208 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



tApBiL 3, 1891. 



tliey remain without any apparent anchorage. They aie 

 not stuck in the mud of the bottom, nor held down by 

 weights. If you lift one to the surface it will float, but 

 you may move it about on the bottom withoiit its rising. 

 I have myself tried this with sticlrs from which the bark 

 had been ea,ten, but liave never done so with the green 

 unhealed limbs before the beaver has taken them into 

 their houses. This matter to me is a very mysterious one, 

 and I have never been able to get any hint as to how these 

 sticks were sunk. Ail through the winter the beaver 

 visit these caches, carry the sticks to their houses where 

 they eat off the bark, returning the bare sticks to the 

 water. Sometimes it may happen that, for some reason 

 or other, the cache may not contain enough to last the 

 whole colony through the winter. In this case the beaver, 

 if possible, get on land through some air hole or piece of 

 open water and then forage among the timber. Occasion- 

 ally a combination of scarcity and severe weather may 

 oblige the colony to emigrate during the winter to some 

 more favorable spot. 



No description of the beaver is needed, since his picture 

 may be found in every child's book. The females are 

 somewhat smaller than the males, and may be more 

 certainly distinguished from them by their broader and 

 more rounded tails. I have never seen the tail used in 

 swimming, though it may be used as a rudder. The 

 largest number of young that I have known of is seven. 

 These I took from a female in April, and from their size 

 and development I conclude that the young are born in 

 May. The largest beaver I ever took I weighed and 

 found that he turned the scale at llOlbs. He was an old 

 fellow and had lost three of bis feet in traps. 



Aside from man, the worst enemies of the beaver are 

 wolves, lynxes and wildcats. These catch them to some 

 extent in summer when they are working; but the 

 number destroyed by these is probably not very great. 

 Although beavers are' supi^osed to be entirely confined to 

 fresh water, yet I have on a few occasions, notably in 

 Loughborough Inlet, on this coast, found them swimming 

 in the salt water. In such situations they may easily be 

 overtaken by a man in a canoe and shot, for a man 

 can easily paddle a canoe fast enough to overtake a 

 beaver. 



The fur of the beaver as seen after being dressed and 

 prepared for trimming clothing does not look very much 

 like the coat of the beaver when freshly skinned. Then 

 the soft under fur is concealed by a covering of long 

 silky brown hairs, which are usually removed in the 

 dressing. The castor, which is contained in two glands, 

 one on each side of the vent, is the only other valuable 

 product of the beaver. It is used by druggists, and was 

 once, I believe, in great demand. It is a yellowish 

 substance — very bitter — a sort of concentrated essence of 

 Cottonwood and willow bark. 



While these remarks on the habits of the beaver will 

 not help any one to learn how to trap him, they will 

 serve to indicate that he-is an animal of high intelligence 

 and pretty well able to look out for himself under or- 

 dinary circumstances. In beaver trapping we use a No. 

 4 steel trap, and the bait is a strong-smelling mixture 

 composed for the most part of the castor taken from the 

 beaver itself. Almost every trapper has his own peculiar 

 formula for preparing his ' 'medicine," and each one thinks 

 his preparation is the best thing in the world to trap bea- 

 ver. It is a very unusual thing for a trapper to divulge 

 the secret of his own preparation. Mine is a very simple 

 one, consisting of castor, honey and alcohol, the purpose 

 of the latter ingredient being merely to keep the castor 

 sweet. Having mixed my "medicine," I bore a 3|in. 

 hole in a birch limb, lengthwise of the grain, fit a stout 

 plug to it, and in this unbreakable bottle place and keep 

 the mixture. 



Many trappers set for beaver on the dam or near the 

 house or on the slide or runway, where they go into or 

 out of the water, I never do so. If you catch a beaver 

 on the dam all the others see him there in the trap, and it 

 makes them still more shy and diiEcult to catch. If you set 

 close to the house you are almost sure to catch kittens, 

 for the yomig are the first to come out in the evening and 

 so the first to find their way into the traps. The skms of 

 the kittens are worth but little, whereas if they are 

 allowed to grow to full size they will bring full prices. 

 I never set where the beaver himself goes, but try to put 

 my trap close to where he passes. Having chosen my 

 sj)ot I take a lot of mud from the bed of the creek and 

 make a little mound like the ones formed for sitting and 

 rolling on by the animal, himself. I then dig out a place 

 large enough to hold the trap in the edge of the bank, 

 splashing water over the digging to make it look natural 

 and old. Just under water and on the bank above it I 

 set up a little step on which are a few drops of the bea- 

 ver medicine. This should be fastened to the trap either 

 by a slender twig or a piece of black thread so that the 

 animal, when he dives in the water, will carry it with 

 him. This is to keep the other beaver from smelling it. 

