On an Adirondack Tr©cp Line 
BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS 
Last year Hy. Burke determined to spend this 
winter trapping in the Adirondacks. Burke had 
tried to make a living on a log job, but ‘‘the 
contract beat him.” Now he was a poor man 
with his forest knowledge for capital and a 
hundred steel-traps for his tools of trade. The 
traps were hidden under an old stump on 
Indian River far back in the woods where Burke 
had run his last line. Getting these traps from 
their hiding place last October was the first 
step toward establishing the winter line. Burke, 
his son-in-law and I carried the traps from their 
hiding place, with the meat of a buck the son- 
in-law killed—8o-pound packs—to Poney Has¬ 
kell’s, a distance of fifteen miles, whence they 
were taken home by team. In November Burke 
loaded the traps on a decrepit horse for which 
he had paid two dollars, and took them to the 
vicinity of Crosby Flow, where he killed the horse. 
Most Adirondack trappers use venison for bait, 
shooting deer when they need them, but Burke 
says “a live deer’s worth more than the fur of 
a dead one would bring—and horse meat’s just 
as good for bait.” 
The winter toil was now begun in earnest. 
With twenty pounds of steel-traps, forty pounds 
of horse meat and his own supplies in his pack, 
Burke headed away through the woods toward 
the heart of the wilderness. His line began 
where the roads ended. With his light ax he 
blazed tree trunks to guide him in the thick 
timber, or where a storm might mislead him. 
At intervals of a mile he set his traps. 
First of all. he threw a two-pound piece of 
bait against the roots of some big birch or other 
tree. Over the bait he built a little cubby house 
of slabs cut from a partly decayed stub. Over 
the top of the cubby he built a roof of slabs and 
evergreen boughs. In the entrance he set the 
instrument of death. The chain of the trap was 
looped around the end of a pole sixteen or 
eighteen feet long. The pole was rested on a 
fork five or six feet high, like an old-fashioned 
well-sweep. A stick flat on the ground, held 
down by a crotched stick driven into the ground, 
served to hold the pole till the struggles of a 
victim jerked it loose. Then the animal would 
be lifted clear of,the ground beyond hope of escape. 
A few minutes sufficed to set each trap, but 
only a few miles of line could be set each day. 
Every trap had to be carried further than the 
one set before. The furthest trap on his line 
as it wound through the woods, was more thar 
forty miles from where he killed the horse. 
The line set, it had to be followed. Regard 
less of discomforts, the traps must be tended 
The rains wet the trap pans, and the cold froze 
them fast to the ground; the snow buried the 
entrances of the cubby houses; mice, squirrels 
bluejays and chickadees ate up the bait; fisher 
even tore down the pens. The trapper wa: 
obliged to be constantly on the move to kee] 
his line open. Every trip over the route com 
pelled a journey of more than 150 miles, and i 
was of not less than ten days’ duration. Hen 
and there on the line were camps where thi 
trapper found shelter at night. Some of thesi 
camps were necessarily constructed to meet thi 
emergencies of Adirondack winter and 40 de 
grees below zero. The camp at the Stillwater 
where the line began, was an old hunter’s camp 
roofed with spruce bark, sided with logs an< 
floored with boards carried from an old cam; 
some miles away. On Black River was th 
second camp. Burke calls this the Cubby Cam] 
because it is so small that he cannot stand erec 
in it, and hardly stretch out on the boards o 
the floor. Sixteen miles from the Cubby Cam] 
is the end camp of the line, though loops o 
traps extend several miles beyond it. Thi 
camp is on a private preserve, but it was no 
locked or even posted, so Burke took possessio: 
for the winter. It is the most uncomfortabl 
of the camps on the line because of its thi 
sides, its large size and poorly matched board; 
Emergency camps are on the line—camps whic 
Burke uses in cases of delay or heavy snow 
shoeing, but the sixteen-mile reach is unrelievec 
That distance must be made or the trapper slee 
out. 
The traps were set with special reference fo 
mink, marten, fishers, otters and foxes—a 
destroyers of game and other forest life. Thes 
animals, with less valuable ermines, made up th 
bulk of Burke’s catch. Bear skins may be adde 
in the spring, and the presence of tracks on th 
line gives a possibility of a greater variety. 
In early February I followed Burke over th 
line. The snow was three feet deep and so loos 
that the snowshoes sank in from five to te 
inches at every step. The weather ranged froal 
clear, bright sunshine to more than sixty degree: 
below zero. The forest presented features no 
to be discovered at any other season, nor any 
where else than on a trap line. 
THE TRAP CUBBY-HOUSE AND WELL-SWEEP. 
