470 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
fDic. 3, 1904. 
Capture of Animals. 
From "The Trapper's Guide." 
The Moskrat or Musquash* 
This is an animal of amphibious habits. Its head 
and body are from thirteen to fifteen inches in length. 
The tail is nine or ten inches long, two-edged, and for 
two- thirds its length rudder-shaped, and covered with 
scales and thin, short hair, the edges being heavily 
fringed. The hind feet are slightly webbed; so that it 
can "feather the oar," as the boatmen say, when they 
are brought forward in swimming. The color is brown 
above and ashy beneath. Muskrats are nocturnal in 
their habits; but are frequently seen swimming and 
feeding in the day time. They are excellent swimmers, 
and can go from ten to fifteen rods under water with- 
out breathing. Their natural food is grass and roots; 
but they will eat clams, mussels, flesh, corn, oats, wheat, 
apples, and many other vegetables. In open winters 
they sometimes find their way into farmers' cellars 
through drains, and make free with whatever they find 
in store. They thrive best in the sluggish streams or 
ponds bordered with grass and flags. The roots of 
these plants are their chief support, and from the tops 
they construct their abodes. These structures are 
dome-shaped, and rise sometimes to the height of five 
or six feet. The entrances are at the bottom, under 
water; so that the inside of the houses are not exposed 
to the open air. The muskrats live in them in winter, 
gathering into families of from six to ten members. 
Hundreds of these dwellings can be counted from a 
single point in many large marshes. 
Muskrats have a curious method of traveling long 
distances under the ice. In their winter excursions to 
their feeding grounds, which are frequently at great 
distances from their abodes, they take in breath at 
starting and remain under the water as long as they 
can. Then they rise up to the ice, and breathe out the 
air in their lungs, which remains in bubbles against the 
lower surface of the ice. They wait till this air re- 
covers oxygen from the water and the ice, and then 
take it in again and go on until the operation has to 
be repeated. In this way they can travel almost any dis- 
tance, and live any length of time under the ice. 
The hunter sometimes takes advantage of this habit 
of the muskrat, in the following manner: When the 
marshes and ponds where muskrats abound are first 
frozen over and the ice is thin and clear, on striking 
into their houses with his hatchet for the purpose of 
setting his traps, he frequently sees a whole family 
plunge into the water and swim away under the ice. 
Following one of them for some distance, he sees him 
come up to renew his breath in the manner above de- 
scribed. After the animal has breathed against the ice, 
and before he has had time to take his bubble in again, 
the hunter strikes with his hatchet directly over him 
and drives him away from his breath. In this case he 
drowns in swimming a few rods, and the hunter, cut- 
ting a hole in the ice, takes him out. Mink, otter, and 
beaver travel under the ice in the same way; and hunters 
have frequently told me of taking otter in the manner 
I have described, when these animals visit the houses 
of the muskrat for prey. 
In summer, muskrats live mostly in banks and in 
hollow trees that stand near a stream; and sometimes, 
for want of suitable marshes and ponds, they remain 
in the banks and trees through the winter. They are 
very prolific, bringing forth from six to nine at a birth, 
and three times a year. The first kittens also have one 
litter, which attain to about the size of house rats in 
September. They have many enemies, such as the 
fox, wolf, lynx, otter, mink, and owl. They are found 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio 
Grande to the Arctic regions. But they do not inhabit 
the alluvial lands of Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and 
Florida, though in other regions they live much further 
south. 
The modes of capturing the muskrat are various. 
One of them we have already seen. Another is by 
spearing. These methods are good at certain seasons and 
in certain conditions of the ice, etc. ; but for general 
service there is no means of capture so reliable as the 
steel-trap. 'Traps should be set in the principal feeding 
places, play-grounds, and holes of the muskrat, and gen- 
erally about two inches under water. Bait is not neces- 
sary except when game is scarce and its signs not fresh. 
