Jan. 18, 1896.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
4 7 
HOW FUR IS CAUGHT— VII. 
About Deadfalls. 
In the course of my story of the Wisconsin trapping 
trip I have several times alluded to the fact that I saw no 
sort of trap except the steel trap employed by the trappers 
of that region. The steel trap is to-day the accepted form 
of instrument used by the trapper of any region where it 
is obtainable in quantities and at reasonable price. There 
are, however, some regions in which the steel trap is not 
so easily obtainable as in localities near the railroads, and 
there are times when one may find an opportunity to do 
a little trapping when he does not find himself prepared 
with steel traps, not having expected to do any trapping. 
In cases such as this it is natural and desirable to be forti- 
fied with a knowledge of the ancient and honorable, if 
more primitive, forms of traps formed of wood, such as 
deadfalls, pens, etc. 
The principle of the deadfall is always much the same, , 
though one sees it in all sorts of forms in different locali- 
ties. Any man of resource can make deadfalls, box 
traps, "figure 4" traps and the like, and it is hardly worth 
while to go further fully into the first principles of such 
engines where space is so limited. The best work pub- 
lished on such matters I have found to be the "Trapper's 
Guide," published by Forest and Stream Pub. Co., which 
is very full and complete on this and many kindred sub- 
jects. From that work I take a few pictures of deadfalls 
of a high grade of ingenuity, which will serve to suggest 
further ideas to the trapper who finds himself out on a 
trip where he needs traps and cannot get steel traps. 
What we may call Fig. No. 1 is a deadfall for sable, 
marten or any small animal which travels along on top of 
logs and stumps sometimes in search of food or for the 
several purposes which induce the moving about of game. 
It will be noticed that this deadfall is set on top of 
quite a high stump. The reason for this would be easily 
seen if one should see the same stump in winter time 
when the heavy snows have covered the ground. The 
top of the stump would then perhaps be about level with 
the snow. One will notice the little house built for the 
bait pen. My trapping friends do not like these artificial 
houses, but prefer natural objects as much as possible, yet 
this house will serve for the idea. The principle of the 
fall is readily seen. The fall log is about 10ft. long and 
5in. thick. It is shown as level, but it must be remem- 
bered that the snow comes up to its level and that it must 
be free of the snow or it could not work ; so its end is 
propped up out of the snow. The trigger of this trap is 
very simple, being made of two parts, an upright about 3 
or 4in. high and a bait stick about 8in, long. The picture 
shows how to adjust these. This same idea can be worked 
out in a dozen different ways. 
In Fig. No. 2 a more ingenious and less artifical-looking 
trap is seen, one also which takes less time to build. It is 
used for taking fi3her, though it would be as apt to do for 
marten or about any animal of investigative turn of mind. 
It is a more thoughtful trap than at first appears, for it is 
intended for an animal which is very cautious and prone 
to spring traps when possible without getting caught. 
The arrangement of the triggers in this trap is the same 
as in the sable trap, but the bait is put out free of any 
"house" or pen and clear of the log above and beneath. 
The fisher-cat comes along and sees the bait and lays his 
plans to get it. He can't reach it from below, so he climbs 
up the split stump and tries to get at it from there, and 
can't. Then he tries to go out on the top pole and 
reach the bait from there, but he cannot do so, because 
the bark covering to the bait is in his way. So he goes 
back to the split pole and crawls out between the two poles 
that make the deadfall, and sticks out his neck to reach 
the bait. In doing this he still leaves the greater part of 
his length between the poles of the trap, and the deadfall 
does the rest. There is one beauty of this trap which 
commends it, and that is that it is not so apt to blow full of 
snow and so become useless, as most traps often are that 
have houses for covering the bait. The natural effect of the 
falling of snow on this latter sort of deadfall would not 
appear to make the trap useless, and would not cover up 
the bait under the snow, for there would be no drifting 
full of snow. 
Deadfalls for Bears. 
There are deadfalls for otter and beaver, and deadfalls 
for fisher, not so good as the one above shown, but I 
imagine these are not important here, for nowadays otter 
and beaver are so scarce and so shy that when one goes 
after them he "goes fixed." But the case in regard to 
deadfalls for bears is a trifle different. The black bear is 
not so hard to trap in deadfalls as the otter or the beaver, 
and annually a great many bears are taken in deadfalls 
by trappers who use steel traps all the time for other fur. 
