FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 24, 1906. 
The Harriman Alaska Expedition. 
v.— Some Fuf Bearers. 
When Alaska first came into the possession X)l the 
United States the only thing of value that it was sup- 
posed to possess was its fur. Of cotirse the yield of the 
seal islands in value far exceeded anything else in the 
Territory, but the enormously costly sea otters were 
numerous, the beaver, the marten and the foxes of this 
northern clime were very valuable, and there were a lot 
of odds and ends, less important, which made up a total 
of very respectable proportions. To-day, the fur trade of 
Alaska is- hardly worth considering. The fur seals have 
traveled a long way on the road to extermination; the 
.sea otter is practically wiped out, less than a hundred 
skins being taken each year, while the smaller fur occurs 
now in such little driblets that the great commercial 
companies find it a difhcult matter to pay — from this 
trade — the expenses of their establishment in the Terri- 
tory, to say nothing of pajnug dividends. 
If Alaska fur had been managed with ordinary common 
sense, it miglit have long continued to yield to citizens 
of the United States a great revenue, but here, as so 
often in this country, the old selfish policy has been fol- 
lowed of permitting each man to take everything in sight 
for fear that he who comes after him will get something. 
The man who is on the ground is allowed to do as he 
likes; the Government does not care for the future. Of 
this great Territory, a large part is utterly valueless for 
any other purpose than as a home for wild animals, and it 
would seem a Avise policy to protect these animals in 
order that they may 
thrive and increase, and 
in due time yield their 
valuable furs. Such a «^ . 
policy never has been ^Z-.' 
adopted, and it may ;/ 
even be doubted whether 
one ever will be. 
The Sea Otter. 
Just east of Kadiak 
Island is a large island, 
Afognak, which was set 
apart some years ago as 
a forest reserve. Noth- 
ing has been done to 
preserve its forests, its 
fish or its fur, and its 
establishment as a re- 
serve is laughed at by 
the Alaskans, for the 
Government has never 
taken any steps toward 
enforcing its protection. 
Proclamation was made 
that Afognak was re- 
served in order to pro- 
tect sea otter, but those 
best informed say that 
this is nonsense, as sea 
otter never haul out on 
the island. To reserve 
some group of outlying 
islands, with all their 
rocks and the waters 
about them; a group, 
say, like the Shumagins, 
or the Sannak Islands 
— a considerable area of 
sea and land, near which 
there should be no hunt- 
ing — would tend to pro- 
tect these otter and 
would be very profit- 
able. A permanent pre- 
serve must be provided 
for these animals if they 
are to continue to exist. 
Such a preserve has been established on one of the Com- 
mander Islands, by the Russians, with the result that 
each year they take many sea otter, and the supply is still 
kept up. The hunting is with nets, and it is done all at 
one time — that is to say, the otters are caught in a single 
drive. 
In order to establish this very successful preserve, the 
Russians fenced off one end of the island, where forty or 
fifty sea otters were accustomed to haul; they never per- 
mit any one to go there, and during foggy weather 
constant^ patrol the water in boats. The otter increased 
so greatly that now they kill 200 selected sea otters an- 
nually. Once a year they spread their nets along the 
shore, and make a drive, killing only the best otters, and 
permitting the escape of all the females and young and 
those in poor fur. The others are clubbed there, but are 
taken away elsewhere to be skinned. As this happens 
only once a year, and as the animals are never disturbed 
except at this time, they have become tame, and are 
doing wonderfully well. When it is considered that the 
skin of the sea otter is worth from eight to twelve hundred 
dollars, according to quality, it would seem well worth 
the Government's while to give the question of this ani- 
mal's preservation some slight attention. When pro- 
tected, the otters become tame, and it is reported that 
even the annual hunt at which the catch is taken in the 
Commander Islands does not greatly alarm them. 
The establishment of a sea otter preserve, properly 
■located and properly cared for, might in the course of a 
few years add some hundreds of thousands of dollars to 
the income drawn from Alaska. 
Fox Farmiiigf. 
