110 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



paw for the hunter. With the deadfall a small beaver 

 may have gone entirely inside the snare before the front 

 log falls; and an animal whose teeth saw through logs 

 eighteen inches in diameter in less than half an hour 

 can easily eat a way of escape from a wooden trap. 

 Other things are against the hunter. A wolverine may 

 arrive on the scene before the trapper and eat the 

 finest beaver ever taken; or the trapper may discover 

 that his victim is a poor little beaver with worthless, 

 ragged fur, who should have been left to forage for 

 three or four years. 



All these risks can be avoided by waiting till the 

 ice is thick enough for the trapper to cut trenches. 

 Then he returns with a woodman s axe and his dog. 

 By sounding the ice, he can usually find where holes 

 have been hollowed out of the banks. Here he drives 

 stakes to prevent the beaver taking refuge in the shore 

 vaults. The runways and channels, where the beaver 

 have dragged trees, may be hidden in snow and iced 

 over; but the man and his dog will presently find 

 them. 



The beaver always chooses a stream deep enough 

 not to be frozen solid, and shallow enough for it to 

 make a mud foundation for the house without too much 

 work. Besides, in a deep, swift stream, rains would 

 carry away any house the beaver could build. A trench 

 across the upper stream or stakes through the ice pre 

 vent escape that way. 



The trapper then cuts a hole in the dam. Falling 

 water warns the terrified colony that an enemy is near. 

 It may be their greatest foe,, the wolverine, whose claws 

 will rip through the frost-hard wall as easily as a bear 



