Quick links
free hunter
Fur Trade, Hist.
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.
a trapper or hunter not in the employ of the fur companies, often a former company servant.
Quotations
1902
Going out alone, or with only one partner, the free hunter encumbered himself with few provisions.
1916
[The] two men . . . were the sole survivors of about three hundred and fifty free hunters, almost all of them of french origin.
1923
Many stories from the lips of other Indians, of catholicized half-breeds from the east . . . may have reached his ears, possibly through the "free hunters" who resorted by the score to the Rocky Mountains even before the time when Thompson, in 1807, first wintered at lake Windermere.