E.J. Dailey: The Last Adirondack Trapper

For those who are not familiar with E.J. Dailey, he was a trapper who lived in St Lawrence County close to the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. During his life, E.J. was widely recognized as the foremost trapping expert. I found the most challenging aspect of writing a book about E.J. was piecing all the trapping related activities together into a cohesive story. He was involved with many varied trapping related activities simultaneously. With this in mind, I based each chapter on one of his specific activities such as family man, trapper, partner, businessman, conservationist, professor or leader. Some chapters are further broken down into components that were not easily incorporated into the story. E.J. continually learned and evolved during his life. In earlier articles, he told of activities he did or did not do based on his beliefs at the time. In a later article, E.J. may have said the complete opposite. In the time between the two articles, he learned something that changed his belief and assisted with his evolution as a trapper. The true measure of a man is not what they write about themselves, but what others write or say about them. For that reason, I included as many published articles about experiences that others had with E.J. Most are a synopsis of a specific event or day. I also included personal interviews from people that knew E.J.