The trapper who stays near home has the advantage of knowing the territory. If he was to visit a strange section, altho a good trapping locality, he would not do so well as if he were acquainted with the locality and knew the locations of the best dens. Then again his expenses are heavier if he goes into a strange section, yet If there is but little game near your home, and you are going to make a business of trapping, go and look up a good trapping section. Under these conditions it is best for two or three to go together. There is no necessity of carrying but little baggage other than your gun, for at the season of the year that prospecting is done there is but little difficulty in killing enough game to live on.
After you have once found a good trapping section, and built your cabin, deadfalls and snares, you can go there fall after fall with your line of steel traps, resetting your deadfalls with but little repairs for years. You will also become better acquainted with the territory each season and will make larger catches. Do not think that you have caught all the game the first season, for generally upon your return the next fall you will find signs of game as numerous as ever.
In locating new trapping grounds, if two or three are together and it is a busy time in September, let one of the party go in advance prospecting. This will save much valuable time when you make the start for the fall and winter trapping campaign. It will pay you to know where you are going before you make the final start.
CHAPTER XII.
WHERE TO BUILD.
In determining where to set deadfalls or locate snares if you will keep in mind the dens where each winter you have caught fur-bearing animals, or their tracks have often been seen in the snow or mud, and build your traps and construct snares at or near such places you are pretty sure to not go astray.
The location, of course, depends largely upon what kind of game you are trying to catch. If mink or c.o.o.n, there is no better place than along streams where there are dens. If there should be a small branch leading off from the main stream, at the mouth of this is often an excellent place to locate a trap. It should not be too near the water as a rise would damage or perhaps float off at least part of your trap. Sometimes farther up this small stream there are bluffs and rocks; at such places, if there are dens, is just the place to build deadfalls. If there are several dens, and the bluff extends along several hundred feet, it perhaps will pay to build two or three traps here.
In cleared fields, woods or thickets skunk are found anywhere that there are dens you can construct a trap. While, as a rule, the thinly settled districts are the best trapping sections, yet skunk, muskrat and red fox are found in greatest numbers in settled sections, while opossum, racc.o.o.n and mink are found in fairly well settled districts.
It is therefore not necessary that you should go to the wilderness to make fairly good catches. While the trapper in the wilderness has the advantage of no one disturbing his deadfalls, yet he has disadvantages. The trapper who means business need not go hundreds of miles away, but if he will build a line of traps along some stream where there are mink, or in the thickets and along rocky buffs for skunk, racc.o.o.n, opossum, etc., he will be surprised at results.
In some sections land owners may not allow trapping, but usually they will, especially if you take the pains to ask before you commence building or setting your traps.
The fact that you have your traps scattered over a large territory gives you better chances of making good catches, for most animals travel quite a distance from night to night. You may have traps at some stream that is eight or ten miles from your home and a mink may come along that does most of its seeking for food miles farther up or down this stream, nearer, perhaps, where it was raised, and you get him. Thus you see by going only ten miles away you may catch animals that really live twenty. Just how far a mink may travel up or down a creek or river I do not know, but it is certain that they go many miles and traps may make a catch of a mink that lives many, many miles away. Of course along small streams they may not go so far.
Often, however, they continue their travels from one stream to another.
If you are an expert trapper you can very easily detect, if you are in a good locality, especially if in the fall--September and October.
These are the two months when the most prospecting is done. Going along streams at this season tracks are plainly seen and in the forests at dens signs, such as hair, bones and dung. Often you will come upon signs where some bird has been devoured and you know that some animal has been in the locality. Old trappers readily detect all these signs and new ones can learn by experience.
It is not absolutely necessary to build traps at or near dens. Some years ago, I remember when doing considerable trapping in Southern Ohio, I came upon a deadfall built near a small stream that ran thru a woods. I looked around for dens, but saw none. Why this trap had been built there was a puzzle to me. One day I happened upon the owner of the trap and asked him what he expected to catch in that trap.
