His thoughtful, quiet, pleasant face, so often portrayed, is familiar to every one; it was the face of a man who never blustered or bullied, who would neither inflict nor suffer any wrong, and who had a limitless fund of fortitude, endurance, and indomitable resolution upon which to draw when fortune proved adverse.

His self-command and patience, his daring, restless love of adventure, and, in time of danger, his absolute trust in his own powers and resources, all combined to render him peculiarly fitted to follow the career of which he was so fond.
Boon hunted on the western waters at an early date.

In the valley of Boon's Creek, a tributary of the Watauga, there is a beech tree still standing, on which can be faintly traced an inscription setting forth that "D.

Boon cilled a bar on (this) tree in the year 1760."[7] On the expeditions of which this is the earliest record he was partly hunting on his own account, and partly exploring on behalf of another, Richard Henderson.

Henderson was a prominent citizen of North Carolina,[8] a speculative man of great ambition and energy.