January 3, 1914- 
FOREST AND STREAM 
11 
keep th’ sicknuss away fr’m his own kid, but ’f 
I hed I reckon he’d a had a answer o’ some kind 
ready. 
“Gess he thought I’s ’bout right fer takin’ 
hi mdown there 'n gimme his best paddle ’n a 
T HE fur trade industry has been one of the 
greatest features of pursuit, and produc¬ 
tiveness, and fortune-making the world 
has ever known. The United States and Canada 
have for time, practically immemorial, supplied 
an immense quota of furs for the world’s mar¬ 
ket—Canada holding the banner, with the indus¬ 
try there in its element, in this day still supplying 
the cream of the most beautiful and most desir¬ 
able pelts. Nor has the United States been far 
behind in this notable business. The encroaching 
of civilization has meant such numbers of trap¬ 
pers, and amateurs, in the profession, that the 
fur supply is gradually being exhausted, with 
every bit of wild, or near wild, territory, over¬ 
run, and taken into consideration, in some aspect, 
by someone, at some time or another. Thus we 
find that in the present day fur-bearers stand in 
need of protection, if there shall be any remnant 
of their numbers, left. Protective laws have been 
greatly improved upon, as we note with great 
satisfaction, but even at that, with so many per¬ 
sistently trapping, they cannot fulfill in their end, 
the duty they should, and their aim. Such high 
priced furs as yielded by the otter, the mink, the 
marten, the fisher—are being exterminated so 
fast that a few years will find them a thing of 
the past. The beaver (once almost as common 
as the muskrat, if we are to take the word of old- 
timers for granted), has been depleted in num¬ 
bers, so that absolute protection has been granted. 
As a consequence we find that they are increas¬ 
ing, and are quite undisturbed, where the eye of 
the law is keen and watchful. The otter is on the 
verge of extinction; the fisher is only found in 
the remotest parts, and there followed persistently, 
unfalteringly, to their lairs by the shrewdest of 
the trapping element. If the white man fails, 
along comes that shadow of the north, the 
Indian, against whom the keenest ingenuity of 
animal instinct, or reasoning, fails, ultimately. 
Our mink is so followed, so hounded about, that 
but few seem left. Where traps fail there is al¬ 
ways the brutalized, unscrupulous medium, of 
pick and shovel, to make success certain, for the 
commercialized viewpoint of the present day does 
not cause in human brains the mere, inconse¬ 
quential thought, of humanity, where gold, even 
in the smallest amount, may be laid hands upon. 
Were humane men alone the trappers, all might 
be more bright for the fur-bearing kindred, but 
the fact that every boy, near to any trapping ter¬ 
ritory, has out his traps, for pin-money, means 
not scarcely a fighting chance for the so greatly 
imposed upon. The trapper of the past educated 
himself in the ways and means of woodcraft from 
first hand knowledge. To-day any boy with or¬ 
dinary bright intelligence, and with a knack for 
putting two and two together, reads his trapping- 
magazine, and his books on trapping, and goes 
out and “does likewise,” with more or less suc¬ 
cess. Show me a lad that traps, and I will show 
you (if he has trapped for any length of time), 
a lad that is as keen as they make them. And 
they catch animals too. Going around here and 
there I have seen their collections, and I have 
seen that they take the best of care of their pelts, 
in stretching and fleshing them, that they might 
big sea otter pelt. Had to take ’em, too, er 
quarrel ’ith ole John, ’n he was a kind o’ decent 
feller, too—fer a Injun.” 
Ed lit his pipe afresh, patted the paddle a 
little and squinted down its length to see if it 
Northland Notes 
By ROBERT PAGE LINCOLN 
get the highest market value. But one thing boys 
will not realize, because by very nature they can¬ 
not (being born seemingly ruthless to the mar¬ 
row), and that is humanity, and not to trap be¬ 
fore the season opens. Thousands upon thous¬ 
ands upon thousands of blue pelts flood the fur 
marts of the country, unprime, and bringing the 
lowest of the market quotations, coming as they 
do from the greedy, the boys especially, who can¬ 
not wait and must be there before his fellows. 
The muskrat is the greatest sufferer of the lot, 
for they are usually the most common, and easily 
trapped. Traps with live muskrats in them I 
have seen that have been untended to for days 
at a stretch. The muskrat in a trap does not (as 
far as I can understand), from experience, gnaw 
his leg off at the closed jaws, as some believe, 
though it is not impossible, but twists out. This 
is done by turning around, and around, until the 
sinews naturally are torn out. I have seen leg 
sinews three inches in length with a severed leg 
in a trap. The very cruelty of it is not good to 
rest your mind upon, especially if you have seen 
some exhibitions of the profession, as it really is, 
•n cold reality. 
