^12 FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER. 



most of the way over mountain trails, I stopped often to watch 

 the deer feeding along the side of the trail. When they saw you 

 they would trot off a short distance and begin feeding again. 



Only last evening, Mrs. Evie Neweil, shot and killed a large 

 mountain lion that started into the yard after a pig. It seems to 

 me panthers are thicker here than wildcats in Pennsylvania. 



* * * 



I have experimented with scents for years and have found 

 scents of no particular benefit for trapping the fox. I have tried 

 the skunk and muskrat scent, the matrix of the female fox taken 

 at the proper time. I have had a female fox and have lead her 

 to my trapping place, and I have tried many so-called fox scents 

 and all to no purpose. Fox urine may, in some particular places, 

 be used to some slight advantage. It is not so with other animals 

 in regard to scents, for they do not use the same acute instinct 

 that the fox does. 



I do not wish to insinuate upon those that do use scent, but 

 for me, I would not give a cent for a barrel of so-called fox 

 decoy. I boil my traps in soft maple bark, hemlock boughs or 

 something of that nature. I do not do this because the fox can 

 be any more readily got into the trap, but because it forms a glaz- 

 ing on the trap and thereby prevents them from rusting and the 

 trap will then spring more readily. It makes no difference how 

 rusty the trap is, so far as catching the fox is concerned. 



No boys, no scent for me, the fox soon learns to associate the 

 scent business with the man, then you are up against it. With me 

 there is nothing mysterious about trapping. It is simply practical 

 ways of setting the trap, learned from many years of experience. 



* * * 



I have had fifty years experience as a hunter and trapper. I 

 have netted wild pigeons in the Adirondack Mountains, in New 

 York, to the Indian Territory, so you know that the articles in 

 H-T-T are very interesting to me. I would say that no young 

 trapper should be without this journal, although I would advise 

 them not to take too readily to scents and decoys. 



