old lady Dufrene several times over the years while she was tending to her cattle. They use to have seasonal cattle drives up Hwy 88 and back from Ione. She was always full of stories and enjoyed talking. We would listen for a long time.

Once she told us of a big Fir or Pine that Carson had carved on and how she had kept the bark trimmed away over the years. We did find it and I actually returned to it several times over the years. I also remember another big tree carving, by another wagon / pioneer with a narrative ... also had a Masonic symbol carved in one corner. They were a lone wagon with his family and were running late into the season. But he took time to carve a narrative into a tree? Old lady Dufrain also told us where that one was.

Higher up toward Carson Pass way I found many Aspen trees carved on by the Basque with some real old dates.

I also spent lots of time around Blue, Red, Rondtop Lakes and the backcountry south of that down to the Tanglefoot, Cole Creek and Bear River area. Climbing Mokelumne Peek many times.

Carson is commonplace around here.
We hunt ducks near his homestead in Las Animas, not too far from Bent's Fort. It's a historical preservation now.
His name is carved in granite at a place next to the road in Wetmore. It shows on some of the old maps.
I've found the logpile that was once his cabin up behind the sand dunes. I think I first learned of that in Ormes mountaineering guide.

There is a book on the internet by a guy last named Cyril St Vrain pertinent to Kit Carson. St Vrain was a French nobleman who explored the south-western USA and became a famous Indian fighter.

St Vrain was Christopher (Kit) Carson's mentor and he writes about Carson in his book.

The French Canadians were all across North America a good 100 to 200 years before the Anglo mountain men.

Pierre Radisson was the first to cross the Mississippi and the first to reach the northern great plains and that was in the middle 1600s when there were onyl 400 people living in Quebec. he had to run a gauntlet of 26,000 hostile Iroquois to pass along the St. Lawrence River on his way west.

The Iroquois were the most warlike of all North American Indians. The Lakota became famous for ending Custer's days but the reason they were on the plains is because they had been chased out of the eastern woodlands by the Iroquois.

The most famous of all Lakota chiefs, Crazy Horse, wore some Iroquois garb as part of his war robe, perhaps hedging his bets because the Iroquois had made an impression on him.

The French were by far the greatest and bravest wilderness explorers to ever to set foot in North America. They had no forts to fall back on for support and they lived by their wits. They were always greatly outnumbered.

Thus names like the Canadian River, the Tetons, Duluth etc etc. have been left by them all over the map of the United States.

The French named town of St. Louis, the jumping off point for the mountain men who came along much later, was a French speaking town up until 1810.