General Scouting Outdoors 195 



what animals live near there is no time better than when the 

 snow is on the ground. 



I remember a hike of the snow-track kind that afforded 

 myself and two boy friends a number of thrills, more 

 than twenty-five years ago. 



There were three of us out on a prowl through the woods, 

 looking for game. We saw no live thing, but there had 

 been a fall of soft snow, a few days before; tracks were 

 abundant, and I proposed that each of us take a track and 

 follow it through thick and thin, until he found the beast, 

 which, if living and free, was bound to be at the other end 

 of the line; or, until he found its den. Then, each should 

 halloa to let the others know that his quarry was holed. 

 Close by were the tracks of a mink and of two skunks. The 





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mink-track was my guide. It led southward. I followed 

 it through swamps and brushwood, imder logs, and into 

 promising nooks. Soon I crossed the trail of the youngest 

 boy, closely pursuing his skunk. Later, I met my friend 

 of skunk No. 2, but our trails diverged. Now I came to a 

 long hill down which my mink had tobogganed six or eight 

 feet, after the manner of the otter. At last the trail came 

 to an end in a perfect labyrinth of logs and brush. I went 

 all around this. The snow was clear and smooth. My 

 mink was certainly in this pile. So I let off a long halloa 

 and got an answer from one of the boys, who left his trail 

 and came to me within a few minutes. It happened that 

 this one, Charlie, was carrying a bag with a ferret in it, that 