 The trap is set 6 to 9in. below the water's surface, and the 

 end of the step is 6in. above water, and a foot or more to 

 the landward side of the trap. The chain I carry out to- 

 ward deep water as far as possible and make fast to it a 

 good sized rock, as heavy as the beaver could well drag. 

 Many people stake down their traps or fasten them in 

 some way so that the animal, when caught, is held to the 

 spot. The result of this is that the beaver, when he finds 

 himself in the trap, works away until he has twisted off 

 the imprisoned foot and escapes. The object of the trap- 

 per should be to drown his victim as soon as possible, and 

 with the trap set in my way the beaver usually makes 

 for deep water where the weight of the stone attached 

 to the chain soon drowns him. A dry pole 10 or 13ft. 

 long will serve to mark the position of the traj) in the 

 water after the beaver has cai-ried it off, and make it an 

 easy matter to recover it. 



This pole should be bo small that the ring of the trap 

 will slip over the butt. The branches which should be 

 left on the pole will keep the ring from shpping toward 

 the smaller end, while the butt may be split and wedged 

 so that the ring will not slip back the way it came. 



The spring of the trap should be bent around to one 

 side — that to which the catch is fast, and the trap should 

 be so set that the jaws when closed will stand parallel to 

 the direction of the beaver's path. Thus the jaws in 

 closing will grasp the beaver's foot without throwing it 

 out of the trap. If they close at right angles to the beaver's 

 line of approach, it might well happen that as they flew 

 together they would strike the foot and knock it out of 

 their reach. 



Some trappers set a little deeper and make use of a 



j device to induce the beaver to put his foot to the bottom 

 ! before he otherwise would. They plant in the bank a 

 small stick sharpened at both ends. This stick is hori- 

 zontal and about 2in. underwater, and its free end is just 

 about over the landward side of the trap. When the 

 beaver comes swimming along over the trap this sharp 

 stick strikes him in the neck and stops him. He puts his 

 foot to the bottom for support, and it touches the pan of 

 the trap and he is caught. 



It requires a great deal of patience to trap otter success- 

 fully. This is partly because they are such great travelers 

 and are almost always moving about. You may find an 

 otter slide to-day with fresh sign on it, and set your trap, 

 and perhaps it will be ten days before the animal visits 

 the slide again. 



For otter I use a No. 4 trap, which I set either on 

 the slide or somewhere near where the otter will pass. 

 For "medicine" I use the glands, and scatter the mixture 

 over the leaves and grass about the trap. When the trap 

 is set on land I fasten the chain to a spring pole long and 

 strong enough to raise the animal quite off the ground. 

 The otter's struggles free the pole and he is lifted up so 

 that he cannot twist or gnaw his foot off. If the trap is 

 set in shoal water I tie the chain to a rock. He will not 

 drag it far. When the trap is set in deep water, the ring 

 is strung over a sliding pole. The otter skin is cased, but 

 the tail must be split and tacked to a stretcher. 



Mink are easily trapped, as they have but little cunning. 

 To take them, build a little pen and set the small steel 

 trap a little to one side of the middle of the entrance. 

 Put the bait, which may be fish or bird's heads, on a stick 

 a foot or two above the ground. Or a deadfall such as is 

 used for martin or fisher, but smaller, may be used. 



The days of successful trapping are now pretty much 

 over, yet if a man has a taste in this direction it is always 

 worth while for him to take a few traps with him when 

 he goes into the mountains, for in this way he may bring 

 back many specimens that he would not otherwise get. 

 ToAT CouLA, Washington. R. V. GRIFFIN. 



SIX YEARS UNDER MAINE GAME LAWS. 



II.— WHY THE FAEMEE COMPLAINS AND WHO HE IS. 



THE Greek farmer, neither in character nor ability, 

 represents the class of men who live on our hill- 

 sides and forest clearings, but what he says is just what 

 I have heard, and in much the same temper, from many 

 of our farmers and back settlers. 



That they should hold such views is natural, even un- 

 avoidable, under present conditions. Farmers, who are 

 not guides nor hunters part of the year, are not very well 

 acquainted with the game laws; many of them never 

 saw the printed statutes and have no other means of 

 judging the import of the law than by what they see 

 done in its name. They have heard it said that the game 

 laws were passed for the benefit of all; but what they 

 have seen of the execution of these laws leads them to 

 believe rather that the claim is a blind, and that the real 

 object is preserving game for privileged classes who can 

 pay for it, and keeping it from them, thp poorer classes. 

 If the suspicion at first sight seems absurd, consider 

 whether any other view would be more likely to prevail 

 among men who have had contrasts like the following 

 thrust upon their notice. 



