MAMMAXS. 89 



long maintained, cauki well be numerous or very common. For at 

 least half a cenfmy the park region has been famous for the number 

 of martens caught e^ch year by trappers. In 1895 old and fresh 

 marten traps and old tra-pper cabins were common throughout the 

 area where the park now lies, and lines of blazed trees, that once 

 marked trap lines may still be found through the most remote and 

 heavily wooded sections of the park. The animals are reported to 

 be more common on the west slope of the mountains than on the east, 

 but this is probably because the timber there is more dense and ex- 

 tensive and it has not been possible to trap them out so thoroughly. 



Martens are forest animals, keeping usually in the heavy timber, 

 where they hunt from tree to tree and over and under logs and brush 

 for their prey. They are expert climbers, and if seen at all in the 

 woods are most likely to be seen in the trees. When startled thej' 

 usuallj' take refuge in a tree and may thus attract attention by the 

 noise they make in climbing. At McDonald Lake in August, 1917, 

 while picking my way through the underbrush, several ruffed grouse 

 started up with a roar of wings, and from close to the spot a marten 

 rushed up the trunk of a small Cottonwood tree. He was so close to 

 the grouse that he had evidently been stalking or lying in wait for 

 them, but when I flushed the flock he also took alarm and made a 

 ra-ther noisy escape. When up 30 or 40 feet from the ground he 

 seemed to consider himself safe and sat on a branch watching me 

 with keen interest. To further test his climbing powers I climbed 

 the tree to within a few feet of him, when he became greatly alarmed 

 and made a long jump to the branches of the next tree. By swinging 

 my tree as far as possible I was able to catch one of the branches of 

 the tree he was in, and by quick jerks shook the tree until he became 

 still more alarmed and made a flying leap for the ground, about 40 

 feet below, where he struck lightly and, bounding away through the 

 Avoods, was soon lost to sight and sound. 



Donald Stevenson, who has spent many winters in trapping them, 

 states that the principal food of martens is snowshoe raljbits and pine 

 siiuirrels, but they also catch mice, wood rats, and conies, and un- 

 doubtedly a good many birds. The scarcity of grouse in a good 

 marten country is easily interpreted. Rabbits, squirrels, and birds 

 are mostly used for trap bait, and the traps are set in a little jDen 

 cohered to keep out the snow, or on the top of a stump with a shelter 

 or on a little shelf on the side of a tree above which the bait is sus- 

 pended. Steel traps are generally employed, but many deadfalls 

 of the ordinary type are used and some are made with the butt end 

 of a small tree boxed into the top of its stump with a figure 4 under- 

 neath. Martens are as a rule unsuspicious and easily caught wher- 

 ever they occur. Their abundance in the park would tend to keep 

 down other small animal life, especially the squirrels and grouse, 

 51140°— 18 s 



