I shall confine myself to the two first mentioned conditions. In the first instance a spread of chaff or ashes covering three or four feet of s.p.a.ce is made where foxes are known to travel. As a rule the most acceptable bait is lard sc.r.a.ps, suet, smoked meat rinds, etc. These are scattered in small bits in the bed, and as a lure nothing can be more efficacious than a few drops sprinkled in the bed composed of the female fox gland taken in the rutting season that has been dissolved in alcohol. It must be kept tightly corked. The same taken from the female dog at this period is about as potent.

The traps must first be thoroughly smoked with some resinous twigs or corn cob, or be boiled in ashes to eradicate the scent of iron, rust, and of other game that has been caught. After this do not handle traps or bait except with gloves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AWAITING THE TRAPPER.]

All old trappers in my section bait a fox a few nights before placing the trap, as the more visits Reynard makes to the bed, and devouring bait without having his suspicions aroused, the more reckless does he become and the easier is he taken when at last the trap is placed.

One old trapper, who is very successful, does not set his traps until some night when the first snowfall is at hand. The new white mantle covers the bed and all human sign made in setting the trap. The clog should have been previously placed some days before so that the fox will become accustomed to the sight of it. The fox has not forgotten the exact location of the bed with its tidbits and comes to it with unerring precision even when covered by snow, and unless he by good luck kicks the trap over and springs it he now comes to grief.

Old man t.i.tus says: "Having nailed the game don't kill on the spot but drag him off a ways. Then don't leave the carca.s.s lying round conspicuous or it will scare the rest out of the neighborhood."

My first insight into the manner of snow trapping I gained from a man named Williams. Several of his sheep concluded to part company with this cold unappreciative world, and their owner determined to make them still serve a purpose. Hauling them off in as many directions as there were of the dead, he left them until deep snow and severe weather came, cutting off much of the natural prey of the fox which reduced him to seeking carrion. After their inroads on the bait had become well established, Williams placed a trap at each of the remains, covering a little snow over them and stapling to pieces of fence rails previously placed.

"Now," said Williams, "the only thing to do is to keep away from here two or three days until a little more snow falls to cover our sign, or is drifted a little by the wind." He used no scent of any kind, saying that "starvation is the best lure in the world." "All I do is to smoke the traps and not handle barehanded," he added.

After two or three days of snow flurrying weather we visited the traps and noted that one was missing. We could see a dim trail where it had been dragged away. We followed and found the fox in a drift.

He was poor and had frozen hard. Five were taken at the sheep bait inside of two weeks, after which there came a thaw stopping further snow trapping.

One old trapper tells of a fox that came near outwitting him, being not only the most cunning but also possessing a degree of meanness almost satanic. "I baited him in a bed of chaff several nights," said he, "and then set my trap. The trap could not have contained scent, but the old chap appeared to know it was there; he carefully nosed out and devoured every sc.r.a.p of bait, and then as deftly dug the trap out, turned it over and sprung it and left a soiling evidence of his scorn and contempt for me upon it. That I was mad you needn't doubt for a minute. I tried setting three and four traps, hoping he'd make a miscue and get into some one of them, but no, he was too smart, he sprung them all each night and insulted me besides. All at once the thought struck me like a brick, I'll set the trap bottom side up.

This I did, removing all the traps but one. "The cat came back" and as before turned the trap, bringing it right side up. I had set it full catch so that it would spring rather hard. He slipped a cog in not taking into account that the trap didn't spring when he turned it; when bestowing his disdain a too close contact brought a sharp click and he was fast. I never saw so sneaking and beat out an animal in my life. He would like to have had the ground open up and swallow him if it could."

An acquaintance of mine who is a settler in Northern Michigan heard a great squealing and commotion among his hogs one night late in November, and bounced out just in time to see a large bear drop one of his shoats as it pa.s.sed through the bars. The porker was stone dead, being bitten through the nape of the neck. The settler, whose name is Clark, drew the pig into the woods and left it between two fallen trees. With his axe he chopped a niche large enough to contain a trap, when set, from each of the logs; a piece of moss was carefully fitted over each cavity and all of the chips were removed.

