38 SHOOTING AND SALMON FISHING 



at the numerous fox, stoat, and weazel tracks all over his 

 shooting. To ensure a successful attack on vermin, it is a 

 good plan to give a small sum per head to those concerned 

 in trapping, which will often make a great difference in the 

 number destroyed. We refuse to believe that English or 

 Scotch keepers exist who would play their employers the 

 dirty trick — thank goodness, we have only heard of it — of 

 asking others to send them vermin killed elsewhere to enable 

 a claim to be made for the head price, and show it as if killed 

 on their own ground by their own skill. It may be urged 

 that trapping is as much a part of a keeper's business as any 

 of his other duties, and therefore, as a matter of principle, 

 it is wrong to pay him extra for merely doing his work. This 

 aspect of the case we will not discuss, but anyone who finds 

 the so much per head system ensures a greater destruction of 

 the marauders should stick to it, and not bother his head about 

 the right or the wrong of offering this small bribe. To trap 

 well is a matter of great skill, and no one can be very 

 successful who has not an intimate knowledge of the senses, 

 habits, and weaknesses of the animal to be circumvented. 

 One man will spot a stoat, and in twenty-four hours it will 

 be nailed up, while another will take as many days to accom- 

 plish the same end. 



As showing what may be done under the most favourable 

 circumstances, we will relate the experiences of two of our 

 friends on the same ground. Each had the shootings of the 

 Island of Raasay ; one, some twenty-five years past, found 

 that if two guns on any August day killed twenty brace 

 between them it was regarded by the natives as a remarkably 

 good bag, and the score did not average anything like that 

 — from ten to twelve brace being much nearer the mark. 

 Some years afterwards — we think in 1876 — Raasay was 

 purchased by our old friend the late Mr. Herbert Wood. 

 He well understood game preserving, and at once commenced 

 a crusade against all vermin, which was so thoroughly 



