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The following took place under my own eye, and I now
put it on record, that yourselfe and others with whom you
may associate, may jointly solve the questions rising out of the facts

In the spring of 1841 I was making sugar in the woods, and had
noticed my dog frequently pursuing a Fox, that seemed to be at home
in a large thicket, that laid between my sugar orchard & the Prairie
Hearing a loud barking in the brush one day, I sent my son then a
small boy, to see what was going on - He soon called to me and said,
that some body had killed a fox, and hung it up in a tree, and that
the dog was barking at it. I went to see it, and sure enough there
was a very fine fox, suspended by the neck; his head thrust through
a narrow close fork in the top of a sapling. A smart branch that
grew out at right angles from the body of the sapling, passed under
one of his fore legs; while another branch lower down, passed out
between his hind legs, his mouth was slightly open, his eyes shut,
and the whole body dangling about like ^a clout, when the tree
^was shaken, gave a most expressive idea of hanging -

Inspecting that there might be some artifice, I watched closely
and discovered him breathing. I then went home for my gun
a mile distant, during which time my son watched hiim, without
discovering the slightes movement. My intention was to shoot
and cut him slightly across the back of the neck, so that I might
capture him when he fell: for the brush was so thick that had he
chosen to leap off, he might have done so without danger from the dog

In my care that I might not wound too deep, I very nearly
missed him just cutting a way the fur, & barely grazing the skin,
but it sufficed to cure his conceit in the safety of hanging, for
in his hastily disengaging his neck, from the fork that held him,
he missed his foot holdes, and fell to the ground, where the dog seized him

It seemed strange that he should ever have took to a tree for safety,
when he had ten acres of very thick brush for a covert, and even in the
open ground, he would have left the dog out of sight in a short race; much
more then would he have done so, in the brush. But up the tree, the
question is, did he hang himself in ^as a safe condition, so that he might
not fall & become a prey to the dog, or did he affect to be hanged & dead, so as
to escape further pursuit - Facts known to you or others may give a solution