VOL. 111. ] Notes on Otters. 327 
They are hunted by both white men and Indians, who shoot them with 
heavy rifles especially manufactured for long-range purposes. This 
is probably the most difficult rifle shooting in the world, the success- 
ful hunter requiring extraordinary skill and vast patience, plentifully 
sprinkled with good luck. In the first place the otter is very shy, 
and all shooting is done at from two to six hundred yards. Then 
the otter merely shows his head and a small portion of his hips, 
which makes a very small mark at that distance. Again he rarely 
approaches shore except in rough weather, so that he is always bob- 
bing up and down on the big rollers, and usually with a high wind 
blowing. With all these difficulties to contend with it is no wonder 
that several hundred shots are fired to each otter obtained, and also 
that from two to four otters are considered a good year’s work. The 
price of skins on the beach ranges from $50 to $250 each according 
to size and quality, the average being somewhere near $125. Twenty 
or thirty years ago the otters were much more plentiful than at pres- 
ent, bands of several hundred being seen ata time, and in those days 
the hunter would get as many in a month as he now gets in a year, 
but at the same time the price of the skins was about half what it is 
at present. 
When the white men first began to make a business of hunting 
otter in the palmy days of old, when they were plentiful, they se- 
lected spruce trees which stood conveniently close to the water, and 
constructed platforms in them about twenty or thirty feet from the 
ground. From these elevated stages they could overlook the surf 
and discern their game much more readily than from the beach. As 
the otters became wilder and kept farther away, the necessity for 
something better presented itself, so they constructed what are 
known as derricks, made of three long poles set up likea tripod and 
surmounted on top by a small wooden box open at the top and one 
side. These derricks are set up on the beach about half way be- 
tween high and low water, the box,or crow’s nest, standing. about 
twenty feet above the sand. 
The hunter enters this as the tide is coming in, so that at high 
water he is on an elevated perch right in the midst of the breakers. 
He is kept a prisoner there, however, until the tide recedes suff- 
ciently to allow him to go ashore. Ifhe is fortunate enough to kill 
an otter he makes a note of the condition of the tide, the force and 
