250 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



He does not wish to frighten the otter till the last has 

 been taken. Coming to the slide by day, he baits a steel- 

 trap with fish and buries it in the snow just where the 

 otter will be coming down the hill or up from the pool. 

 Perhaps he places a dozen such traps around the hole 

 with nothing visible but the frozen fish lying on the 

 surface. If he sets his traps during a snow-fall, so 

 much the better. His own tracks will be obliterated 

 and the otter s nose will discover the fish. Then he 

 takes a bag filled with some substance of animal odour, 

 pomatum, fresh meat, pork, or he may use the flesh 

 side of a fresh deer-hide. This he drags over the snow 

 where he has stepped. He may even use a fresh hide 

 to handle the traps, as a waiter uses a serviette to pass 

 plates. There must be no man-smell, no man-track 

 near the otter traps. 



While the mink-hunt is fairly over by midwinter, 

 otter-trapping lasts from October to May. The value 

 of all rare furs, mink, otter, marten, ermine, varies with 

 two tilings: (1) the latitude of the hunting-field; (2) 

 the season of the hunt. For instance, ask a trapper of 

 Minnesota or Lake Superior what he thinks of the 

 ermine, and he will tell you that it is a miserable sort 

 of weasel of a dirty drab brown not worth twenty-five 

 cents a skin. Ask a trapper of the North Saskatche 

 wan what he thinks of ermine; and he will tell you 

 it is a pretty little whitish creature good for fur if 

 trapped late enough in the winter and always useful as 

 a lining. But ask a trapper of the Arctic about the 

 ermine, and he describes it as the finest fur that is 

 taken except the silver fox, white and soft as swan s- 

 down, with a tail-tip like black onyx. This difference 

 in the fur of the animal explains the wide variety of 