In reply he pointed to a bush some rods distant in which hung the carca.s.ses of two opossum and one c.o.o.n--caught in the trap. While there were no dens near, it was a favorite place for animals to cross or else they came there for water. This same trap was the means of this old trapper taking two or three animals each winter, while other traps at dens near caught less. There is much in knowing where to set traps, but keep your eyes open for signs and you will learn where to build traps and set snares sooner or later.
Yes, boys, the deadfall is a splendid trap if made right, says an Arkansas trapper. I will tell you how to make one that will catch every mink and c.o.o.n that runs the creek. Take a pole four feet long and four inches through, next get a log six inches through and eight feet long. Use eight stakes and two switches. Use the figure four trigger, but the notches are cut different. Both of the notches are cut on the top side of the long trigger and a notch cut in the upright trigger and down the long trigger. The paddle part is sixteen inches long. When the trap is set the paddle wants to be level and one-half inch higher than small logs, then your two switches comes in this to keep the paddle from hitting the bark on side logs.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAIL OR DEN TRAP.]
Next is where to set. If along a creek, find a place where the water is within three feet of the bank, set your trap up and down the creek at edge of water, dam up from back end of paddle to bank with brush or briars, then from front end into water three or four feet. You will find the upright trigger has to be a good deal longer than the notch trigger. You can use round triggers if you want to by nailing a shingle five inches wide on the long trigger stick. Be sure and have your paddle muddy if setting along creeks. You want to put a little stone back beyond paddle, so when the trap falls it will not burst paddle. Now you have a trap easy made and sure to catch any animal that steps on paddle, which is five inches wide and sixteen long. You don"t need any bait, but you can use bait by throwing it under paddle. This trap is hard to beat for small game.
I make a deadfall that sets without bait, writes an Illinois trapper.
It is made like any other only different triggers. Set it across path, over or in front of den or remove a rail and set it in the corner of a fence where game goes thru. Use thread in dry weather, fine wire for wet. Two logs for bottom is better than one, make triggers high enough to suit the animal you wish to catch; if he hits the string or wire he is yours.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PROPER BAIT.
Bait is sometimes difficult to get, but usually the trapper will get enough with his gun and steel traps to keep his line of deadfalls well baited, without difficulty. In trapping, all animals caught after the pelt is taken off should be hung up so that other animals cannot reach them, but will visit your traps.
There are two objects in hanging up bait: First, other animals coming along are apt to eat them and not visit your deadfall; second, should you run out of bait you can cut a piece from the animal hanging up, bait your trap and go to the next. While bait of this kind is not recommended, sometimes it comes to this or nothing. Fresh bait is what is wanted at all times, yet the trapper cannot always get what he knows is best and consequently must do the next best. Perhaps by his next visit he has bait in abundance.
The writer has known trappers to use a piece of skunk, opossum, muskrat, c.o.o.n, etc., that had been caught some weeks before and hung up in a sapling where it froze and on the next visit the trap baited with skunk contained a skunk. This shows that when an animal is very hungry it is not very particular what it eats.
In the early fall while food of all kinds is easy to find, any animal is harder to entice to bait and at this season bait should be fresh if the trapper expects to make profitable catches. The trapper should always carry a gun, pistol or good revolver with which to help kill game to supply bait for his traps. Steel traps set along the line will also help to keep the supply of bait up at all times. If you are successful in securing a great deal of bait, more than will be used on that round, you will find it an excellent idea to leave some at certain places where it can be secured on the next round should it be needed.
Bait may consist of any tough bit of meat, but rabbit is an excellent bait. Quail or almost any bird is good. Chicken also makes good bait.
Squirrel is all right. For mink, fish is excellent. Mice, frogs and muskrat can all be used. Remember that the fresher and bloodier the bait the better--animals will scent it much quicker. They are also fonder of fresh bait than that which has been killed for days or weeks as the case may be.
In baiting it is important to see that the bait is on secure. It is a good idea to tie it on with strong thread or small cord. The amount of bait to put on a single trap is not so important. Most trappers use a rabbit in baiting ten traps or less; the head makes bait for one trap, each foreleg another, the back about three and each hind leg one, altho each hind leg can be cut to make bait for two traps.