The so-called arctic fox is hardly found south of 
Bering Sea. This species has two color phases, the white 
and the blue, the skin of the first having little commercial 
value, while the blue fox is a good fur, a single skin 
being worth from $20 upward. _ 
We are accustomed to see in the newspapers frequent 
glkisfons to fex farming, \>n\ }ittlg h^s fy^r lifei? told 
about this industry that is definite. The Alaska Com- 
mercial Company has stocked several islands with blue 
foxes, and on one of these, near Kadiak, they have in- 
creased surprisingly. On some other islands they have 
not done very well. It is believed that the mother rears 
four or five young each year, but the number in a litter 
is sometimes larger, one case being known in which 
there were eleven. 
At these stations the foxes are fed chiefly on fish, either 
dried or fresh, or preserved in oil. Salt fish is never used, 
for the impression prevails that this food would make the 
coats harsh and would tend to give the animals the 
mange. Food for the foxes is put out every day in the 
year, the amount being gauged by the way in which the 
animals dispose of it. The supply is made especially 
abundant in May, June and July, when the young are 
dependent on the mother; the puppies being born from 
May I to f5. 
The foxes are captured in box traps, which they 
readily enter, the traps being left open, and not set 
during a part of the year, and food placed in them, so 
that the animals are accustomed to enter them. 
The fem.ales captured are marked and turned loose, 
while the males are killed and skinned. Now and then 
an exceptionally fine male is marked and turned loose. 
The owners of the fox farm do not expect to capture all 
that there are on the island, for some are wild and 
never come to the feeding places, where the traps 
are set. 
The foxes follow the beach and depend largely on its 
wash — that is to say. on the fish ca.st up on the shore. 
They catch mice, and are said to have exterminated them 
on some of the islands. They also capture salmon on the 
riffles, and sometimes follow the bears and feed on their 
leavings. Besides man, they have few enemies. The 
eagle is perhaps the most destrnctive. for it catches many 
C2. 
IN THE CLEARWATER COUNTRY — THE OUTFIT. 
Photo by Mrs. A. M. SteveUs. 
j'oung. Late in July, while the steamer lay at the wharf 
at Kadiak, a large party visited Fox Island, where a fox 
farm is situated, and had an opportunty to see some of 
the foxes. We saw three adults and two puppies, bright, 
woolly little creatures, which were suspicious yet curious. 
The struggle between their fears and their inquisitiveness 
was amusing. While we were watching the young, which 
had retreated under a building, an old fox approached 
quite close to the party and hid behind a rock, occasion- 
ally peeping over to see what was going on. 
On the wharf here some Aleuts were dressing salmon 
for drying, and after the work was over, the heads, back- 
bones and gurry from the fish they had been cleaning 
were shoveled into sacks to be taken over to Fox Island 
and given as food to the foxes. They do not eat the 
fresh heads at once, but carry them off and bury them 
for a day or two before devouring thern. 
On an island in Gladhough Bay, in Prince William 
Sound, a man named Busby has a fox farm, where he 
hopes to raise blue foxes for the market. He has fift^'' 
or sixty adults, and beUeves that they produce nine or 
ten puppies at a litter. He feeds them on fish, salmon 
and halibut, on which they do well. They refuse to eat 
cod. 
They are fed in a little house, which they have learned 
to visit for the food. The entrance to the house is so 
arranged that by a slight change the foxes, which may 
still go in, cannot get out again. In winter they are fed 
on dried salmon. The skins are said to be prime only 
for a short time, say from Dec. 20 to Jan. 10. The proj- 
ect is still in an experimental stage. In 1898 blue fox 
skins were quoted at from $15 to $20 each, while this 
year the price is said to be from $2=; to $30. 
The blue fox is abundant on the Pribilof Islands, where 
it has been trapped in considerable numbers ever since 
the fur has had a commercial value. Of late years a 
serious attempt has been made to study the nroblem of 
increasing the number of the foxes and so the yield of 
fur. 
These efforts have been carried on by Mr. J. H. Judge, 
pf the Treasury Pepartmept, who stfitioned fof 
several years on the Island of St. George, and who has 
taken great interest in the question of the fur seal and the 
blue fox. The efforts to increase the foxes have been 
in the direction of making a business of feeding them and 
trapping them, trying to increase the number of breeding 
females and to keep the males down to as low a point as 
practicable. Mr. Judge has communicated the results of 
his studies to Mr. F. A. Lucas, of the National Museum, 
who has published them in a very interesting paper in 
Science. Of St. George Island Mr. Lucas says : 
"From its isolation, its hilly, rocky charactei-, and from 
the vast numbers of birds which resort to it for a breed- 
ing place, this island is admirably suited for the abode of 
the fox, the great drawback being the lack of food during 
the winter. This lack of food not only acts directly on 
the foxes by starving them, but causes them to abandon 
the island and go out on the floe ice whenever this drifts 
down upon the island, as it often or usually does in 
early spring. In summer the foxes feed upon birds and 
eggs and to some slight extent upon dead seal puppies and 
the placenta dropped from those recently born. The 
bodies of the seals on the killing grounds are eaten to 
some extent, but these bodies rapidly decay, and besides 
during the killing seasaii the supply of other food is most 
abundant. 
