FOREST AND STREAM 
689 
tured there is no escape; some die by leaping 
into the water, in the entrance—others remain 
alive in the feed-bed till the trapper appears, 
'often as not twenty-four hours later, especially 
if it is a cold day without, and inhuman man 
chooses to stay by the fire. The trouble is that 
the holes are not closed up very good after the 
trapper gets through with his set. The result is 
that the house freezes up tighter than a drum. I 
hope laws will be passed all over the country for¬ 
bidding trappers to cut into houses in the winter. 
It would save thousands upon thousands of rats. 
As I have made note of, like as not the trapper 
is late in making his rounds. This is one of the 
cruelest crimes imposed upon Nature and her 
keepers. There are thousands of these, however, 
many lazy, shiftless creatures, though trappers 
as a rule are about the most industrious humans 
in the world, and face pretty near the worst 
hardships. I am not making the least reference 
to wilderness trappers—men who actually make a 
profession of it—for I know them to be a very 
sane, righteous, humane set of men who always 
strive to catch and kill an animal as speedily 
as possible after its being caught in the trap. 
There are many methods of doing this but they 
are as a rule disregarded by the near-civilization 
trapper. Especially are boys to blame for a 
lot of this thoughtlessness and lack of consid¬ 
eration. I trust if there are any boy readers of 
this article they will remember next trapping 
season to tend their traps at least two times a 
day, one in the morning and the other ’round 
night, and that they will use methods whereby 
the animals they have caught are speedily re¬ 
leased from misery. I may add here that my 
youth was none too marked by methods of hu¬ 
maneness, and I think I was the average ex¬ 
ample of the American boy. Therefore the 
mention. 
I wish here to speak of a method used in 
killing the muskrat that is about the cruelest 
I know of, and which should be removed from 
existence if there is any means of doing it. That 
is by means of spearing them, which comes under 
the head of chopping into the houses- There 
are various ways of spearing the muskrat. On 
the great New Jersey swamps the usual manner 
of procedure is by means of a spear having five 
long tines, connected to a central piece. Some¬ 
thing like a fork, only the tines are four, or 
four and a half, to five feet, long. The trapper 
approaches the house cautiously, counting on 
the animals, or inmates of the house to be within; 
he drives this spear in from above same going 
straight on down through. If he is lucky he will 
impale one, two or even three victims, sometimes 
none at all; it all depends upon where the ani¬ 
mals are situated when the tines enter. If the 
man with the spear feels a gnawing on the 
steel he promptly cuts into the house and re¬ 
moves the rat, which may have been impaled 
in almost any part of the body. To say the 
least this is a cruel method. The most common 
spear in. use is that one having one long, sharp¬ 
ened rod of steel sunken into a wooden handle, 
usually made from a curtain rod or a pitchfork 
handle. Blacksmiths are generally skillful at turn¬ 
ing these out. The steel is sharpened and is 
tempered. It forms a very deadly weapon if 
handled rightly and with any degree of dexterity. 
The southern exposure of a muskrat house is 
the softest and usually the thinnest; the north 
side is often so solid and impregnable that the 
strongest man is not able to drive a spear 
through. But a sharp thrust from the south side 
into the house will usually be successful. It is 
entirely a matter of guesswork and judgment. 
The spear is driven through; one time in five 
perhaps you will impale a rat. It is like the 
former method, save only that the spear is one¬ 
pronged. The animal naturally suffers much agony, 
for the spear is held in place while the trapper is 
cutting into the house. This takes all the way 
from Eve to ten minutes- In the meantime the 
animal suffers on the spear, often driven right 
through the stomach. A speared rat pelt brings 
less in the fur market, as a matter of course; 
some of the speared pelts are utterly worthless. 
Yet thousands upon thousands come into the 
mart this way, specimens of the fever and lust 
of men who will stop at nothing short of actual 
human murder to gain their ends. Another 
view of this degrading age of commercialism; 
but enter a market where they are sorting and 
grading the furs and you will witness some re¬ 
markable sights. In one glance you can tell 
the offering of the true trapper and the con¬ 
tribution of the slovenly man who does his trap¬ 
ping in adjacent farming country. Blue pelts, 
shot-ridden pelts, ill-stretched and unscraped 
pelts, some even rotten and decaying, and full 
of maggots all find their way to the fur market, 
sad to relate; it is pitious indeed to look upon 
some of these sights. 
The muskrat derives its name from the fact 
that the female of the species has a bag or sack, of 
musk, near her organ of reproduction, forward 
of the vagina. This musk has a very acrid smell 
and when used as a lure will call in a great num¬ 
ber of the males. This musk is placed in a 
bottle, mingled with fish-oil, the trapper sets his 
trap, using a feather and paints a trifle of this 
on the trap. It is a deadly method, especially 
recommended in sections where rats are scarce. 
