

CUNNING TRAPPERS 23 



One year his anxiety for his cubs was so great that he 

 caught them all in weak gins and released them. He 

 knew that after this experience the cubs would never 

 allow themselves to be again caught in a gin. On the 

 same principle, keepers sometimes net and release 

 their own partridges, hares and rabbits, to save them 

 from falling into the meshes of poachers. In the 

 ordinary way, the fox is never caught in a trap set for 

 other vermin or foxes would have been extinct years 

 ago. If they could be trapped as easily as the ordinary 

 cat, twenty-four hours would be enough for catch- 

 ing every fox in the country. 



c * * 



The skilled trapper, setting a baited trap for vermin, 

 places it at such a distance from the bait that the 



creature he wishes to catch cannot reach the 

 Trappers ^ OO( ^ without treading on the pan. Just 



when it can reach the prize is the moment 

 when it is most likely to overstep the safety-line : 

 desire overcomes suspicion. A fox, if so minded, 

 can reach over the pan, and take the bait of a 

 trap properly set for vermin, without risking a pad. 

 Yet he seldom takes a bait : he detects the scent of 

 man for a longer time than a trap is likely to remain 

 unvisited. A keeper with an experience of more than 

 twelve years vouches for it that though he used a 

 hundred traps for vermin he never lost a bait through 

 a fox, nor the Hunt a fox through a bait. But one 

 keeper surpassed the cunning of the fox. A certain fox 



