February is the month when it is fashionable for stoats and weasels to
begin courting. The keeper finds the trapping of stoats or weasels less
difficult work than usual in consequence. He maintains that all is fair
in love, war, and gamekeeping. He relies chiefly on tunnel-traps. The
old way was to fix a long, low, narrow box in a likely run--a box open
at each end, but with shutters which dropped when a pan in the middle
of the floor was touched by a weasel's feet; so the weasel would be
caught alive, without injury--only, however, to be executed. Another
old-time trap was the figure 4 trap, set with a heavy stone or slate,
which fell upon and instantly killed its victim. These cumbersome and
not always reliable traps have passed from the woodlands, and now the
keeper merely slips a gin into the entrance of a tunnel. This is made
sometimes of earth and sticks, or is a drain-pipe, or is made of three
lengths of plank, about a yard long and six inches wide. A hole in a
hedge-bank is a favourite place for the gin. These tunnel traps are
commonly set a few yards from the end of a hedge, because stoats and
weasels have a weakness for cutting corners.
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