178 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



they are detected. With a litter of cubs on his 

 ground the keeper, if minded, may promptly put an 

 end to the nuisance. But he may never congratulate 

 himself that there are no stoats. Where there is 

 game, there stoats must be also. Just where they 

 lurk the keeper may never know; and every art 

 may fail to catch these sly thieves. 



The keeper does not wait to see a stoat before 

 he sets his traps ; usually when a stoat is caught he 

 sees it for the first time. During the mating season, 

 in the early spring, stoats are trapped most easily. 

 When one has been caught it serves as a lure to 

 attract others. The body is suspended just out of 

 the reach of curious relatives and friends, and a 

 neatly hidden trap is set beneath it. Since rabbits 

 supply the staple food of stoats, they serve as bait : 

 anything that suggests newly done rabbit work is 

 almost sure to attract the attention of any passing 

 stoat. So after setting a trap just inside a hole in the 

 track of stoats, the keeper with his stick scratches 

 up a little fresh soil on each visit to the trap, to 

 imitate what he calls the " ferricking " of a rabbit. A 

 hollow underwood stump is always a likely place for 

 a stoat. Rabbits love to sit in such stumps, and a 

 stoat never misses a chance to investigate them, sur- 

 prising the rabbit before he can scoot away, and then 

 himself lodging in a recess of the stump, on a cosy 

 couch made from the fur of his victim. 



