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FOX TRAPPING
While looking over some back numbers of Fur News I found a piece in last March's issue hat I was very interested in. It was by Mr. S. Creps, called trapping facts and theories and I found the facts true enough.
I will tell what I know of the fox. I don't know it all yet; but this is some of my expertness with the red and grey fox. One time I was going around my trapline and found signs )f a den of skunks. I set a trap there, one that was not fixed for a fox and two days later I found a fox in it, instead of a skunk. I got the skunk on my next trip.
Another time I found fresh signs of a skunk Jigging and set a trap where he was digging nth my bare hands. This trap was boiled and set for a fox. Well, on my third trip I had a red fox. So I believe sometimes the fox is afraid of human scent and rust, or I think it is just luck they get caught.
Sometimes I believe a fox is scared more of a big stick for a scent than it is of human signs and scent. I find in my way of trapping the fox I can't set a trap to-day and get a fox that night. 1 takes me five to seven days before I can get one. I have seen good signs and places to set a trap for the fox and not even caught anything or had the trap sprung till I pulled it up. Another thing, you can't draw a fox a mile with a good fox scent, or half a mile.
If you catch a fox in a trap, you have educated him of the set and bait for some time and I think for good; but if he gets away you won't catch him again, for you educated him, like the mink is when caught and gets away.
It took me four years to trap the fox success trapper has his way of trapping. Some say this and others say do such a thing. Well, they all may be all right for all we know but I think the reason the fox is afraid of a trap is that it isn't fixed and boiled right. The way the set and sign are and scent around the set scares him. No one can catch a fox if he goes up to the trap every time he looks at it. Your own scent will keep a fox away by doing it, or else he get away by luck.
Some trappers say when a skunk gets into a fox set, the scent will keep a fox away. You know skunk scent don't freeze and it helps me out with the bait I use for snow trapping. Foxes will eat skunks sometimes, I think, for I have seen tracks of skunks on snow and a fox following it to its den. I have caught foxes where skunks have been caught.
I use a large size for the fox, like the No. 2 B. & L., Nos. 2 and 3 of Oneida Jump. I figure en a fox with big feet as well as small ones in a trap. I use the short chain trap for the all round land set, and a long chain for a water set, for you can make your water set as you want it with the long chain. I think the fox is afraid of iron, steel, and human scent; but I can't say anything about tobacco; that is a hard thing for me to say. If a trapper spits around his set I believe it would scare a fox to some extent and as to a fox being afraid to cross a man's track on snow or bare ground, I find in my trips around to traps that a fox is a little afraid to cross, even if he does go the other side of your tracks. Every year I learn something new; like a new set, bait, taking care of traps and so on and by the way we read in Fur News about other trappers ways of setting traps. We are not too young or too old to learn the art of trapping, to find and make new scents, new ways of doing everything to outwit the furbearers and in a few years you will get on to them. It took me four years to trap the fox; I caught them before that time, but I got on to their ways after four years. So I believe a good fox trapper didn't learn the art of trapping the fox in one year.
Howard, the Trapper,
Windham Co., Conn.
Fur, News. Fur News, January 1916.
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