256 FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER. 



H-T-T, one of the greatest sporting magazines of the world, and 

 through the columns of this magazine, put up their fight for the 

 protection of the furbearer and the song birds. Unless the trapper 

 puts up his own fight for the protection of the furbearers, they 

 will soon be exterminated. The dog-man is now trying to place 

 a tariff on the trappers' bread and butter in placing a bounty on 

 the furbearer to induce the money-mad trapper to destroy the fur- 

 bearer during the summer when their fur is worthless. 



Also, let us have a little chat with the dig'em-outs or den- 

 destroyers. Boys, what is the difference how the skunk or coon 

 is caught, whether by the steel trap or by dig'em-outs or by the 

 dog; if the animal is caught is it gone, isn't it all the same? Well, 

 it looks to the fellow up the tree as though there was quite a 

 difference. Now comrades, if we dig out a skunk, that den, that 

 habitation is gone, is it not, and there is nothing left to induce 

 other skunks to frequent that location. Now, as to hunting the 

 coon and possum with the dog, two-thirds of the time the coon 

 or possum is treed in a den tree or rock and the tree is cut down 

 and the rock or other den is destroyed and you will get no more 

 coon or possum at that place. If this work of destroying the 

 dens of the skunk and the coon is thoroughly practiced, the dens 

 will soon be gone and with the disappearance of the dens the skunk 

 and the coon also disappear. If the dig'em-out or dog hunter, 

 when he found that he must destroy a den in order to get his 

 game, would leave it or get the animals in some other way with- 

 out destroying the den, then there could be no objection to the 

 dig'em-outs or to dog-hunting. 



Now, comrades, I will give some of my own experience in 

 regard to this destroying of den trees. I trapped for a short time 

 around a slough or pond in Alabama two years ago. The large 

 timber in the vicinity of this pond was mostly oak and lumbermen 

 were cutting this timber and taking it out. Coon were quite plenti- 

 ful around this pond when I first began trapping there but I 

 soon noticed that signs were fast disappearing and I could not 

 think what the cause was. I went to another pond or rather a 

 swamp about two miles from this pond where I again found coon 

 quite plentiful. 



