DCHP-1 Online

free hunter Fur Trade, Hist.

• a trapper or hunter not in the employ of the fur companies, often a former company servant.

  See also: freeman (def. 2), (def. 1a)  free trapper  

  • 1902  (1912)  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.