In the winter they rested or returned to Georgetown, making occasional trapping trips, hunting bear and deer, and the meat of which they sold.

In those days deer used to winter in large numbers almost as far down as Georgetown (some fifteen miles or so), so that hunting them for market was a profitable undertaking in the hands of experts.
They and John McKinney, the founder of McKinney's, were great friends, having worked together in the Georgetown mines.

They soon made their places famous.

Their mining friends came over from Virginia City, Gold Hill, Carson, etc., by way of Glenbrook, where they were ferried across Lake Tahoe by the old side-wheel steamer, _Governor Stanford_, to McKinney's.

Then by pack trail over to Hunsakers.
For many years they used to cut a great deal of hay from the nearby meadows.