492 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 27, 1909. 
From a Trapper’s Diary. 
Camp Peltskin, Cal., March i. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: In the fall and winter of 1878- 
1879, iHy old partner, Jim Pardee, and I, were 
“holed up” in the Yack basin, which is tribu¬ 
tary to the Kootenai River. We had pros¬ 
pected the Yack and the Moie basins for our 
winter’s trapping ground. We found pine 
marten, red fox and lucifee, as Jim called the 
Canada lynx, fairly plentiful. I had never 
before seen any lynx, but had seen their pelts 
brought over the mountains from the Blackfoot 
country to the eastward. Of course, I had 
heard many a yarn by cabin and camp-fire of 
the lynx-eyed, clog-padded, sneak cat. My 
partner had caught a number of lynx on the 
Little Missouri. Jim said that a lynx will walk 
right into a bare steel trap. The main point in 
trapping these animals is to find their skulking 
ground. 
The lynx, as well as the bobcat, is arboreal 
and terrestrial in the pursuits of its quarry. 
When the Canada lynx gets really hungry, he 
will rush a fawn or lamb, while a bobcat has 
been known to crowd a young pig or snake. 
I agree with Manly Plardy that no Canada 
lynx or wildcat will face a dog of any grit, 
but in one characteristic of our Western lynx 
{Canadensis) the animals differ, and that is that 
in rutting time their intercourse becomes a 
general family brawl and the fur flies. I have 
seen one such inixup. 
In the early fall of 1880 I was cruising a 
trapping ground with ten days’ rations strapped 
to my back, a rifle and revolver, a pie-plate and 
tin cup as handy utensils. I had no blankets, 
but I wore two undershirts and a stiff Mac¬ 
kinaw, and when the gloom got black, the 
flicker from my camp-fire heralded to the 
awakened forest denizens that I was well found 
and well fed. 
Dear friends of Forest and Stream, the 
stealthy voices and noises one hears after the 
blanket of night has fallen, none can appreciate 
save him who has been cradled in the forest 
depths. Those gifts that mellow from every 
limb and bough—the pleasant mysteries and 
voices of the night-—my pen cannot portray the 
whisperings of, but I recognize them all. I 
love to wander away from my camp into the 
droning night, and listen occasionally to the 
sad tale of the owl, or perhaps the frenzied 
gnashing of teeth where the carnival of flesh 
has opened. Successful fur hunting is, after all, 
a prospect of plans to be well laid. In the early 
fall when the ground is yet bare of snow, the 
picking of sign would need the nose of a hound. 
To take the lay of the land and to prospect 
your ground well, one has to be on the qui- 
vive both night and day. 
Coming up along the rim of a slide that had 
taken place the spring before, night overtook 
me, and I decided to make a dry camp, so I 
easily boxed under the roots of a wind-shake. 
I had been chewing on a hunk of jerkie, and 
presently proceeded to -take a smoke. I was 
doing nicely, when from somewhere under my 
feet came a stem-winding and air-splitting 
screech. The ground gave way beneath my 
feet, and out jumped a troop of cats. In the 
oncoming darkness I had made my dry camp 
right over a den of more than a dozen and 
less than twenty of old Jim’s lucifees. I held 
that camp down tighter than before and started 
right in to prospect the den. After a good deal 
of fumbling I rigged up a tallow widow, and 
lighting it, entered the den. The fog of rank 
odor was thick. I retreated from the den to 
snatch some sleep, knowing that by dawn some 
of those routed lynxes would be skulking about 
nearby. , An old saying among wise trappers 
is: “Find a cat den and you have got the cat; 
be it panther, lynx or bobcat, it is all the 
same.” So by dawn I was up, had broiled a 
grouse leg and sat looking up and down the 
mountain. I could see no lynx, but I knew 
they were not far off. 
I made a memorandum of the lay of the 
land, and was already in harness -to strike out 
up the ridge, when, directly below me, about 
one hundred yards, three lynx got to swearing 
YELLOWSTONE PARK BUCK. 
