176 
FOREST AND STREAM 
February 7, 1914. 
glance at the rifle I turned my eyes again on the 
buck and was mentally calculating how many 
points those antlers carried when something ap¬ 
peared about fifty yards beyond the buck, and 
in a line directly between those horns that made 
my blood run cold. 
Just coming over the crest of a rise in the 
trail was the well-known corduroy cap of an¬ 
other hunter, and a second later his gleaming 
rifle 'barrel showed that he had sighted the buck 
and was only waiting for a good chance to pull 
the trigger. I tried to shout, but could not. 
With a sudden impulse I threw myself prone 
behind the boulder on which I sat, and not a 
second too soon. The first motion on my part 
caused the buck to wheel and as he did so the 
other fellow fired. The deadly 38-calibre bullet 
clipped the boulder not ten inches above my 
head and plowed its way into the butt of a big 
beech a few feet beyond. 
It had missed the buck, but caused him to 
whirl back again toward me, and in less time 
than it takes 'to tell 'it, the second and third 
shots followed until just as he passed about two 
rods from where I lay the fourth ball caught 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
We, of “the Labrador,’’ while out of the 
hurly-burly world, find much to interest us in 
animal life of this supposedly bleak territory, a 
terra incognito to the average person, but a 
game and fur paradise for years to come, with 
anything like proper attention. Let me tell you 
something about our foxes. 
There are four species here: 
The Blue Fox Vulpes lagopus. 
The Silver Fox, Vulpes argentaius, of which 
the Black Fox is a variety. 
The Cross Fox, Vulpes decussatus. 
The Red Fox, Vulpes fulvus. 
*The Isatis, wrongly called the Blue Fox, is 
the Arctic Fox, and quite distinct from the 
three other species through its size and tempor¬ 
ary albinism. 
The red, cross, black and silver foxes are 
distinguished from each other only through the 
color of their skins. In a litter of a cross fox 
I have seen five cubs of whic'h one was silver, 
another was double cross and three others were 
red. In another litter, that of a red fox, there 
were three red cubs and one black one. A trap¬ 
per of my acquaintance saw a double-cross fox 
cub in the litter of a red fox and another litter 
of a cross fox consisting of five red cubs and 
one black one. Another friend of mine had 
a red fox which gave birth to four cubs: two 
red, one cross and one silver black. I could 
give any number of instances of this mixture 
of colors in fox litters. 
It will be observed that the blue fox is not 
included in any of the cases I have mentioned. 
This is assuredly a conclusion very favorable 
*Dr. Merriam in his work on the mammals of the 
Adirondacks, classifies red, cross, silver and olack 
foxes as one specie. 
Mr. Comeau of Godbout River, who supplied Dr. 
Merriam with skeletons of various kinds of foxes, states 
that there are perceptible anatomical differences between 
blue and white foxes and he classifies them as differ¬ 
ent species. 
him under the ribs, ranging forward to the neck, 
and with a mighty leap he fell dead beside a 
fallen log. 
I now breathed easier. 
Raising myself slowly from behind the boul¬ 
der I saw the other fellow coming down the trail 
as fast as his heavy hunting togs would allow 
and when about thirty yards away he caught 
sight of me standing directly in the path of his 
murderous fusilade of a moment before. A 
more scared man I never saw. I was scared 
and riled too. For several seconds (it seemed 
minutes) we stood looking at each other, and 
then to break the suspense I remarked, “Well, 
you got him, didn’t you?” “Y-Yes, I got him, 
but where in - did you come from?” 
After he had given me a well-deserved lecture 
on the folly of sitting on a gray boulder skin¬ 
ning a gray cat with a gray sweater on my back, 
in a place where any man might be looking for 
game, we parted, and I made my way back to 
camp with a firm resolve that thereafter I 
would wear some protecting color, if only a red 
bandanna around my neck. A. N. Rogers. 
21 Grant St., Portland, Me. 
to the idea I have always conceived as to the 
origin of the individual animals of that color 
and a further argument in favor of their classi¬ 
fication into a distinct species. 
Some naturalists see in the blue fox and in 
the white, or Arctic fox, one and the same 
animal which they designate Isatis, but such is 
not the case. The blue fox of the trappers— 
let us call it vidpes ignotus doctoruni —the fox 
unknown to Science, and the Isatis—vulpes lago- 
pus-Sched —are two entirely different animals. 
