BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 27 
men and careless or slow ‘‘hookers” the rate of recov- 
ered bodies would be much less. The ‘‘hooker” was 
usually the steersman who in addition to guiding the 
boat, carried along pole with an iron head made in the 
form of a shepherd’s crook, with which he attempts to 
secure the dead beaver before sinking from sight in the 
turbulent waters, surfaced with running ice. The car- 
cass of a sunken beaver was seldom recovered except 
as a putrifaction many days or weeks after the animal 
was killed. | 
Vic Smith one of the best game shots on the Upper 
Missouri country made a trip down the Knife River in a 
spring break-up—the exact year having escaped the 
writer’s memory. He brought down about sixty beaver 
carcasses, and said that he only secured one in every ten 
that he killed. If the best shot could do no better than 
this what must have been the useless destruction from 
the multitude 9f poor shots that lined the banks of every: 
considerable beaver stream during the ice break-ups in 
the early spring, continuing the same until the last of 
these animals disappeared? The destruction in many 
cases was purely wanton—no effort being made to se- 
cure the pelts after the slaughter. The writer is free to 
say that although a professional trapper many years he 
never took part in beaver shooting during the breaking 
up of ice in the spring or during high water floods at 
any time. 
