Boone supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter and trapper, collecting pelts for the fur trade. Almost every autumn, despite the unrest on the frontier, Boone would go on "long hunts", extended expeditions into the wilderness lasting weeks or months. Boone went alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and trapping beaver and otter over the winter. When the long hunters returned in the spring, they sold their take to commercial fur traders. On their journeys, frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone's name or initials have been found in many places. A tree in present Washington County, Tennessee, reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar on tree in the year 1760". A similar carving, preserved in the museum of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803." The inscriptions may be genuine, or part of a long tradition of phony Boone relics.