Foxes there are very numerous, and Clark soon noticed that the bait was being sampled; he knew the fox nature in that they have a habit of walking logs or on the highest points when investigating an attraction. When the tracks to and from and circling the bait became frequent Clark placed a trap on each log, covering them neatly with patches of moss; the chain was fastened to clogs concealed under the logs, and the chains were hidden with strips of moss. Upon his first visit to the traps, two days later, the trapper found a fox in each trap, and several more were taken before crows and other scavengers had polished the bones of the bait.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER THE CHASE.]

On the quiet, boys, I will say that it requires so much preparation, caution and patience to successfully trap the red fox that I have more frequently resorted to the hound and shotgun; by this means I have often taken the jacket of a cunning old dog fox, after running him over the hills an hour or two, that it would have taken much time and patience to trap. After one gets the runways learned, and if he possesses a good gun that loads properly, and is a tolerably fair shot at running game, the means is much quicker. It is like digging out a nest of skunks as against the slow process of trapping one at a time.

I had a little experience with a sly old female fox last winter, says Claude Roora, of Ohio. I had noticed on early snows where this old fox had two holes under an old rail fence where she would pa.s.s through every night, and also a stone beside a sheep path where she would stop. I picked out those three places to set traps for her under the next snow.

One morning I thought it looked as though it was fixing for a snow. I got three No. 2 Victor traps and told my wife I was going to catch that old fox that night if it snowed. I went to the three places and was very careful not to tear things up any more than just to dig places the size of the traps. I had grapnels fastened to chains and dug holes deep enough to bury them, so that when the traps were set on top of them it would be just a little below level of the surface of the ground, and covered all up with dead grapevine leaves. About the time I got the last trap set it commenced snowing and quit snowing before dark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAP AND GRAPNEL.]

Next morning I went early to get my fox before the hound men got out, thinking sure I would have her. When I got within one hundred yards of set No. 1 I saw her tracks leading straight to it. She went up within five or six feet of the trap, turned short off to the right and went down to set No. 2, went up within five or six inches of trap where she turned short off to the right again, made a few jumps down the hill, jumped over top of fence, circle back up the hill to sheep path, followed it out to set No. 3. She went up to this trap, raked every bit of snow and leaves off of trap and left trap bare and in plain sight, not even springing trap. I covered trap up again thinking I might fool some other fox, but in about half an hour the hounds came along on her track and one of them set his foot in the trap and his owner let him loose and threw the trap away.

The hounds followed the fox up over the hill, routed it and ran it about an hour and holed it under a big rock, and the men went off and left it. Now the hounds had been in the habit of holing this fox under the same rock, and the most of us know that when a pack of hounds hole a fox they generally tear things up some. In other words, they leave some signs. I set the traps as nice as I knew how, and when I went back the next morning traps were turned upside-down and fox gone.

So I concluded I would follow the track and see if I couldn't find her asleep and shoot her, but had not gone far when I found the snow had drifted so I could not follow her. I came back home discouraged.

Next morning I thought I would go and see if she had been back on the hill. When I got to set No. 2 I saw where she had come up from the opposite side from what she had been in the habit of doing and stuck her right foot square in the trap. She went about one hundred yards where she got tangled in some grapevines and was waiting for me.

Now I think there are instances where the scent of steel or human scent will scare animals away from your sets, and when you mix them both together they are a sure warning of danger with all shy animals.

Now if this fox did not locate that trap at set No. 3 with her nose I would like to know how she did it, for I removed every bit of dirt I took out to make set and left all level and two and a half inches of snow ought to make things look as natural as any fox could expect to find a set, and at a rock where she had been in the habit of seeing things torn up by the dogs when she came out on previous occasions, and traps hidden out of sight, her nose surely told her where they were set.

CHAPTER VIII.

TRAPPING RED FOX.

In the many years that he has been striving for his glossy pelt, man has evolved numerous clever schemes for outwitting the fox, but in the meantime Reynard has not been an idle observer regarding the ways of the human enemy, says J. L. Woodbury, of Maine. He lacks the advantage of books or tradition for handing down his store of acc.u.mulated knowledge, but in some mysterious way it is transmitted from generation to generation, nevertheless. So it is that the fox of the older and more thickly settled sections is a very different animal from the fox--even though it be of the same variety or species--inhabiting a part of the country where its kind has not been so persistently hunted. Tricks that prove effective with the latter are utterly lost on his better-schooled brother. Hence the simple methods advanced by some trappers are a bit amusing to the trappers here in the East, where the subject of this sketch reaches the acme of wisdom, and is, we believe, the peer in shrewdness and cunning of any animal in the world. However, we do not wish to be understood as ridiculing anybody's methods. We read the crudest of them with interest, realizing that they are all right in the region whence they came.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAUGHT IN MAINE.]