Photograph by O. A. Anderson. 
at each other, as Manly Hardy puts it. Very 
soon more lynx came loping from all sides of 
the adjacent ground, and there started a fight 
such as I have never seen before or since. 
The mountain echoed and re-echoed with their 
metallic vowels. Fur and flesh was rent, and 
I saw two lynx, sorely pressed, roll over in a 
ball. The scrimmage lasted fully fifteen or 
twenty minutes with me as a most interested 
spectator in full view of the arena. 
A panther ledge, a lynx’s den, or a bob¬ 
cat’s lair is rarely abandoned. All these cats 
are local, if the food supply holds good. Lynx 
bring forth their young late in January, or 
February. They never have more than two at 
a litter, while the bobcat has from four to five 
I have caught the Canada lynx, the snowshoe 
lucivee, the largest of which measured over 
four feet in length and tipped the scales at 
forty-two pounds. 
Bobcats do not become so large or so heavy. 
They are great rovers. Their trail is a very 
plain one, so much so, that when once learned 
it cannot be mistaken for any other sign, and 
they do not run in the ordinary sense, but leap 
and jump with their hind feet well in under the- 
body, the fore feet being kept close together. 
In stalking its prey, the bobcat creeps close to 
the ground, or lies on a limb, cut bank or rock, 
ready to make a lightning leap. It loves dense 
thickets where birds are found, haunts rabbit- 
infested Jocalities or skulks near the margin^ 
of ponds in quest of dead fish or sleepy frogs, 
and even hunts mice. 
If a sandy beach is within their range they 
are sure to visit it in their rounds, and when- 
hunger drives and gnaws, the bobcat will ap¬ 
proach the clearings and in broad daylight or 
dusky eve, rustle a chicken or other easy chuck. 
Like the lynx, to which he is so closely allied, 
the bobcat is bold but not cunning and lacks, 
that subtile sense which ever seems to safe¬ 
guard the other varmints. He can easily be 
taken in steel traps or snares. It is goods 
medicine to hang a bird above the trap, but the 
acme of wildcat bait is fish of any sort, but 
the louder the fish smells the more attractive it 
will be to a bobcat. The trap must be properly 
bedded, so that its top is flush with the sur¬ 
face of the ground, and the ring of the trap 
chain fastened to a three-inch butt cut of a 
sapling, say three feet long. An aged egg, with 
a handful of feathers strewn about will surely 
invite an investigation', and if your “set” is 
fairly good you will hear the snarl of your cat 
in the morning. H. P. 
Mr. Kellogg’s Lectures. 
New York, March 12. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: I.ast month, in Brooklyn, I had the 
good fortune to hear Charles Kellogg, who 
lives in the Maine woods, lecture on the life 
of the woods. He showed us astonishing and 
delightful moving pictures, taken by himself, of 
birds, of moose swimming, deer in the woods, 
beavers at work, ’coons washing their food, 
and other wood-life scenes; of the great Bird- 
Rock in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, of which 
John Muir has written, and of the sea on his 
way there; telephotographic views of birds; 
photographs of his friend and companion John 
Burroughs in and around his house, Slabsides, 
and on their travels; and intimate views of de¬ 
tails of the woods, his camps, etc. 
He neither fears nor harms any creature in 
the woods, and no creature fears or harms him. 
Some of the views show him playing with 
poisonous snakes, petting wild fawns, etc. 
Accompanying his bird pictures, he actually 
sings—not whistles—the songs of our wild 
birds. In the darkened lecture room it seems 
impossible to believe that the birds are not 
there. So far as he knows, he is the onty 
human being that has this gift. 
The whole thing was such a revelation and 
delight, the man himself so unusual, original, 
and unlike the literary naturalist, that I know 
I am doing you a service in telling you of an 
opportunity to hear him and recommending you 
to pass the word along to any friend that loves 
the woods. 
Mr. Kellogg has addressed great audiences 
of children. Last winter in Boston he gave 
eighty-six lectures in two months, mostly to 
public school children. Not long ago he lec¬ 
tured to 3,000 children in Hartford. He has 
lectured successfully in London. 
Lewis S. Burchard. 