In that case you may bait with apples, parsnips, carrots, 
artichokes, white flag-roots, or even the flesh of the musk- 
rat. The musk of this animal will sometimes draw ef- 
fectually at long distances. The bait should be fastened 
to the end of a stick, and stuck over the trap about 
eight inches high, and in such a position that the ani- 
mal will have to pass over the trap to take the bait. 
Care should be taken to fasten the trap to a stake in 
such a position that the chain will lead the captive into 
deep water and drown him. If he is allowed to en- 
tangle himself or by any means to get ashore, he will 
be very likely to gnaw or twist off a leg and get away. 
Curing Skins. 
However successful a trapper may be in taking ani- 
mals, he will not secure a full reward for hi? labor 
unless he knows how to take care of skins, and prepare 
them for market in such a manner that they will com- 
mand the highest prices. As skins that have been 
riddled with shot find little favor with fur-dealers, so 
skins that have been cut in stripping off, or that are 
encumbered with remnants of flesh, or that have passed 
into a state of incipient putrefaction before drying, or 
that have not been properly stretched, or that have been 
dried too fast, or that have been neglected and ex- 
posed after being cured, are very sure to_be thrown put 
by the fur inspector as second or third rate skins, 
deserving only poor prices. Great quantities of valuable 
furs, taken by-boys and inexperienced trappers, are 
rendered worthless by bad treatment in some of the 
processes of preservation. I shall give such information 
on this part of the trapper's business as I have ob- 
tained, both from my own experience and from con- 
versation with fur-dealers. 
General Rules. 
I. Be careful to visit your traps often_ enough, so 
that the skins will not have time to get tainted 
•a. As soon as possible after an animal is dead and 
dry, attend to the skinning and curing. 
3- Scrape off all superfluous flesh and fat, but be 
careful not to go so deep as to cut the fibre of the skin. 
4. Never dry a skin by the fire or in the sun, but 
in a cool, shady place, sheltered from rain. If you use 
a barn door for a stretcher (as boys sometimes do), 
nail the skin on the inside of the door. 
5. Never use "preparations" of any kind in curing 
skins, nor even wash them in water, but simply stretch 
and dry them as they are taken from the animal. 
Stretching Skins. 
In drying skins, it is important that they should be 
stretched tight, like a strained drum-head. This can 
be done after a fashion by simply nailing them flat on 
a wide board or a barn door. But this method, be- 
sides being impracticable on the large scale in the 
woods (where most skins have to be cured), is objec- 
tionable _ because it exposes only one side of the pelt 
to the air. The stretchers that are generally approved 
and used by good trappers are of three kinds, adapted 
to the skins of different classes of animals. I shall 
call them the board-stretcher, the bow-stretcher, and 
the hoop-stretcher, and will describe them, indicating 
the different animals to which each is adapted. 
The Board-Stretcher. 
This contrivance is made 1 in the following manner: 
Prepare a board of bass-wood or other light material, 
two feet three inches long, three inches and a half wide 
at one end, and two inches and an eighth at the other, and 
three-eighths of an inch thick. Chamfer it 
from the center to the sides almost to an 
edge. Round and chamfer the small end 
about an inch up on the sides. Split this 
board through the center with a knife or 
saw. Finally, prepare a wedge of the same 
length and thickness, one inch wide at the 
large end, and tapering to three-eighths 
of an inch at the small end, to be driven 
between the halves of the board. This 
is a stretcher suitable for a mink or a 
marten. _ Two larger sizes, with similar 
proportions, are required for the larger 
animals. The largest size, suitable for 
the full-grown otter or wolf, should be 
five feet and a half long, seven inches wide 
at the large end when fully spread by 
the wedge, and six inches at the small 
end. An intermediate size is required 
for the fisher, raccoon, fox, and some 
other animals, the proportions of which 
can be easily figured out. 
These stretchers require that the skin, 
of the animal should not be ripped 
through the belly, but should be stripped 
off whole. This is done in the following 
manner: Commence with the knife at 
the hind feet, and slit down to the vent. 
