ADVICE FROM A VETERAN. 239 



The average trapper also makes a mistake in listening to some 

 one's ideas about scents in trapping the animal, instead of going to 

 the forest, the field and the stream and there learn its nature, its 

 habits and ways, and its favorite food. He also makes a mistake by 

 spending his time in looking after scents, rubber gloves to handle 

 traps with and wooden pincers to handle bait, instead of spending 

 his time in learning the right way and the right place to set his 

 traps. For one little slip and the game is gone if the trap is not 

 properly set. It is like hunting in the days of the percussion cap 

 gun. I have tramped all day long over hills .and through valleys 

 to get a shot at a deer, and just at night get the coveted oppor- 

 tunity, taking every precaution to see that there was no bush or 

 obstruction in line. I would take deliberate aim, holding my breath 

 that my aim might be sure. I trick the trigger, flick went the 

 hammer, up goes the deer's tail and away he bounds beckoning me 

 to come on. Come on, and my day's tramp has been in vain all on 

 account of a damp gun cap. Now in these days of fixed ammu- 

 nition, such mishaps rarely occur. 



It is so in setting the trap, one little misfit and the game is 

 gone. In the Hunter-Trader-Trapper, I read, undoubtedly written 

 by a trapper of many years experience, telling the true way of 

 setting the trap in front of a V shaped pen. He said that the trap 

 should always be set so that the animal had to pass over the jaws 

 of the trap and not between them. Now mark my mistakes, for of 

 late years I have been very particular to set the traps so that the 

 animal passed between the jaws, not over them for I reasoned 

 like this: I thought that the animal might step on one of the 

 jaws and turn the trap up without springing it. In so doing be 

 frightened away, or that the animal might have ball of foot resting 

 on the .jaw of the trap, while it set the trap off with its toes, 

 or the ball of the foot might rest on the latch, while the trap was 

 sprung with the toes on the pan. In either case, the animal's foot 

 would be thrown entirely from the trap or so that it would only- 

 get slightly pinched, which would put a flea into the animal's ear- 

 that he would never forget. 



In days long since past, I was not particular how I set the 

 trap, just so I got it planted, but in those days I also made the 



