134 
the gopher-hunters were rendering to the 
country at large, and a plan of retaliation, as 
dishonest as it was shrewd, was adopted by 
the trappers. The gophers caught alive on 
this man’s farm were carefully deprived of their 
tails and then turned loose to continue their 
depredations. The tails secured the reward 
from the county, but the miserly farmer re- 
ceived no benefit whatever from the transac- 
tion. 
Gophers were so numerous that trapping 
them at twenty-five cents a scalp, or even at 
fifteen cents, opened up a most profitable in- 
dustry to the country lad. Not only did boys 
abandon the regular work of the farm, to make 
more in three months at trapping gophers than 
their entire years wages as farm hands would 
have amounted to, but the temptation was 
more than grown-up men could withstand. I 
knew one man whose income from this pecu- 
liar industry netted him one thousand dollars 
in a single summer. Aside from the pecuni- 
ary profit of the business, ke gained not a little 
notoriety, and the nickname of ‘Gopher” 
Johnson clung to him long after he gave up the 
business. , 
The gopher is caught with a smooth-jawed 
steel trap. A chain a few feet in length is at- 
tached, by which the trap is secured to a stake 
outside of the burrow. . 
The place to set a trap is near the freshest 
mound in the little colony. An opening is 
made with a spade, and the trap set in the tun- 
NATURE'S REALM. 
nel is carefully covered with pulverized earth- 
The channel is then darkened with a board 
laid flat on the ground, a hole an inch in diam- 
ater being left to lettin asmall quantity of light.. 
This is a lure to the gopher, who must have total 
darkness in his underground realm. You 
stake your trap and leave it to-do its work. 
In the course of his daily rounds the gopher 
discovers that his works have been tampered 
with, and in his haste to close up the hole steps. 
into the trap and springs it. The prisoner is. 
usually caught by the foot, and is alive whem 
found. Sometimes he springs the trap with 
his nose, and is caught by the neck and stran- 
gled in a few minutes. 
The gopher is a very interesting little animal, 
but he is so shy that the naturalist who would 
study him thoroughly must be more than ordi- 
narily cautious. I have seen thousands of his. 
mounds which appeared to have been thrown 
up only a few minutes, but only once have IL 
found the chap at his work. With his broad: 
tore feet folded across his breast, he pushed 
the loosened earth before him, and leveled off 
his mound with all the precision and dexterity 
of a landscape gardener among his flower-beds. 
Gophers are still numerous in parts of the 
West, but the incessant war made upon them 
with traps and with poisoned potatoes dropped 
into their burrows, has greatly reduced their 
numbers, and in a few years. they will doubt- 
less disappear altogether. 

