February, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
61 
the large bed where the traps were set. 
One trapper who was familiar with 
their runways made deadfalls, skilfully 
camouflaging them with leaves and 
grass. He placed heavy mesh wire 
about a foot from the ground, staking 
each corner of the strip securely, and 
put it at the foot of a bank on the 
runway where the fox would naturally 
make a jump. As he jumped into the 
wire his legs would be secured; in try- 
ing to get free his legs would keep 
slipping through the mesh, similar to 
sinking down in quicksand. 
Two foxes were recently caught in 
this way: A farmer’s cow died and the 
ground being frozen the farmer did not 
bury it at the time but loaded it onto 
a stone boat, and hitching a team of 
horses to the boat drew the cow a few 
rods back of the barnyard, leaving it on 
top of the ground. He happened to see 
a fox eating of the carcass one day, so 
he set some traps around it, without 
any success. He finally made a new 
set, shifting the traps a few feet. 
It snowed early that night, just 
enough to cover the traps. When the 
foxes came for their accustomed meal 
they avoided the old sets, and in so 
doing were caught in the new sets. This 
is a good stunt to try on any animal; 
to shift the traps, when after a reason- 
able time you do not make a catch. In 
fact it is often necessary to do this 'On 
account of weather changes. Heavy 
snow, a bank cave-in or a log rolling 
will spring the jaws of the trap making 
it worthless until reset. After a cold, 
snowy snap, when it thaws so the 
ground is bare, in spots, the coon like 
the skunk will oome out of his hole to 
forage. Then the trap line should be 
carefully gone over — reset and fresh- 
ly baited — making such changes as 
deemed practical. 
1 AM somewhat partial to the raccoon, 
having a conservative attitude 
toward this animal, and I never feel 
any personal pique toward those I don’t 
catch. This bit of sentiment on my 
part was probably first instigated as a 
result of a boyhood incident still re- 
membered, and which causes laughter 
whenever recalled, wherein a coon 
played a prominent part. 
We boys caught a young coon and 
fixed a place for him over the granary 
in the cow barn. He had a chain and 
collar on him and was fastened to a 
staple in a beam. He had clean straw 
for bedding, and his nest, a sort of dark 
niche, was warm so he grew fat and 
very tame. An alley-way led by his 
nest and directly across from him was 
a boxstall which held a big twenty-four 
hundred pound bull. It used to furnish 
us boys much amusement to play a 
trick on those who would go through the 
alley-way to look at the bull. We’d puli 
sharply on the coon’s chain and he’d 
bark and make a jump for the unsus- 
pecting party who generally yelled and 
was frightened away. 
Coon hunting is exciting sport. In 
the eastern part of the country we start 
out a-foot in the evening carrying lan- 
terns and with good dogs. The dogs 
strike a coon track and tree him. The 
coon hides perfectly still and in thick 
woods on a dark night it takes some 
time before we discern him. But we 
know from the yelping of the dogs that 
he’s in the tree. Then we see his eyes 
shinning like balls of fire and shoot 
him with a small calibre rifle or re- 
volver, not always dislodging him, 
though, for should he be lodged in a 
crotch of the tree, some one will have 
to climb up and bring him down. A 
more sportsman-like way is to' chop the 
tree down, or wait until daylight, 
thereby giving him a fighting chance 
with the dogs when he strikes the 
ground. 
It takes a gritty dog to kill a coon; 
one weighing thirty pounds will hustle 
two dogs. A good way to break in a 
young dog for coons is to take him 
along hunting with an old dog. 
The coon delights in a hollow tree 
for a home nest and under favorable 
conditions will spend his lifetime in the 
A good place to set a mink trap 
same thicket. The male forages at 
night. In corn fields you will see ears 
of corn strewn here and there on the 
ground partly eaten. That is the work 
of a coon and is a good place to trap 
them. They relish wild honey, robbing 
the bees of the fruit of their labor, 
and like the mink are expert fishermen, 
cleaning out entirely a hole of suckers. 
They will spend hours hunting up and 
down a creek for crawfish. Place traps 
along the creek. Set a brand new trap 
in the water for coon and it will often 
attract them. Coons will choose large 
brush piles and places where trees have 
been felled in a mass, causing a laby- 
rinth of limbs and trunks, for a re- 
treat. When signs are seen of their 
work such as the chewing of a rotten 
log, or scratches on a tree trunk, then 
sets should be made. The meat of a 
young coon is very good eating, when 
thoroughly parboiled and roasted. 
Coons, like the skunk, differ from the 
mink in that they will den up when fat, 
not stirring much until about mating 
time, while the male mink is nearly al- 
ways traveling. A bold destroyer, 
feared and dreaded by the other ani- 
mals, and growing larger and more 
courageous than the weasel, he does not 
confine his hunting operations to any 
one province, but woe to the unlucky 
rabbit, partridge or other game he 
comes across. 
He does not he^jtate to attack and 
beat animals three times his size. He 
varies in color from a light to a very 
dark brown. His home is wherever he 
happens to be until he makes a kill, 
then he drags the victim to the home 
den. In cold weather the mink family 
will migrate to low swamps where it 
is warmer and game is plentiful, with 
an occasional dash out to the open, as 
he is always ready to pounce on some 
victim. 
Low-lying swamps are good trapping 
grounds, many mink being caught in 
them, but it is also hard work for the 
reason that such ground, being largely 
of a porous, boggy nature, the ad- 
vantages are with the mink. Here he 
can travel over large areas and under 
the surface as he pleases, making it 
difficult to always make the sets just 
right. 
One time while examining some traps 
set for mink in a swamp, I found that 
one had gotten caught but had gotten 
out of the trap and gone. The fresh 
tracks on the snow were very plain, so I 
tracked him a few rods until I came 
to a pond of water and gave him up. 
But my dog swam across the pond, 
picked up the track on the ether side 
and started off on the trail. 
I detoured around the pond and followed 
after the dog. Walking along I would 
see the tracks then lose them for a while 
as the mink traveled under the surface, 
and then finding the tracks again as the 
mink came out on solid ground further 
on. The trail wended this way for at 
least four miles. I finally came up to 
the dog and found that he had the 
mink cooped up in a hole under a tree 
stump. 
This dog was half shepherd and half 
hound. He was well trained, knew his 
business and liked it. 
Many times he has trailed a coon into 
a hollow log or some burrow, and I’d dig 
and poke around with shovel or stick, 
until he came out and I could count on 
him to catch the animal every time. 
He carried many scars on his head 
where animals had deeply cut him with 
their fangs. On the trail he would soon 
out-distance me and when he had run 
the game to a finality, before I came 
up to him I could distinguish from his 
bark and growl whether it was a coon, 
skunk >or mink he had cornered. And 
I could also tell whether he had the 
game dead to rights and the capture 
would be easy or if I would have some 
trouble. 
A FRIEND and I once had a line of 
traps out in partnership and one 
day we tracked a mink into a 
fallen hollow tree. The cavity at one 
end, where the mink entered, was large 
enough to thrust my hand into and 
(continued on page 90 
