654 NOTES OF A FUR HUNTER. 
nine pounds. He lives on mice principally, also on beech- — 
nuts, fowl, and rabbits. House-cat meat is good bait for 
them, so is honey, cheese, and pork scraps; and hog’s 
liver is excellent. I make a bed as large as a cart-wheel, 
strew on ashes and chaff, and then get the foxes familiar 
with the place. I go there often myself, until they get 
so familiar with my track, finding it brings them no harm, 
that it does not scare them. A strange track, or mine, if 
I stay away a little while, would keep them off for a night 
or two. I cover my trap with ashes, which seems to 
prevent them from smelling it. I attach a grapple to 
my trap, so that when the fox runs off with it, it will 
catch and hold him before he goes far. I don’t fasten it 
to the bed, because the digging of the fox caught would 
frighten away others. The fox is not so much afraid of 
the iron as of the man who handles it, and, therefore, I 
avoid touching the trap with my hand. If I have a dead 
horse, or other carcass, I throw it into a hollow where 
the snow will cover it. When the foxes have made a 
path to it, I set a trap in the path, covering it with snow 
from the carcass and the fox path, and making new tracks 
over it with a fox’s foot if I have one. I don’t touch any- 
thing about the trap with my hand, but use a wooden 
shovel. Sometimes I smear the trap with a mixture of 
tallow and fox dung. 
Red Foxes are plenty about here. In 1865, I bought 
thirty-seven skins taken in the neighborhood. One St- 
-~ -VER-GRAY Fox ( Vulpes Firginiamis Rich.?), was caught 
_ in Brownville or Milo, three or four years ago, and was 
_ sold for $35.00. I have seen one skin of the Brack Fox 
z m AS var. argentatus?). It was from Sanger- 
ville is also a kind called Cross-eray ( Vulpes 
S, var. i account of a cross made by 