Before a Minnesota law, saying that you may 
not cut into a muskrat house, went into effect, 
houses were destroyed by the thousands upon 
thousands, and the animals driven, starving, des¬ 
titute, homeless into the swamps. In the auto¬ 
biography of a muskrat I am engaged in writing- 
I am giving some facts that are pretty close to 
the truth, as I have carefully studied it. I do not 
know how well this Minnesota law is taken heed 
of, but I know there is something like a hundred 
dollar fine connected with the inhumane perform¬ 
ance. It ought to be one thousand. I know one 
thing. Any house I see broken into, frozen up, 
I am going to find that offender and do some¬ 
thing. When a man, for a few paltry red cents, 
will open houses and leave them to freeze solid, 
as I have seen them left, without thought or care, 
1 think it is about time that man were given a lit¬ 
tle of the law’s medicine. I believe in humane 
trapping (if trapping must be), which does not 
seem to be done away with as long as Milady 
and Fashion say the word. It is the ignorant 
wretches that cause suffering untold among the 
ranks of the fur-bearers. 
I am heartily glad that the spear method, in 
capturing muskrats, has been done away with, by 
the rule of the law, forbidding the cutting into 
houses. It seems very queer that this system was 
allowed as long as it was. Of course, I am 
speaking for Minnesota. I do not know what 
other states have done about the matter—suffice 
to say that we have the law. Think of driving a 
spear into a rat, living, impaled upon that spear 
for sometimes ten minutes, before the house 
could be entered, and the victim thrown out. 
Really, it is a wonder that it is borne so long 
without a great voice, as one, of protest. Several 
years ago I wrote an article about it to that great 
humanitarian paper, Our Dumb Animals, but it 
was turned down, with request that I submit it 
to our legislators. Needless to say we have a good 
law now. Muskrats should not be trapped, save 
in the fall, and in the spring, when they are prime. 
was true, got up, and kicking the kinks out of 
his angular anatomy, remarked: “I’d like to see 
ole John ’n th’ kid again, but I reckon they’ve 
moved er died by this time, ’speshily ole John, 
fer he was purty old when I know’d him.” 
And yet even then we find men, mind you, trap¬ 
ping way on into June, killing thousands and 
thousands of rats that might have been, murder¬ 
ing the progeny in the wombs of the mothers. No 
muskrat trapping should extend beyond the fif¬ 
teenth of April, for after that date rat females 
are big with little ones, and makes it a crime to 
take them. 
Thank the Lord also that the season has been 
shifted from, with opening day on November 
first, to December first. This helped the muskrats 
so greatly that we have only to look upon every 
swamp with its many houses to know that they 
have increased. Now if we can only protect them 
in the winter, I will take chance with their sur¬ 
viving all, even against civilization’s great army 
of unscrupulous slaughterers, and their despica¬ 
ble methods, that would cause a true old trapper 
to blush for shame that they should even be 
called trappers. The muskrat is prolific, and, as 
a consequence, is able to always replenish its 
shortened numbers by innumerable others. 
But the same cannot be said of the mink, 
and the skunk. They are failing, and faltering, 
in their ranks. The shovel and pick have been 
their doom. In a wild state a mink will match 
cunning with the wisest, but given not even a 
fighting chance for existence, the odds are all dis¬ 
mally against his righteous survival. Likewise 
the skunk. They have little, or no keen intelli¬ 
gence, or sharpened instinct, whichever you will, 
and fall blindly into a trap if they happen around. 
They are dug out, and often as many as fifteen 
are taken out of one hole. It is not uncommon to 
see men digging them out in the woods. The 
work is done up as clean and slick as a whistle. 
Fashion beckons: give them to me. I am cold. 
Instantly an army is out on; duty service, and the 
fur markets pile them up like cordwood while 
the bidders vie with each other for their pur¬ 
chase. The present mild winter I note with sur¬ 
prise, however well founded, that fur prices 
have fallen almost to the bottom of the ladder. 
For instance, I recently brought in a small bunch 
of furs to the famous house of McMillans in 
Minneapolis, co sell. In the past I have sold 
hundreds upon hundreds of trapped pelts there, 
and have always obtained good prices. This year 
the price stood twelve cents, the lowest, and four¬ 
teen cents a pelt, the lowest, on muskrats, where 
last year, on the same pelts, I could have obtained 
forty cents straight. In fact an old shipper, in at 
the same time, refused fourteen cents for his 
catch, and took them home, reflecting upon the 
fact that it would be a whole lot better to have 
them made into a fur coat. I think the winter 
will allow the rats, and other fur-bearers 
throughout the country, to recuperate, since a 
number will drop out of the trapping ranks. 
Thirty different wood preservatives are in 
commercial use in the United States; many of 
them utilize creosote of one sort or another; 
others require chemical salts. 
Last year the forest service distributed 116,- 
000 basket willow cuttings; 15,000 to forest 
schools, 20,000 to agricultural experiment sta¬ 
tions, and 81,000 to individuals. 
