They enlisted on different terms.

Some were to have a fixed salary of three hundred dollars; others were to be fitted out and maintained at the expense of the company, and were to hunt and trap on shares.
As Mr.Hunt met with much opposition on the part of rival traders, especially the Missouri Fur Company, it took him some weeks to complete his preparations.

The delays which he had previously experienced at Montreal, Mackinaw, and on the way, added to those at St.Louis, had thrown him much behind his original calculations, so that it would be impossible to effect his voyage up the Missouri in the present year.
This river, flowing from high and cold latitudes, and through wide and open plains, exposed to chilling blasts, freezes early.

The winter may be dated from the first of November; there was every prospect, therefore, that it would be closed with ice long before Mr.Hunt could reach its upper waters.

To avoid, however, the expense of wintering at St.Louis, he determined to push up the river as far as possible, to some point above the settlements, where game was plenty, and where his whole party could be subsisted by hunting, until the breaking up of the ice in the spring should permit them to resume their voyage.
Accordingly on the twenty-first of October he took his departure from St.Louis.His party was distributed in three boats.