KEEPERS AND KEEPERING 407 



ing the chase. On one occasion the Committee's field observer 

 saw a family of seven or eight stoats systematically hunting out 

 a brood of young Grouse while the mother bird hovered about 

 in a state of great anxiety, running round just out of reach, and 

 trying to draw the marauders away from her brood. 



The stoat is a great traveller, and on occasions has been 

 tracked for miles in the snow. Like foxes, stoats seem to follow 

 well-defined lines of migration, and cases are known where 

 keepers have by chance struck upon these lines of march, and 

 have been able to trap many more stoats than were ever bred 

 on their own ground. 



The stoat is not, as a rule, difficult to trap. The edge of a 

 dyke, or an opening in a wall, a narrow gully or path between 

 rocks usually give the best results. His curiosity is often his 

 undoing, and he is, so to speak, his own best bait. When placed 

 in an open run the trap should be covered by a flat stone over- 

 lying two uprights. The habit of the animal makes him wish to 

 investigate all objects of interest without attracting attention, 

 and often merely the satisfaction of exploring a partly concealed 

 passage between two stones is a sufficient draw ; when the corpse 

 of a dead brother is placed on the flat stone above, the prob- 

 ability of a kill is greatly increased. 



Stoats are rarely killed down in sufficient numbers. Like 

 every other kind of vermin they seem to congregate wherever 

 the stock of game has begun to increase ; hardly any moor is 

 without them, and a good keeper will kill his thirty to sixty 

 stoats a year, and keep on doing so year in year out without 

 apparently making any impression on the source of supply. 

 The lazy man has one of two standard excuses .which many 

 moor-owners will recognise : on the rabbit-ridden moor that 

 the stoats confine their attention to ground game ; on the moor 

 where there are no rabbits that there are no stoats. No 

 credence should be given to either statement. Every keeper 

 should have several dozen of the best steel traps (it is useless 

 to employ any other kind) always set and left out on the stoat 

 runs as long as they will spring. 



