E. N. (Eldred Nathaniel) Woodcock

Born in Potter County, Pennsylvania, in 1846, Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock became known as a hunter, trapper, and outdoor writer whose life was closely tied to the forests and game country of northern Pennsylvania. He died in 1917, leaving behind a record of a world of backwoods travel, camp life, and frontier-era hunting that was already beginning to fade.

Woodcock wrote a series of accounts based on his own experiences, many of which first appeared in Hunter-Trader-Trapper Magazine between 1903 and 1913. Those pieces were later gathered into Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper, the book for which he is best remembered.

What makes his writing last is its directness. He writes less like a polished literary memoirist and more like someone sitting by a fire, telling you exactly what he saw, tried, and survived, which gives his work a strong sense of place and lived experience.