"Since the advent of pelagic sealing the foxes have had 
an abundant, though brief, supply of food in the fall in 
the shape of the seal puppies whose mothers have been 
taken at sea, and who have starved in consequence. In 
1896 every starved puppie was devoured by the foxes, so- 
that no actual count of them could be made, but from an 
estimate made by comparison with the known facts on 
St. Paul Island, their number was probably considerably 
over 2,000, while in prcA'ious years it was much greater. 
The foxes have fed to some extent on the Pribilof lem- 
ming, Leinmus nigripes;. 
and seem to have near- 
ly exterminated the lit- 
tle creature, since but 
one specimen was seen 
in 1896-97. In winter 
the foxes eat anything 
that comes to hand, ex-^ 
traordinary as it may 
seem, subsisting to a 
considerable extent on 
sea urchins, Strongy- 
locentrotus drobachien- 
sis, which are gathered 
at low tide. Consider- 
able grass is found in 
their stomachs in win- 
ter and some worms, 
which they scratch up 
on the killing grounds, 
as well as with a few 
tunicates and an occa- 
sional fish bone; but it 
may be said that in 
winter the foxes lead 
a precarious existence. 
Some not very ener- 
getic attempts have 
been made to introduce 
the cottontail rabbit on 
St. Paul Island, and 
the cottontail and jack- 
rabbit elsewhere, but' 
so far withotit success; 
tjie proposed introduc- 
tion of the spermophile, 
Spermophilus empetra, 
which is found at Una- 
laska, would probably 
succeed better. 
"On the Aleutian Ls- 
lands dried salmon has 
been used for feeding 
the foxes in winter, and 
on St. George the ex- 
periment was also tried 
of using cracklings and 
linseed meal. This lat- 
ter was evidently not to the foxes' taste, but it was 
found that by mixing the meal with seal oil it 
was eagerly devoured. In 1897 Mr. Judge decided to 
use the carcasses of the fur seals taken for skins, but 
as the catch on the Island of St. George has of late 
years become so small that the bulk of the meat is eaten 
by the inhabitants, a number of bodies were salted and 
brought over from the neighboring Island of St. Paul. 
Mr. Judge tried the experiment of putting down fresh 
carca.sses in silos, as well as of salting them, and this 
plan has, with one exception, been entirely successful. 
The exception was when some seventy foxes effected an 
entrance into one of the pits, where they feasted to .such 
an extent before being discovered that a few died. The 
salted bodies were freshened by protracted soaking be- 
fore being fed to the foxes. As the trapping season 'drew 
near these carcasses were placed at night in the vicinity 
of one of the sheds, near which it was proposed to set 
traps, and, starting with four bodies, the number was 
increased as found necessary, until no less than ten were 
consumed each night. 
"When all was ready trapping was begun, box traps 
being used, in order that the foxes taken might be ex- 
amined to ascertain their sex, the deadfalls formerly 
employed killing whatever entered, regardless of sex or 
condition. All females were turned loose after being 
marked by clipping a ring of fur from the tail, an ex- 
ception being made when white foxes were caught, all of ' 
these being_ killed in the endeavor to produce a breed 
none of which should turn white in winter. 
"As the use of box traps proved to be somewhat slow, 
a small inclosure or corral was hastily constructed ad- 
joining a large shed, and so arranged that the entrance 
could be readily closed by a man stationed within the 
building. This plan proved an immediate success, the 
foxes entering the inclosure without hesitation, so that 
from five to forty could be taken at one time. Having" 
beeri shut in the corral the animals were dnVen'throup-h a 
small- door cut in the side of the shed into a room' where 
thev wer? P^ug^fty mean? pf fQr^e4 stieks p?-ess?d ovey 
