THE SMALL NEIGHBORS OF BIG GAME 307 



of long bounds; or, in other words, it goes at a gallop. 

 Its specialty is following up a line of marten traps; and 

 on this point my good friends Charlie Smith and the 

 Norboe brothers became quite wrought up. This is the 

 substance of what they told me: 



A Wolverine will follow the trail of a trapper, visit 

 every one of his marten traps (or any others, for that 

 matter), spring every trap, steal every bait, and take 

 out every marten that has been caught. If the marten 

 is not dead, it is killed and torn out of the trap ; and if 

 dead and frozen, it is seized by the body and violently 

 jerked until the trapped leg is torn off the body, and the 

 skin spoiled. The dead body will then be carried 

 some distance, a neat hole will be dug straight down into 

 the snow for perhaps two feet, and the dead marten is 

 cached at the bottom. Then the snow is replaced in the 

 hole, tamped down and neatly smoothed over on the sur- 

 face, after which the Wolverine defiles the snow over 

 the grave, and goes his wicked way. 



By these signs, the trapper knows where to dig for 

 his stolen marten. J. R. Norboe once recovered four 

 martens out of six that had been stolen by a Wolverine 

 on one line of traps. 



In the Elk River Valley, C. L. Smith once had about 

 seventy miles of traps, and every mile of his lines was 

 gone over by Wolverines. He said, " They caused me 

 a great deal of loss, and at last they nearly drove me 

 crazy." He once set a trap for a Wolverine, and put be- 

 hind it a moose skull bearing some flesh. The Wolverine 

 came in the night, started in at a point well away from 