The former is the largest of all foxes and its fur 
never changes color at any season. The Isatis, 
or Arctic fox, is the smallest and the only variety 
whose fur, which is a greyish blue in summer, be¬ 
comes white in winter. Finally the white fox 
is very common while the blue fox, on the con¬ 
trary, is extremely rare. This will be seen by 
a glance at the following statistics: In fourteen 
years the Hudson Bay Company’s post at Un- 
gava took in 5,000 fox skins divided up as fol¬ 
lows: White foxes, 4.000; silver and cross foxes, 
655; red foxes, 300; black foxes, 30; blue foxes, 
15; total 5,000. 
In any case the trappers admit the Isatis and 
the blue fox to be separate types and divide the 
species known to them into seven they take, or 
think they take, the red fox, the cross fox, the 
double cross fox, the silver cross fox, the silver 
fox, the black silver fox and the black fox. 
Although foxes are very wary and possess a 
keen sense o'f smell they are sometimes caught 
in the most carelessly set steel traps or get 
their backs broken 'in the most clumsily-built 
bush trap or are even caught in snares like the 
stupidest of hares. The trappers say that they 
are like men, some are clever and others are 
stupid, and that while they may exhaus't every 
endeavor in a vain attempt to catch one they 
catch others without the slightest trouble. 
Our foxes wander about everywhere, but do 
not seem to be guided by any regular migratory 
laws. In some years they are remarkably plenti¬ 
ful on the north and northeast shore of the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. About twenty or twenty- 
five years ago there was such an abundance of 
them along the shore of the gulf and of the 
Straits of Belle-Isle that as many as twenty-five 
were caught with one trap. I cannot say to 
what this strange exodus was due. That win¬ 
ter was not different from the previous one. 
Ptarmigan and hares, which are their favorite 
food, were neither more plentiful nor scarcer 
than usual. Foxes do not migrate in large num¬ 
bers, but their migrations are affected by the 
greater or lesser quantity of snow which falls 
in the winter. Like all other fur-bearing ani¬ 
mals, except perhaps the Arctic fox, they fly 
before great accumulations of snow. Thus when 
it is not so deep on the coast as in the inte¬ 
rior, they come to the coast and, in the con¬ 
trary case, they remain in the interior. The 
winter of 1886-1887 was an example of this. 
Near the seashore such quantities of snow fell 
that it drifted in some places to a height of ten 
or twelve feet, while there was much less in 
the interior, and at a distance of a hundred 
miles from the shore there was barely a depth 
of two or three feet. That year those who 
trapped near the shore got nothing, while those 
who went inland did very well. 
Foxes are sometimes shot but are generally 
trapped. The traps must be set with the great¬ 
est care, and nothing must be touched with 
the hands; gloves are used. 
Some trappers have another way of getting 
valuable fox skins which I will illustrate by the 
following story: 
Theodule’s Black Fox. 
Theodule, the trapper, is about sixty years 
of age, small, but strongly built, with rather 
long, curly hair a pointed beard and a bristly 
mustache. He dyes these hirsute ornaments very 
carefully every Sunday so that the hairs are 
white at the roots and a brilliant black above, 
giving him a remarkable appearance. He in¬ 
dulges in this Vanity for the benefit of the fair 
sex, to please the creatures, as the Canadian 
French call the ladies. 
In spite of his foppishness, Theodule is very 
clever and a good spinner of yarns, some of 
which are said to be rather far-fetched. He 
can do anything; he is a mason and a fisher¬ 
man, an oven-builder and a trapper, a fish mer¬ 
chant and a miner, etc., etc. It is true that the 
chimneys he puts up lean over like the tower 
of Pisa, the ovens he builds sometimes cave in 
on top of 'the loaves baking in them, and the 
mines which he drills do not always explode. 
Other calumnies are also said of him, but he 
keeps on the even tenor of his way and man¬ 
ages to get on very well. He came to Esqui¬ 
maux Point in its palmy days and gave up 
trapping for a while to devote himself to a 
commercial pursuit, keeping a store apparently 
for vending the usual commodities but in real¬ 
ity for the clandestine sale of spirituous liquors 
of doubtful origin which he himself sometimes 
sampled not wisely but too well. His goings 
on and those of his customers soon attracted 
the attention of the good old cure who from 
the pulpit denounced Theodule and his pals 
so that the latter had to give up his lucrative 
trade. He was determined to be revenged, and 
with the assistance of a confederate, he suc¬ 
ceeded in convincing the people at the Point, 
and even the worthy old priest himself, that 
the church was haunted. He played many tricks, 
the last of which nearly caused the cure to 
have a fit of apoplexy and which was the talk 
of the whole country-side. But Theodule felt 
that he had overdone it so he retired into pri¬ 
vate life and took to -trapping once more. He 
Foxes in Labrador 
The Present High Cost of Foxes, of the Black Variety, Makes the Following 
Story of the Four Species Found in Labrador Intensely Interesting 