The steel trap for bears is a heavy and expensive tool, 
and not many trappers have a great many of them. Be- 
sides the weight of such traps prevents carrying them 
easily, and besides that again one often runs across bear 
sign when he is far in the woods and has not time to get 
him a bear trap from the settlements. In some sections 
bears are not to be called numerous, so it does not pay to 
count on them enough to pack in great steel traps for 
them; yet the accident of the line may bring one right 
across a fine bear trail, and the working of the 
animal may be seen to be such that he can easily be taken; 
or it may be that a using ground or runway may bo found 
where bears come through every season, and where a bear 
pen can be put out to good advantage. 
Fig. No. 8 shows a bear deadfall which may be called 
about a typical one, or at least one which will do to start 
from. The cut shows plainly enough the way the pen is 
made, and one can see how the triggers work. The bait 
is tied to the lower end of the stick e. The bait used in 
New England is usually a piece of smoked codfish, we are 
told, though I believe pork and beans would be fully as 
good. This trap is about 5ft. high, about 3ft. wide, and 
about 4ft. deep. The bait is about 8in. from the back of 
the pen. The fall log is about 20ft. long, and is weighted 
with other logs placed on it crosswise. The bed log is 
made about of two pieces, each about 9in. in diameter. 
Its purpose is to assist the fall log in breaking the back of 
the bear when the trap is sprung. 
As I look at the details of the bear trap above shown, 
it appears to me that it is an extremely poor kind of a 
trap, more especially in regard to the triggers. It is, 
moreover, complicated and awkward, and carries "trap" 
written all over it for a bear to read— and even a bear 
knows a thing or two about traps, especially when he 
isn't very hungry. It can easily be seen that such a trap 
would be a dangerous thing to set, especially by a man 
who was alone. Instances are common enough where a 
trapper has had an arm broken by being caught in his 
own deadfall, which is no respecter of persons. If I had 
never seen a better deadfall than this I might think it a 
very good one, but I have seen a much better one, and 
this I will try to describe, as I saw it manufactured on the 
spot by Joe Blair, an old and successful trapper. 
A Wisconsin Bear Trap. 
Joe and I had found a piece of country toward Bucka- 
tabon Lake where it was evident a bear had crossed, 
although it was then only March and early for a bear to 
be moving. We selected a place near the top of a ravine 
which led up out of a dense thicket to the top of a divide 
making down into another system of water courses. We 
found a big fallen tree, whose vast uptorn roots gave us 
our location for the trap. This made more than two- 
thirds of the walls of our house, and gave a natural look 
to the trap. We arranged the bed log and long fall log 
much as can be seen in the cut, Fig. 3, shown above, 
driving in stakes to guide the fall log in its fall. We 
avoided all stiff and newish-looking appearance as much 
as possible, and disguised the trap by covering it as well 
as possible with heavy boughs, though leaving plenty of 
light inBide, so the thing would not be too suggestive of a 
trap. 
When it came to the making of the trigger of our trap 
Joe cut a forked limb whose sides spread nearly at a right 
angle, and which was about 3ft. long on each leg. This, 
with one cross piece about 3ft. long, was all the trigger 
he had. Its principle may be understood if we should 
imagine the two sticks, a and 6, shown in Fig. No, 3, to 
be reversed, end for end, in the trap, their point of union 
being on the bed log instead of on the fall log. In that 
case the stick a would represent the bait-stick, and all the 
rest of that machinery inside would be done away with — 
a great gain in simplicity certainly, and yet at no expense 
of certainty in action. When we came to set our trap 
Joe stood his forked bait-stick up on end on the bed log, 
the end which was to carry the bait projecting inside the 
BEAR DEADFALL SET BY JOE BLAIR. 
trap about 2 or oft. On the top end of his forked bait- 
stick he placed his cross-stick, at right angles to the forked 
bait-stick. Then he let down his fall log on top of the cross- 
stick, and the weight of the fall log held the cross-stick 
and the bait-stick together, so that the trap, was set and 
ready. We then piled a lot more logs on top of the fall 
log crosswise, as shown in the cut above. The triggers 
held in place perfectly under this, yet I found that the 
slight touch of a pole on the point of the bait-stick easily 
sprung the trap. The top end of the forked bait-stick 
was slightly rounded at the point where the cross-stick 
rested on it, and the trap was so set that when the cross- 
stick was in position the upright leg of the bait-stick was 
a little to one side of the center of weight of the fall log. 