I would advise the amateur fox trapper to begin with the water set if practicable. Nearly any one of the many different forms are good enough, with such modifications as will be found necessary to adapt it to varying conditions of different sets. As one should not begin operations until freezing weather, spring water should be selected for the trap. A good-sized spring works best, but if this is not to be had, utilize some of the little springs to be found in plenty near the sources of brooks. One with a dark bottom is to be preferred, as then there will be no sand to clog the trap, which may be pressed down into the mud until it is all hidden but the pan. This should be about an inch under the water, and covered with a lump of moss.

The position of trap with relation to bait has so often been explained I need not dwell upon it here. If the spring be a large one it is easy to place the bait so that it will be protected by water on all sides save the one desired, but if a smaller pool be employed the side opposite the trap should be barricaded with stumps or brush; which work, by the way, had better be done some time during the previous summer. And rather than leave too narrow an approach to the bait if is better to set two or even more traps, for reynard's suspicions are quickly aroused by anything resembling an inclosure.

As to the matter of bait, it may be said in general that foxes like about all kinds of meat. Yet the task of selecting a killing bait is not always as easy as might be expected from this, as individuals seem to have their particular preferences, while the morsel that would be eagerly sought by the same fox at one season will have no attraction for him at another. If you find "signs" in the vicinity of your sets, yet they remain unmolested, experiment with different kinds of baits, as the angler tries a variety of flies at every likely-looking pool. It is certain that mice, rabbits and grouse are among the best baits.

For the "scent" part, some trappers claim to do well without them, but a good scent is unquestionably a great help. Many of those for which receipts are given I know to be effective. But the most tempting bait and the strongest lure will jointly prove unavailing if one's set be unskillfully made, and carelessness be practiced in going to and from trap.

Water, of course, leaves no scent where it is possible to reach the set by boat or wading, but where this is impracticable arrange to go to trap but rarely, if it remain undisturbed. The height of springs vary but little with wet or dry weather, and this fact should be taken full advantage of by the fox-trapper. Carefully select a trap that will not spring of itself. See that the trigger is pushed well into the notch, pick out a good, close-fibred piece of moss for pan, not large enough to clog the jaws, and stick a few small twigs around it to hold it in place. Push the chain well down into the mud, have the bait exactly in the right place, and in fact use every care to have things fixed so that they will not be disarranged by trivial causes. Then in visiting, go no nearer than is necessary to see that bait or trap have not been disturbed.

Skunks will often prove a great bother, as they take all kinds of bait and kick up no end of a "bobbery" when caught. The fact that their pelts pay the bill in part is but poor consolation, when one has just got a particularly shy old red coat about worked up to the "biting" point.

Sometimes one will run upon natural conditions particularly favorable for a set--a rock, islet or piece of drift in mid-channel, or an old log spanning the stream. Experienced trappers are quick to note all such places as these, as well as points where, with a very little human handiwork, traps may be placed to advantage.

It is best to make all essential preparations as long before setting as possible, though bearing in mind that the streams are usually much higher in the trapping season than during the summer. Also begin putting out baits some time before setting traps. No animal exercises afterward the same degree of caution as on the first two or three visits to a spot, and even so shy a creature as the fox, if he become accustomed to picking up a few choice bits at a place, will soon neglect much of his usual precaution in approaching it, and though he take alarm and shun it for a time will ere long get up sufficient confidence to renew his visits.

If you find where there is a burrow with a family of young foxes, watch them all you can during your leisure moments. Learn where they get their food, where they cross the streams, and their general lines of travel. True, the family may be broken up and driven to sections miles away before time for trapping, but nevertheless a few traps should be placed in the old beats, as if one of this family should ever return to the vicinity he will be certain to revisit his former haunts.