Cut around the vent, and strip the skin 
from the bone of the tail with the help 
of the thumb-nail or a split stick. Make 
no other slits in the skin, except in the 
case of the otter, whose tail requires to 
be split, spread and tacked on to the 
board. Peel the skin from the body by 
drawing it over itself, leaving the fur- 
side inward. In this condition the skin 
should be drawn on to the split board 
(with the back on one side and the belly 
on the other) to its utmost length, and 
fastened with tacks or by notches cut in 
the edg-e of the board, and then the wedge 
Board-Stretcher, should be driven between the two halves. 
Finally make all fast by a tack at the 
root of the tail, and another on the opposite side. The 
skm is then stretched to its utmost capacity, as a boot- 
leg is stretched by a shoemaker's "tree," and it may be 
hung away in the proper place, by a hole in one end 
of the stretcher, and left to dry. 
A modification of this kind of stretcher, often used in 
curing the skins of the muskrat and other small ani- 
mals, is a simple board, without split or wedge, three- 
sixteenths of an inch thick, ' twenty inches long, six 
inches wide at the large end, and tapering to five and a 
half inches at six inches from the small end, chamfered 
and rounded as in the other cases. The animal should 
way keep their proper shape, and pack better than 
those stretched on bows, and in the long run boards 
are more economical than bows, as a set of them can 
be used many times, and will last several years; where- 
as bows are seldom used more than once, being gen- 
erally broken in taking out. 
Muskrat-Stretcher. 
be skinned as before directed, and the skin drawn tightly 
on to the board, and fastened with about four tacks. 
Sets of these boards, sufficient for a muskrat campaign, 
can easily be made and transported. They are very 
light and take up but little room in packing, thirty-two 
of them making but six inches in thickness. 
The Bow-Stretcher. 
The most common way of treating the muskrat is to 
cut off his feet with a hatchet; and rip with a knife 
from between the two teeth in the lower-jaw, down 
the belly, about two inches below where the forelegs 
come out. Then the skin is started by cutting around 
the lips, eyes, and ears, and is stripped over the body, 
with the fur-side inward. Finally a stick of birch, 
water-beech, iron-wood, hickory, or elm, an inch in 
diameter at the butt, and three feet and a half long, is 
bent into the shape of an ox-bow and shoved into the 
skin, which is drawn tight, and fastened by splitting 
down a sliver in the bow, and drawing the skin of the 
lip into it. 
This method is too common to be easily abolished, 
and is tolerable when circumstances make it necessary; 
but the former method of stretching by a tapering 
board, in the case of muskrats as well as other small 
animals, is much the best. The skins treated in thaf 
Sleeping Black Ducks. 
Green Bay, Wis., Nov. 14. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have been interested in the articles whether or not 
black ducks sleep. I have been very undecided on the 
point myself, but yesterday I can say I saw a black duck 
asleep, and he must have been very sound asleep at that, 
for I walked through the water with my dog to within 
60 feet of the bird, making noise enough to scare a wide- 
awake bird at 60 yards. Ducks were not flying any too 
thick on the bay side, so I decided to walk around the 
pond, which covers a few acres and is bushy near the 
shores, with the rice growing up close to the edge of the 
brush. The water was about ten inches deep in the brush 
which I splashed through after the dog, and from his 
actions I thought he evidently scented some sort of a 
bird. When I had got past the brush, I stopped and sur- 
veyed the pond ahead, and could see everything, as the 
wild rice for the most part was down and the rest very 
thin. I saw a black duck within forty yards of me all 
huddled up, evidently asleep, and I felt that I had a 
chance to see if it was asleep or not. 
I let the dog go ahead, which he did very slowly, com- 
ing to a half-hearted point, and we splashed into the 
deeper water now nearly to my knees until within not 
over 60 feet of the bird. I then stopped and stood still 
with the dog for at least a couple of minutes, and I firmly 
believe that this duck was asleep. I yelled and the bird 
looked up, and then, upon seeing me, j umped and I killed 
it. The bird was in good condition, and was shot when 
on the wing, so was no sick or crippled duck. 