Trapping the muskrat is a comparatively simple 
thing. The animal will follow along the edge 
of a stream, forming trails and in these trails 
the trap may be placed with success, the shrewd 
eye selecting a spot where the animal must step 
over a stick; the trap is admitted on the 
other side, directly where the pad of the foot 
lands. This set is also used for mink with 
notable success. Muskrats will readily come to 
most any likely lure, especially vegetables which 
they will risk doom to procure. Carrots, par¬ 
snips, apples, etc., may be placed on a stick 
over the trap. The animal in swimming down¬ 
stream easily scents this luxury and is quick 
to approach. In trapping the muskrat the Num¬ 
ber i Newhouse trap, is most generally used, 
though the writer has always preferred the 
well known and much appreciated Victor trap, 
which is not made quite so strong and sharp, 
biting sharp, as the Newhouse, which holds the 
leading place for strength and durability. It 
is notable that new specimens of the Newhouse 
traps are especially strong; some cutting the leg 
almost off, others, nearly so, and the animal 
“legs,” and usually gets away. Every self re¬ 
specting, and humane, trapper, uses the sliding 
oole or the wire so that his catch may readily 
drown. The sliding pole is very' simply illus¬ 
trated in the- drawing I am submitting with this 
article as is also the spring-pole. The sliding- 
pole is a thin sapling with a branch catch at 
the end which will hold the trap ring when 
same courses down the length to its furtherest 
extremity. The other end is driven slantingly 
up into the bank. The animal gets into the 
trap, leaps into the water, the trap ring slides 
down and the animal drowns, the weight of the 
trap proving his speedy destruction. I certainly 
approve of this system, either this, or the wire, 
if possible. We will have trapping with us for 
an awful many years yet and it is no more 
than right that I give the pointer here for use 
by raw beginners, many of which are yearly en¬ 
tering the ranks of the fur-garnerers. The wire 
is often substituted; it makes it easier for the 
trapper. Common bale wire is selected. Same 
is tied to a bush near the stream and a rock 
is connected with the other end and is sunken 
directly below the set in the stream. Iden¬ 
tically the same happens, as in the sliding-pole 
affair, which is largely used in the wilderness, 
where wires cannot be procured. The spring- 
pole is another humane contrivance; not only 
does it kill the animal, but it lifts a valuable 
fur off from the ground and out of the maws 
of various prowling animals who will all too 
readily fall upon a captured animal and devour 
it. It is simply made as follows: a sapling is 
bent down and is admitted into a notch cut on 
a tree standing nearby, loosely, so that but a 
little moving around of the animal in the trap 
will cause it to become disattached from the 
notch and to leap into the air. Of course, the 
trap chain is tied to the end of the pole. A 
piece of wire may be added to the trap chain 
should the pole be too stout to bend completely 
down. See the illustration I am submitting. An¬ 
other manner I have used with success for many 
of the water animals of the fur-bearing family 
is as follows: trap is set, baited, and the trap 
chain, with wire or rope, is brought back and 
is tied to a rock, which same rock is balanced 
upon another on the bank above. The animal 
in the trap, when captured, disturbs the rock and 
it rolls off the other member and down the 
bank, into the stream. This system is used by 
the Indians to a large extent in their capture of 
the beaver and the otter and is here heartily 
recommended to trappers for all aquatic ani¬ 
mals as a means of saving the animal from suf¬ 
fering and to save the trapper his fur from the 
attention of prowling animals. Muskrats have 
their places where they are known to come and 
rest and partake of their usual meal of flagroot 
and moss. These places are easily noted by the 
“droppings” in the vicinity. Here the trap may 
be admitted with singular success; out on logs 
a trap may be set in a notch cut out to lower 
it even with the top surface; the trap chain staple 
is driven into the wood, if the chain is long 
enough so that the animal may drown by simply 
diving down, otherwise a wire is added. In set¬ 
ting traps for such animals as the muskrat, it 
is not impossible that another animal may 
stumble in, if the trap is well hidden. Fine 
grass and leaves usually come handy. If set in 
the water the trap is lowered one inch under 
the surface and a large wet leaf is put over the 
pan. But always be sure to attach your chain 
to a slide-pole, or, if this is not handy, make 
your spring-pole. To be humane is one of the 
greatest examples a trapper should set. Haste 
always makes waste. A careful set is worth 
three or four poorly arranged sets, etc. If more 
of our boy trappers would study the animals 
they are trapping, they would have more suc¬ 
cess as a result. 
A unique method used in capturing the musk- 
(Continued on page 710.) 
