VOL. II J.] Notes on Otters. 327 



They arehuntedbybothwhit^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 iirst 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 tired 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 at a 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 tirst 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 larther away, the necessity for 

 something better presented itself, so they constructed what are 

 known as derricks, made of three long poles set up like a tripod and 

 surmounted on top by a small wooden box open at the top and one 

 tjide. 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, howexer, until the tide recedes suffi- 

 ciently to allow him to go a.shore. If he is fortunate enough to kill 

 an otter he makes a note of the condition of tlie tide, the force and 