Many trappers, and especially young trappers, expect to get a fox the first night, and, as it would seem, think to make their set so that not the slightest taint of man or iron lingers about the spot after they leave it. They boil their traps in this or that, or smear them with some odorous substance (the very thing perhaps to draw the game's attention to them); they handle them gingerly with gloves (which are often as strongly imbued with man smell as their naked hands); strap hides, pieces of board or snow shoes to their feet when setting or visiting, and in fact go through a rigmarole that would require about half a day to set a single trap. Then they think that if the shyest old fox imaginable should come along that night he would walk into their snare as confidently as a cow into a stall, or a man into his own house. Without reflecting upon the methods of any one, we must say that we consider many of these expedients unnecessary, unless when dealing with an unusually shrewd customer.

For my own part we make but little reckoning on a trap for the first two or three days, especially one with bait. Sometimes, of course, a storm helps us out, or we may nab a youngster who is green at the game; but this is an exception, not the rule. We take all needful precautions in respect to disturbance and scent, but our chief aim is to secrete and cover our trap well; to cover it so that no smell or iron can possibly reach the surface, and so that it will remain covered for weeks if necessary, and yet be ready for business, let the weather be what it will--snow or rain, heat or cold. Herein lies the essence of the art; to fix your trap so that it will not soon require your attention, then nature will speedily dispose of whatever scent you may have left about it. We are speaking now chiefly of land sets.

In looking up a place for a set, select one if possible where some natural or artificial provision will admit of approach without leaving much scent--a hard-beaten path, a double stone wall, a line of ledges, or a combination of some such conditions, which should be invariably followed in going to and from trap.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAUGHT BY A MISSOURI TRAPPER.]

When you have decided upon the place for a trap, make all possible preparations at a distance; then go to the spot and do your work as quickly and cleanly as you can. If the ground is soft, use a strip of board to stand on. If you use gloves, have some especially for the purpose, and never leave them lying about your dog's quarters or the house. It will do no hurt to smear them lightly with whatever you are using for scent.

See that the trap rests evenly and firmly, so that if any part of it be stepped on it will not tip and pull apart the covering, or grate upon rocks or the chain. Make your excavation quite deep, filling in the bottom with some two inches of hemlock twigs or something of like nature, so as to prevent the gathering of moisture and a consequent freeze. Secure to a clog, or use a grapnel. The latter is in most cases preferable, as it may be buried from sight, while the former adds one more to the objects likely to arouse suspicion.

The covering is something that you will pretty much have to learn for yourself. Like swimming, no one can teach it by any amount of talking; practice is necessary to acquire the trick. Moss, leaves and rotten wood are the princ.i.p.al materials used, though pinches of herbage and dirt may be added to harmonize with set and surroundings.

Leaves, however, should be used sparingly, as they change shape with every phase of weather, and thus frequently spoil what would otherwise have remained a good covering. If well rotted they give less trouble in this respect, and offer less resistance to the jaws in closing.

When using bait, if not setting in a bed, find a spot where little building is required to protect it--a hollow log or stump, the entrance to an old burrow, a niche in a ledge or hole under a rock.

Sometimes, where a trout-stream flows under a step bluff, a little shelf is found in the face of the bluff (and one can usually be made if it is not already there); and by placing a trap on the shelf and the bait just above it, you have sly Mr. Fox at great disadvantage, as he must leap from the opposite side of the brook to the embankment to reach the bait. A projection in the face of a cliff, several feet from the ground, if it is inaccessible from overhead or either side may be similarly improved.

Always be on the lookout for such places as these, where those sharp eyes and that keen, pointed nose will be kept at a distance from your set until it is too late for them to detect signs of danger.

Old roads offer good possibilities for traps without bait. Unused plain roads, where the gra.s.s has sprung up may be practically covered by placing a trap in each wheel-rut and the central path. The s.p.a.ce under a set of bars may be partly filled with brush and two or three traps placed side by side in the opening with good chances of success. We say two or three traps, as by so doing a larger opening may be left, which adds greatly to your chances. An attempt to coax this slippery fellow into narrow quarters quickly excites his suspicions.

Cow and sheep paths are much traveled by reynard, especially those leading around and through swamps. These are more easily trapped than roads, a good method being to first go along the path with your decoy scent, applying at intervals to objects close beside the path, and then setting traps, without bait, between the "doctored" points. An old pelt of some sort dragged behind you will serve to kill your own scent, and to keep the intended victim to the path.