GROUND AND WATER ENEMIES 91 



know how to trap them. They are taken with common 

 steel traps. Minks can be hunted with a good dog, and I 

 read an account not long ago of a Western hunter who 

 found them in the sloughs with the aid of a halfbreed 

 pointer trained to hunt them. 



The Raccoon. Mr. S. Evans, the father of the pro- 

 prietor of the Wallace Evans Game Farm, told me that 

 the "coons" were sometimes a pest. They succeeded in 

 destroying young ducks on the game farm notwithstand- 

 ing the fact that the place is heavily trapped and guarded 

 by competent keepers. 



The Skunk. The naturalists regard the skunk as a 

 beneficial animal, and I doubt much if it destroys as 

 many eggs and young birds as some people think it does. 

 There can be no doubt, however, that sometimes it takes 

 the eggs and young of game birds, and it seems likely it 

 might develop a decided taste for them in places where 

 such food was abundant and easily procured. Skunks 

 are easily trapped and shot, and a good gamekeeper 

 should have little difficulty in keeping them down when 

 they are observed to be harmful. 



Snakes. Both the rattlesnake and the blacksnake have 

 been known to take quail and their eggs, and I have no 

 doubt they would take young ducks. It is not a difficult 

 matter, however, to keep snakes out of a well wired rear- 

 ing and breeding field, and easily they are destroyed 

 with the aid of a terrier in places where the cover 

 is not too heavy. A gamekeeper once gave me an amus- 

 ing account of the killing of a blacksnake by one of his 

 terriers. 



The Mole. The late Mr. C. J. Cornish, in Shooting, 

 says : "I remember a case in which a mole made its run 