A farmer on the Penobscot captures a caribou in clope 

 season intending to keep him alive, and an officer is 

 straightway sent by orders from Bangor to force him to 

 release the creature, under threat of prosecution. Prose- 

 cution, for having the animal in possession? No, for 

 putting on snowshoes in order to catch the creature, be- 

 cause putting on snowshoes is prima facie evidence of an 

 intent to hunt, whether one has a gun or not, and under 

 the law the attempt is punishable. Bat while such wire- 

 drawn logic is used against the farmer, two full-grown 

 deer, which must have been taken in close season, are 

 kept by the month and the year at the Banp-or House, 

 within a quarter of a mile of Mr. Stilwell's office. The 

 immediate inference is that the rich and the poor are 

 differently regarded by the laws. Again, a farmer who 

 trit^s to sell eight or nine partridges in close time is finpd, 

 although he proves the bii-ds were ktlled legally in De- 

 cember; but togue and trout are openly sold in close time 

 in city markets. The poor man has no chance, they say ; 

 the rich man can do what he pleases. 



Again, two farmers each killed a caribou a little before 

 the open season began; neither was a hunter, neither 

 knew what kind of a creature he was killing or that it 

 was illegal; both were fined; But men from our own 

 cities and others yearly violate the laws, knowing well 

 what they are doing, and no wardens are sent into the 

 country where they are known to have gone for this pur- 

 pose. This injustice in the execution of the law is mis- 

 takenly but naturally laid to a partiality in the law 

 itself. The law favors sportsmen, it is said, and is against 

 our own people. 



But the farmers see this difference between rich and 

 poor made not only in capturing alive, in killing and in 

 selling game, but even in transporting it. A hunter buys 

 a ticket to Boston and checks his deer as personal bag- 

 gage, just as sportsmen do daily, but he does not go on 

 the same train with them. The deer are seized at Bangor 

 on the ground that the owner must accompany them per- 

 sonally. The State law about non-tran.-portation does 

 not say this, by the way, but it is the interpretation at 

 Bangor. The query comes, what is there wrong in it? 

 Were not the radroad requirements met in having the 

 deer checked as personal baggage and the ticket punched 

 with the baggage check, so that nothing else could be 

 afterward sent on that ticket? A sportsman's deer would 

 not have been seized if the owner were detained by sick- 

 ness or accident from going with them, iti the comment, 

 and the suspicion of unfairness is strengthened when this 

 case is compared with another a few years back, when 

 the non- transportation law was at its strictest. Then the 

 orders issued at Bangor forbade any conveyance, public 

 or private — railroad, stage or private team — to handle or 

 convey more than one moose, two caribou or three deer 

 under penalty of seizure of the whole load of game. The 

 Maine Central E. R. issued the strictest orders on this 

 point and refused to carry any game; seizures were fre- 

 quent. But, nevertheless, this railroad at one time for- 

 warded a load of deer — nine, it is said, including one 

 white one tagged to a prominent rHilroad official, and all 

 or a part of them killed with dogs by outside sportsmen. 

 The load passed through Bangor, the officers there knew 

 it, and yet no seizure was made, Comparing this with 

 the foregoing, what inference could well be drawn except 



that the laws had not been fairly executed? It is only a 

 step to the' assertion that the laws themselves are unjust, 

 and the step is taken by those who know less of the law 

 than of what is done by the officers of the law. 



The cases given above are not fictitious. The informa- 

 tion regarding the farmer who caught the live caribou, 

 was given personally by Warden Eben F, Morse, of Ed- 

 dington, wfio was sent to release the animal, and the 

 ground for prosecution, absurd as it seems, is as he gave 

 it. Warden A. J, Darling, of Enfield, gave the informa- 

 tion regarding the farmer fined for having partridges in 

 possession, and said that he tried to get the fine remitted 

 because the man was too poor to pay it and the violation 

 was unintentional. If the farmer had been able to so to 

 law about it he could have won the cas-^, as Benjamin 

 Young of North Milford won his case on deer. Warden 

 Alec McClain, of Mattawamkeag, said that he fined one 

 of the farmers who killed a caribou, but should not have 

 done so if the man had knowm enough not to sell the 

 horns in close time to the station master at Mattawam- 

 keag. The other, Milo Merriam, of Sherman (I believe), 

 personally told my father of his case, and said that the 

 caribou came out among his sheep at Benedicta, and he 

 killed it not knowing what it was. The last case is the 

 Walter McPheters case, soon to be tried in court. 