A. G. Holmes. 
[The question is not whether black ducks sleep — all 
ducks sleep; but whether a company of them all sleep 
together.] 
Cuvier Club's Annual. 
The thirty-first annual banquet of the club was held on 
November 22, and was enjoyed by over three hundred 
members and guests. Eugene L. Lewis, chairman of the 
Reception Committee, with some of his big staff of 
assistants, met the guests as they entered the building, 
and as they reached the top of the steps leading to the 
main floor, President P. F. Swing and Vice-Presidents 
Henry Hanna and P. E. Roach received them with a 
cordial welcome which carried with it the freedom of the 
house. There was one thing which cast a shadow over 
the pleasure of the evening for very many of those 
present, and that was the absence of ex-President Alex. 
Starbuck, who was reported to be ill. To say that lie 
was greatly missed, is but stating a fact, and is not 111 
any way reflecting upon the administrative resources of 
the new president, Judge P. F. Swing, who was called 
to the office by Mr. Starbuck's recent resignation. Among 
the noted anglers present were the following: Abe Furst. 
T. B. Paxton, J. S. Peebles, P. E. Roach, and F. G. 
Tullidge. W. B. Smith, R. J. Morgan and George Gerkc 
composed the Banquet Committee, and that their work 
was well done was the general verdict, the dinner being 
pronounced one of the best ever given by the club. Two 
additions to the menu — black-tailed deer and diamond- 
backed terrapin — were obtained by Mr. Smith. Luther 
Parker, chairman of the House Committee, assisted in 
welcoming the guests, as did the secretary, W. J. Lawler. 
Chef Max Basse supervised the preparation of the 
various dishes and added to the reputation he has made 
in the past as the club's chef. The next public event of 
the club will be the New Year's reception. 
The Watch as a Compass. 
Toronto, Nov. 10. — Editor Forest and Stream: Under 
the above heading I have recently seen a new formula 
published by you for determining the points of the com- 
pass from a watch. It is as follows : "Get the number 
of hours from midnight, divide by two, and point the 
hour at the sun, so that the shadow of a match or 
lead pencil falls directly across the center of the watch. 
. Twelve o'clock will be north, six south, nine west, and 
three east." 
I have for many years used another formula, which is 
as follows : "Point the small hand of the watch to the 
sun, and half way between that and twelve o'clock will 
be due south." 
I have submitted both methods to the Director of the 
Meteorological Service here for his opinion, and he says: 
"I prefer your method, as it is expressed in fewer words 
and is about as accurate as the other. Neither method 
gives direction with exactness except at the equinoxes, 
and the error will be greatest at the solstices (midwinter 
and midsummer)." I may say that the second method 
I have found convenient and sufficiently accurate for or- 
dinary purposes. B. 
Carrying Game from New York to NewYofk. 
Relative to the practice of the Forest, Fish and Game 
Department respecting the bringing of game from Orange 
and Sullivan counties through New Jersey via Erie Rail- 
road to New York city, the question has never been 
raised, as a hunter or sportsman returning home with the 
number of birds the law provides one may transport, pur- 
chases a ticket direct to New York, which is a guarantee 
that he is not trying to evade the law by stopping in New 
Jersey with his game, which the law prohibits being trans- 
ported without the State. 
Montgomery Association. 
The annual meeting of the Montgomery County Fish 
and Game Protective Association was held on November 
25 at Dayton, O. About 250 members were present. The 
election resulted as follows : President, Edwin Best ; 
Vice-President, O. B. Brown; Secretary, John F. Camp- 
bell; Treasurer, W. N. Kuhns. Executive Committee— 
B. F. Seitner, B. F. Hershey, E. T. Hardy, H. G. Protz- 
man, Dr. D. W. Greene, H, M, Altick, Charles E. Pease. 
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