The spindle or trigger is run thru the bait and should be fastened on trigger near the end as shown in ill.u.s.tration elsewhere. The securing of bait on the trigger is an important thing. If it is not on securely and the trap is hard to get off, the animal may devour bait and the trap not fall. If the trigger is only sticking loosely in the bait, it is easy for an animal to steal the bait. Usually the observing trapper knows these things and are on their guard, but for those who are using deadfalls this season for the first time, more explicit explanation is necessary.
The bait should extend back into the pen about a foot and the pen should be so constructed that the bait touches nowhere only on the trigger. The animal in eating the bait usually stands with its fore feet upon the under pole, or just over it. In this condition it can readily be seen, that if its gnawing at the bait twists the trigger off the upright prop what the consequences will be--the animal will be caught across the back. An animal standing in the position just described will naturally pull down somewhat on the bait and in its eagerness to get the bait pulls and twists the spindle, or trigger, off the upright prop.
It is a good idea to try the trigger. That is, place the triggers under the fall just the same as you would if they were baited and you were going to set the trap. By doing this you will find out about how you want to set the triggers so that they will work properly. There is much in being acquainted with the working of traps. Study them carefully and you will soon learn to be a successful trapper.
CHAPTER XIV.
TRAPS KNOCKED OFF.
If you find that your traps are "down" each time you visit them and the bait gone, the pen is perhaps too large and the animal, if a small one like a mink, is going inside to devour bait. Animals usually stand with fore feet upon lower log and reach into pen after bait, but at times they have been known to go inside. In this case the animal is not in danger as when the "fall" comes down the animal is not under it. If such is the case, that is, the animal entirely inside the pen, the trigger will be caught under the fall and the trapper knows that whatever is molesting his trap is doing so from the inside. All that the trapper has to do is lessen the size of the pen. This can be done by placing small stones or chunks on the inside of the pen or by driving stakes on the inside. By doing this the outside appearance is not changed.
If, on the other hand, the trigger, that is the long one or spindle, not the short prop, is pulled out each time and often carried several feet, the trap is set too hard to "fall" and should be set easier. If the prop, or upright piece, is cut square across the top, take your knife and round off the edges so that the trigger will slip off easier. Again the pen may be torn down and the animal takes bait from the rear. Here is where it pays to build traps substantial. In such cases rebuild the pen, making it stronger. Should it be torn down on subsequent visits, the game is perhaps a fox. Of course if the pen has been torn down by some trapper or pa.s.sing hunter, you can readily detect same by the manner in which it has been done. If the trapper is satisfied that it is an animal that is doing the mischief, he wants to plan carefully, and if he is an expert trapper, a steel trap or two will come into good play and the animal will be caught in the steel trap. The pen will not be torn down again.
When traps are down note carefully the condition that they are in; see that the "fall" fits on the lower pole closely, and by the way, when building this is an important thing to notice--that the fall fits snugly on the lower or under pole.
If a snare or spring pole is up but nothing caught, simply reset.
Should many snares be up "thrown" and no catches, the trouble should be located at once. The noose is probably too large or small or made of limber or too stiff string or wire, or maybe it is too securely fastened. When resetting, note all these carefully and experience will sooner or later enable you to set just right to make a catch. If a certain snare is bothered continually, it will do no harm to set a steel trap where you think chances best of taking the animal. It matters but little to the trapper how the animal is caught, as it is his pelt that is wanted.
In using the trip triggers with or without bait, the trapper should fasten the bait by either driving a peg through it and into the ground or tieing.
In most instances the animal will throw the trap before getting to the bait, but it is well to take this precaution in case, for any reason, the animal should not step on the trip trigger at first.
Sometimes a small animal may jump over the trip trigger in order to get the bait and in its endeavor to get bait will strike the trigger.
The animal does not know that the trigger is dangerous, but now and then either steps or jumps over. Generally they step on the trigger, for if the trapper is "onto his job" the bait and trigger are so placed that the animal thinks the trip trigger is the place to put his foot.
In using without bait the trigger is so arranged that the animal rubs or steps on the trigger when entering or leaving the pen or if at a trail or runway when pa.s.sing along.
CHAPTER XV.
SPRING POLE SNARE.