Here we had the fulcrum point of the trap, composed of 
three rounded surfaces not bearing on each other in a 
direct line. A touch on the bait end of the forked stick 
would set the fulcrum point rolling, and down would 
come the trap. This sort of bear trap can be set from the 
outside entirely, and is very simple and easily built, and 
looks less like a trap than that shown above. Indeed, if 
one should look at the photograph of the bear trap which 
Joe Blair and I built he would not know what it was 
intended to represent, nor could he see the way the trig- 
gers were set unless he looked very closely. As I have 
mentioned earlier in these articles, Joe wrote me that he 
caught two bears after I came home, but he did not say 
whether he took them in a deadfall or not. 
How to Market Furs. 
Perhaps this will do for discussion of deadfalls, and will 
do also as an end for these articles, which have proved far 
longer than I intended they should be, though there re- 
main a great many interesting things which it is hard not 
to go on writing about. Indeed, that a most interesting 
book could be written on this subject is well proven in the 
visible form of the "Trapper's Guide," which I have men- 
tioned. One useful hint I append from that work to cover 
the whole question of taking off and curing skins, which 
I have not touched upon at all. This has to do with the mar- 
keting of furs in the most acceptable form, and says: 
"Fur manufacturers now (in 1894) demand: 
"1. That the bow-stretcher be always used formuskrat. 
Skin from the nose, and make the rumps square, not round 
or pointed. 
"2. That ermine, fisher, fox, marten, mink, opossum, 
otter and skunk must be cased — that is, not cut open — and 
must be stretched on board stretchers. 
"8. That badger, bear, raccoon, wolf and wolverine 
must be open; that is, cut open along the belly from tail 
to head, and stretched, somewhat oblong, to the fullest 
extent of the skin. 
"4. The hoop stretcher should be used only for beaver." 
Trade Names of Furs. 
An interesting chapter could be written on the prices of 
furs and the trade names of the various sorts of furs. 
There is the moat intense popular ignorance about the 
actual nature of furs offered for sale in manufactured 
form, and in no other line of business is deception more 
common than among uncandid fur dealers. A great 
many furs are never sold under their own actual names, 
and there are fanciful trade names for furs which are of 
a very common sort if the buyer only knew it. Thus, 
"Electric seal" is really nothing but dyed skin of the 
coney, a sort of rabbit. "Black marten" is made out of 
the dyed skins of the opossum, the raccoon, sometimes 
even of the dog. "Brown marten" is dyed skunk, and it 
sometimes is very beautiful too. The skunk is quite a fac- 
tor in the trade. The real ma,rten, such as we caught on 
our Wisconsin trip, sells as "Hudson Bay sable," a very 
fetching name when you are selling furs to an alderman's 
wife, who has once upon a time heard that Hudson Bay 
is where the furs come from. "Black lynx" never grows 
black, but is dyed black. "Russian lynx" is a trifle 
deceptive when we learn that it is made of nothing fiercer 
than rabbit skins, dyed. But perhaps the nicest little trade 
name is that of the "Brook mink." This is nothing but 
our humble friend the muskrat, whose robe costs about 10 
cents on the average. 
Odd and Vakiable Furs. 
A fur store is a delightful place to wander through, 
and one can there see many wonderful things, and many 
showing the irregularity of Dame Nature's methods and 
her contempt for all classifications. Odd and sometimes 
almost unnameable skins comes in, which even in 
their natural state puzzle the grader. Quality and not 
name is what makes the value of any skin. Thus I 
learned of one black bear skin which was bought at Bos- 
ton by a Chicago house at a wholesale price of $50. It 
was only a cub skin, but was so soft and silky that its 
value was double that of the average high-grade bear 
skin of twice the size. This skin was killed in Maine. Is 
now a rug in a Chicago residence, whose owner thought 
he was lucky to get it at $100. Southern bear skins 
run as low as $3 to $10 sometimes. Wisconsin] bear 
skins, killed when prime, net the trapper $25 very often. 
Albino skins are common in the fur trade. At the store 
of A. Bishop, in this city, Mr. Rich showed me albino 
skins of the skunk, muskrat, opossum, raccoon and mink. 
