} 
j 
The Stoat and its ways. 23 
hungry, carrion will draw him to the gin; if he be full to reple- 
tion, and has had his nap, he «will approach out of sheer 
curiosity—which undoes so many of us—or a pure love of thread- 
ing tunnels to discover what is within or on the other side of 
them. ‘The only art required is to put the trap in the right place, 
that is, exactly in his path. “ Once a stoat road, always a stoat 
road,” is a true proverb, as every keeper knows to his cost. Ina 
hedge the trap should be on one side of a gate-post, or crossways 
through the fence at a gap OF “ hedge-hole.” The covering OT 
box tunnel only requires to be long enough to hold the trap and 
to let the stoat pass through and over it ; and long enough also 
to keep game and foxes free from harm. In dry ditches the 
tunnel should be at the bottom, well “ bushed” to prevent the 
stoat going on either side or over it; and every “ gate-road 
tunnel” should have its trap. 
When the trap is found empty, the earth at both ends of the 
tunnel should be slightly scratched up with ‘ the business end”’ 
of the gamekeeper’s stick. This is said to suggest “ rabbit” to 
the stoat, and to make it more inquisitive. It is absolutely 
useless to set a baited trap in an open field, or in the middle of a 
big game covert, unless there be a dry ditch, or drain carrying 
water, to cause the stoat to use the place asa“ road.” ‘The very 
justly condemned pole-trap would not have destroyed as many 
stoats as it did if the animals were not so inquisitive, and the 
blood of their predecessors had not proved such an attraction, and 
Paused them to climb twenty or more feet to investigate the 
circumstances. 
There is another deadly mode of taking this species. It is SO 
secretive, and yet at the same time so curious, that it falls a 
victim at once. “This craving,’ as a trapper has pointed out, 
“ finds an illustration in the fact that when a stoat is on one side 
of a stream it is possessed by an idea that the opposite bank is 
just the right place for full investigation. The desire to get over 
the water may not always be keen enough to impel it to swim, 
though it will at times do this, but all the same it wants,to be 
across as soon as possible. The result is, that the stoat carefully 
crosses every bridge which it meets with ; it matters not whether 
the structure be the usual wide one for carrying a roadway, a 
