BAITS AND SCENTS.
I prefer cat or muskrat for bait, says G. W. Asha. Cut it in pieces
as large as an egg, place it in a perfectly clean can, zinc, screw
cover, place it in the sun, allowing the bait to taint. This must be
done in July or August, or can be done about two weeks before using.
In regard to using scents, many don't believe scent is a help to
trappers, but I'm one that believes in scent, because if there's a
heavy rain storm it takes the scent from the bait. If a little scent
is added, your bait is fresh again. Even heavy frosts have the same
effect in this case. You have seen advertisements saying that scents
will call an animal a mile. Don't take any stock in it, because any
animal can't smell at the most only a few hundred feet away if the
wind is right, not half as far if the wind is not right.
If any of you are beginners trapping fox, scent is a great help, if
you happen to tuck anything around the trap that have effect, if a
little scent is added. A fox can smell only one thing at a time. If
the scent is stronger than human scent, they will not smell the human
scent. Too many accidents in this way have their effect because the
fox is a forest animal in existence. I use for fall trapping the fox
pure skunk glands and pure strained honey (not sugar fed honey) but
clover or flower honey. Winter scent, pure matrix from the female fox
taken in the running season during the heat, a little muskrat musk
and pure strained honey. This scent attracts the male fox and is the
strongest scent in existence.
[Illustration: VERMONT HUNTER AND FOX SKINS.]
Here is a first class fox decoy which can be made very easily, write
Irving Brown, of Vermont. Take one half pint of skunk oil and the
musk glands of a muskrat and one scent bag of a skunk, and you have
the celebrated scent of Schofield, one of the first water set fox
trappers in the East. This should be made in spring, but it is all
right made at any time. It is not the best scent, however, but it is
a most excellent one.
Here is the secret of the best and it is hard to prepare because you
cannot get the female fox in the running season, which is February or
March, in this climate very easily. Take the matrix of a female fox
taken in the running season or, in other words, cut out the entire
sexual organs and place them in a pint of alcohol, and the result
will be the best scent ever made. Some do not use alcohol but salt
the matrix. This is the scent you will buy the secret for $5.00, and
you will be told that foxes are just crazy to get it. This is in a
measure true, but a red fox will not step into a trap unless you use
care in setting it, with any kind of scent. I don't care how frantic
a fox is to get at the bait. They don't commit suicide if they know
it.
There are many other ways to prepare for both mink and fox, all of
them possessing merit, but my aim is to give the best, not those
which are no use to the trapper. The more simple, as a rule, are the
best. Some trappers are opposed to the use of scent, but you will
find that man far behind others. The capture of fur bearing animals
has become a science, as mink and fox become more wary so does man
become more skillful in overcoming their shyness. We hear lots of
secrets that were learned of the Indians. No doubt they had some good
ones too, but the white trapper in the same place will outdistance
any Indian I have ever seen or heard of. My experience among those
people is that they are too lazy to use the care that a white man
will use in either setting traps or stretching skins.
* * *
I have had a fox get into my snowshoes tracks and follow a long way
because it was better traveling, says M. H. McAllister. Now that
shows he was not afraid of human scent. Now about iron. How often
does a fox go through a wire fence, or go near an old sugar house
where there are iron gates? That shows he is not afraid of scent of
iron.
Once there was an old trapper here, and the young men wanted him to
show them how to set a fox trap, and he told them he would. So he got
them out to show them how, and this is what he told them: "Remove all
suspicion and lay a great temptation." Well, there it is. Now, in
order to remove all suspicion you must remove all things that are not
natural. A man's tracks and where he has been digging around with a
spade or with his hands are not natural around a spring, are they?
No. Well then, there is where the human scent question comes in. By
instinct he is shown that man is his enemy, and when a man has pawed
the bait over he uses his sense and knows that there is danger, for
it is not natural.
[Illustration: LEFT FOR THE FOXES TO DEVOUR.]
Now I have a question at hand. In one place he is not afraid and
around the trap he is afraid. Now, how does he know when to be afraid
or not? I think because when he sees a piece of bait in a new place
it is not natural. Once last winter I knew where there was a dead
horse and I used to go by it, and one day my brother was with me and
of course he knew I could get a fox there, so to please him I set a
trap, and not another fox came near. Well I smoked that trap, boiled
it in hemlock and then smeared it with tallow, but the fox knew and
never came within ten feet of it again, when they were coming every
night before. When I went by there before I set my trap I left as
much scent as after, and how could he tell when there was a foot of
snow blown there by the wind after I set my trap.
Now they don't appear to be afraid of human scent or iron in some
places and around a trap they are, so now why should they know where
to be shy? Well, because it may be in an unnatural place, unless it
is instinct or good sharp sense. As for scent, I know that rotten
eggs and onions are not natural, although the matrix of the female
fox in the running season is very good. Also such as skunk or muskrat
scent or fish, as it smells rotten and makes a strong smell.
One word to the novice fox trapper, and I will leave space for
something more valuable. You must make things look natural around the
spring and smell natural, and put before them the food that God has
provided for them, and you will have success by placing the trap in
the mud of the spring, and putting a sod on the pan of the trap that
has not been handled by the hand of a human being.