The skin of the mink was very pale, almost white, and 
the leather was a faint pink instead of white. The rac- 
coon was very white and heavily furred. There were 
also several skins which were called "hybrid" by the 
dealers. The body color was that of the marten or almost 
like that of the low-grade sable, but across the shoulders 
was a tell-tale streak of white which denoted the skunk 
beyond doubt, although the general look of the skin was 
very far from that of the skunk. 
"We don't look at a skin to tell whether it is skunk or 
not," said Mr. Rich, "but feel of the leather. No matter 
how a skunk skin is marked or dyed, a good fur man can 
always recognize the unmistakable feel of the inside of 
the skin. 
"Once we had a skin come in here which was odd to 
us at first, but we found that it was Australian opossum, 
plucked and then dyed. This passes in the markets as 
'French beaver.'" 
The Fur of Royalty. 
But the handsomest furs you will see are those of the 
sable. If you see a bunch of these rich furs hanging on 
the wall you will go up to them and will not want to go 
away, such is their fascinating richness and brilliance of 
coat. I thought I had found some very fine marten skins 
when I came upon a lot of these furs. 
"We made a little collarette for a Chicago lady the 
other day out of some of these sable skins," said my in- 
formant. "It was only about 8in. deep, but it cost $350. 
Not more than a few weeks ago we bought one sable skin 
from the East which cost $135. This skin you see here is 
worth $92. We would take $55 for this one, or $88 for 
this one. It all depends on the quality, the dark skins 
being the most valuable. These are the furs of royalty, 
the genuine Russian Crown sable. Each skin regularly 
exported from Russia has the crown stamped on it upon 
the inside. A considerable number are yearly smuggled 
out of that coumtry and so do not bear the stamp. The 
Alaska sable is not so good as the Russian, or at least is 
rarely so good, though we sometimes see a very fine, dark 
Alaska sable. With furs it is the same as with gems — 
with diamonds or opals, let us say. You may get an opal 
of some size which is not worth over $5, or your jeweler 
may show you one no larger, but whose fire and brilliance 
may make it worth $150." 
The Trapper's Pay for his Furs. 
In the question of the value of his furs the trapper is 
very much at the mercy of the fur buyer. The trapper 
has of course a general idea of what his fur is worth, but 
he bases this only upon what he has received for similar 
fur at another time. He regularly receives from his fur 
buyer a list of quotations on the different furs; but here 
is where the dishonest buyer — and there are many of 
these — gets in his work. It seems there . is competition 
among these buyers, as in all other sorts of business. For 
instance, a new firm wants to get hold of so good a set of 
trappers as the Buck outfit at Mercer, Wis. The firm 
sends out a circular, and quotes marten up to as high as 
$10, or maybe places otter "$12 to $20." A young or in- 
experienced trapper might think that this firm was pay- 
ing more than his old firm, and so would begin to ship to 
the new outfit. When the returns came in he would find 
that his darkest marten were not good enough to be worth 
more than $2 to $3, and his biggest and blackest otter 
would not bring more than $6. They "would not grade." 
And then there would be some skins "grease burnt," and 
a skin or so would come up missing in the count. Such 
robbery of the trappers is a common and notorious occur- 
rence, but it is usually the inexperienced who get caught. 
The old trapper knows about what his fur is worth, and 
usually knows something of the firm to whom he is ship- 
ping. In some mysterious way, too, the reputation of a 
good firm travels over the entire country and becomes 
known among all the trappers — how, I could never under- 
stand. When I was down in Mississippi this fall I saw a 
negro with some coon skins. He told me he trapped and 
bought furs in that country, and when I asked him where 
he shipped he mentioned the name of the same firm at 
Oshkosh, Wis., to which Fay Buck, Joe Blair and most of 
the Wisconsin trappers I met ship all their furs. 
The whole subject of fur, from the wilderness to the 
palace, is a most interesting one. To the sportsman no 
phase of it will appeal like the first and rougher ones of 
the trapping trail. As I write the last lines of my little 
trapping story the snow is falling fast. It is Jan. 1, and 
fur will soon be prime again. When one looks out of the 
window and sees the white footing growing rapidly so 
good, it is impossible not to long again for the snowshoes 
and the pack of the deep woods in winter. E. Hoitqh. 