Of the instances cited on the other side the first is too 

 well known to need comment, the second will be referred 

 to later, the third is notorious, and the last is based on in- 

 formation from various sources and the admission of the 

 highest authorities here. These are not a tithe of the 

 contrasts which might be cited; but these are enough to 

 show how the present feeling could arise, I must not be 

 understood to say that the laws are invariably or even 

 half the time executed after this fashion; but to bring 

 them into disrepute does not need that the majority of 

 the grand total of indictments should have been of this 

 sort; but only that the people, whose individual judg- 

 ments make up the public opinion which I represent, 

 should have seen three prosecutions of every five that 

 have come to their notice conducted contrary to their 

 ideas of fairness and justice, or if strictly legai in form, 

 enforced against one class of law-breakers, while another 

 class seems to have been scarcely noticed. 



In what I say now, however, and in what I shall say, I 

 am not speaking of the State at large, bat only of the 

 section included in Penobscot, Hancock, Aroostook, Pis- 

 cataquis and the upper half of Somerset counties. Wash- 

 ington county might perhaps be added, but I do not know 

 enough of the popular feeling there to speak with any 

 certainty. Waldo, Knox and Lincoln, by their situation 

 on the seaboard, have less interest in game than t' e other 

 counties; and of the region west of the Kennebec I know 

 nothing, though I judge a much better state of feeling 

 prevails there than here. I speak of and for the country 

 drained by the Penobscot, Union, and St. John rivers and 

 their tributaries, and the territory about Moo^ehead Lake, 

 which is always treated here as if it belonged to Penob- 

 scot instead of to Kennebec waters because most of the 

 travel to and from it comes this way. These four couutiesi 

 and a half cover more area than the other elevf n and a. 

 half — considerably more than the States of Massachusetts,. 

 Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. Thp population 

 of these three States taken together, by the census of 

 1880 (the last not being at hand), was <J00 to the square 

 mile; that of Maine, 21. The proportion of native tO' 

 foreign population in the three States was less than 70i 

 per cent. ; that of Maine, more than 90 per cent. Bat in 

 the region of which I am writing the contrast is much 

 greater. With half the area we have little more than 

 one-fourth the population— not more than 13 to the scjuare 

 mile, by the census of 1880, and the ratio of native to 

 foreign born must have been more than 95 per cent. In 

 these four counties and a half there were only a dozen 

 places of more than 2.000 inhabitants, and five of these — 

 Bangor, Brewer, Hampden, Orono and Oldtown — lie 

 almost adjoining each other. The significance of these 

 facts in relation to what I propose to say is this: The 

 absence of large towns shows that manufactures can 

 occupy comparatively few of the inhabitants; the great 

 preponderance of native over foreign born shows that 

 under similar conditions they will be i-ure to think nearly 

 alike; the scattered population shows that agriculture, 

 under which lumbering may properly be included, must 

 be almost exclusively followed. Since the population is 

 practically homogeneous both in race and in occupation, 

 I must either entirely mis-represent them or else repre- 

 sent what is known politically as an overwhelming 

 majority. 



Now this section contains by far the greater portion of 

 the forest land of the State, including all the best of the 

 deer country and nearly all the moose and caribou coun- 

 try in the State. The inhabitants of this section as a 

 whole must therefore know more and care more about 

 game matters than those of any other section, For 

 another reason also they are better informed, 



Bangor lies in this section and Bangor is the grea 

 lumbering and sporting center of the State, Whatever 

 is done in the woods, in the course of time drifts down 

 the river to Bangor, and there is caught by those who 

 stand waiting for it. Things that the doers supposed were 

 buried in the wilderness — what was done, what was seen, 

 what was said, even, come to be talked over publicly on 

 Bangor streets. As it is the center also of all the radroads 

 leading to the great game country, most of the sportsmen 

 who come to hunt must pass through it, while game seized 

 in tran5»portation is more often taken here than anywhere 

 else. Then, one of the gam^ commissioners lives here, so 

 that it is headquarters for official news. Besides, Bangor 

 and Ellsworth are the two principal county Feats of the 

 region described, so that most of the game cases that pass, 

 into the higher courts are tried in either one or the other 

 of these places. While many of the people may not be 

 able to tell a deer from a caribou, there is, nevertheless,, 

 no other place in the State or out of it where Maine game> 

 matters are so well understood and so much discussed as. 

 in Bangor; and a knowledge of what is said and done 

 there is indispensable if one would speak on game matters. 



This knowledge I may claim to have, from having lived 

 so near as to be almost in the city and from peculiarly 

 good facilities for obtaining information. Other circum- 

 stances have given me a considerable acquaintance with 

 woodsmen, guides and hunters, both white and Indian, 

 and opportunities of knowing about many more whom I 

 never have seen, therefore I know definitely for whom I 

 am speaking and what are their views. In addition, I 

 have been through the game regions of which I speak in. 

 oloae time, for the express purpose of seeing what wae 



