i 
850 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 28, 1910. 
down at the foot of a spruce close to the lake 
and exposed to the driving snow. She seemed 
to be intended for our dinner, and I took her 
in. We fried her at noon with our bit of bear 
fat, and had each a dipper of good hot choco¬ 
late, which is both victuals and drink. W e at 
standing up in the snow and enjoyed the meal 
better than many do their Thanksgiving dinners. 
“We went a little out of our way to look some 
traps and got two sable, a mink and another 
partridge, and after a walk of at least fourteen 
miles through swamp and brush with no path, 
reached home an hour before dark. 
“Oct. 29. Wind still blows a living gale. Rufus 
started on foot to look the Loon Lake traps 
while I looked the southwest line. The snow 
on the ridges was three inches deep and much 
deeper in the valleys. The ridges are so far 
apart that standing on the top of one it looks 
at least three miles across to the top of the next. 
I tramped all day through the snow and took out 
four nice sable. Just at dark, while running 
across a flat piece of beech land, I thought I saw 
a shadow, and looking up I saw a barred owl 
balancing on his wings not four feet above me. 
His claws were drawn up close to his body and 
he had evidently mistaken me for some kind af 
game, but when our eyes met he just slid off 
sidewise without seeming to move his wings at 
all and alighted on a low beech limb. I turned 
and smashed him and kept on without reloading, 
reaching camp long after dark. 
“Oct. 30, Sunday. Still blows and spits snow. 
Although alone in the camp, I have com¬ 
pany; as, soon after we got settled, a weasel 
came to us. At first his back was “malty”—as 
we often call a blue-gray—but he soon changed 
to pure white. Lie is very tame and seems to 
like company, as on our coming home we some¬ 
times see him running toward the camp. Often 
when I am alone cooking he will come half way 
out of a knot hole in the floor and look me in 
the face, letting me talk to him as I would to 
a cat or a dog. We have npt seen a mouse, 
mole or squirrel near the camp.’’ 
One day just after I had hung a saddle of 
bear on the end of a rib pole close to the door 
and was standing beside it, my weasel came out 
from between the two roofs and began to pat 
the meat with his fore feet, just as a cat will 
pat a bed when about to lie down on it. I could 
distinctly hear him purring, for he was not two 
feet from my ear. The only writer I remember 
having stated that a weasel purrs was a Mrs. 
Jam; G. Swisshelm. As I recall it, she had a 
tame weasel and she spoke of its purring when 
pleased and of its patting with its fore feet. I 
remember that in the fall of 1852 my partner, 
on going back to a place where we had taken 
the entrails out of a deer, told me that when he 
reached the place a weasel sprang upon the 
paunch of the deer and began to pat it with his 
fore feet as if afraid it might be taken from 
him. 
According to my observations for many years, 
the change of color in weasels is due to the 
color of the long fur gradually turning from 
brown to “malty” and from that to pure white, 
and not, as some assert, to the growth of white 
under-fur and the darker hairs shedding out. 
The fact is that the weasel has put on his new 
winter coat just before he changes color, and 
he never sheds any of it until spring. A weasel’s 
coat changes in the same way as a mink’s. In 
August a mink has a coat of long hair, quite a 
bushy tail and a sickly yellowish-white pelt. At 
this stage they are known by the trade as 
“August prime,” and they so closely resemble 
the real prime that when mink brought from six 
to eight dollars, inexperienced buyers often paid 
four to five dollars for skins for which they 
could not get over twenty-five cents. In Sep¬ 
tember this long hair sheds out, the tail is not 
much more than skin and bone and the pelt is 
coal black. The new coat begins to grow, and 
by the first part of November or earlier the pelt 
is clear white and the fur fully grown. It is the 
same with the weasel. Before the color begins 
to change, the new coat is fully grown and this 
new coat gradually turns from brown to malty 
and from that to white. I have had weasels get 
into my traps at all stages of the change and I 
know positively that they were not shedding. It 
is a singular thing that although we had traps 
set on six different townships (a Maine town¬ 
ship is six miles square), we did not catch a 
single weasel nor see the track of one after the 
snow came, although we caught a muskrat in a 
log trap baited with meat quite a way back from 
the water and a rabbit (hare) in a log trap 
baited with fish. 
“Oct. 31. Wind still blows furiously and it 
snows a little. Rufus came in late last evening. 
He took out a very large beaver, an extra large 
fisher, a fine otter, two mink and a sable and shot 
a drumming partridge. He skinned the otter and 
the fisher and brought the beaver in whole. The 
beaver was the old banker he had set for on 
Loon Stream.” This beaver got into one trap, 
and a piece of pine bark kept the trap jaws 
open so that he escaped. But he had got into 
another set close by. The otter was in a trap 
I had set only a few rods above. T he fisher 
was a gift to us. When returning from Loon 
Stream, Oct. 15, we had a trap we had no use 
for, and I set it in hope of catching a lynx. As 
it was no place for a fisher to be in I did not 
set it with a spring pole, as we do in setting for 
fisher because they often take their feet off if 
a spring pole is not used. This fisher had killed 
himself fighting the trap. 
I very much prefer log traps for mink, sable 
and fisher, unless fisher have been made shy by 
escaping from too weak a trap. One can set 
log traps faster and the animals do not suffer 
as in steel traps. Trapping like war is cruel at 
its best. We always try to drown all water ani¬ 
mals as quickly as possible. An otter caught on 
the land will kill himself in a short time fight¬ 
ing the trap. I have repeatedly found otter dead 
with the lower jaw broken and most of the 
teeth gone when at the outside they could have 
been in the trap not more than a few hours. 
"Nov. 1. Rufus started to look the Baker 
Lake line. I stayed in camp to skin and stretch 
the beaver and make stretchers for the otter and 
fisher, as we had no stretchers large enough.” 
I worked hard until after dinner. Then I found 
that my rifle would not go off. I tried pricking 
in powder until tired, but it was of no use. I 
took the barrels out from the stock and put 
bear’s oil around the tube and heated it in over 
the fire, then replaced the barrels, took off the 
hammer of the rifle barrel and lashing the gun 
fast to the deacon seat with Rufus’ snowshoe 
strings, tried to take out the tube with a tube 
wrench I had. I used all the strength I had. but 
it remained fast. After working a long time, 
repeatedly heating and putting on bear’s oil (we 
had no kerosene then), I finally happened to 
think of a steel otter trap which was in camp. 
I cut a narrow crease on each side of the handle 
of the tube wrench, and opening the trap let the 
jaws shut into the crease, then putting the 
wrench on the tube I had an auger-handle pur¬ 
chase and the tube had to come. It was in so 
hard that it lifted the lower thread of the screw 
like a ring into which one can slip keys. After 
putting in powder and oiling the screw of the 
tube 1 replaced it and fired the rifle. Had I 
been where a gunsmith could be reached I should 
never have thought of this kind of a purchase. 
“As there was a little time before dark I re¬ 
loaded and went up to look our bear trap. It 
was gone, but it was easy to follow the trail in 
the snow. The bear had gone under logs and 
around trees, evidently trying to find something 
to hitch up to. I found him fast after follow¬ 
ing about forty rods. Getting so that he was 
head toward me I fired at about twenty-five 
paces, putting the bullet exactly between the 
eyes. His head dropped between his paws. Be¬ 
ing in a hurry, as it wap quite late, I held his 
head back with my left hand and was cutting 
his throat with my belt knife when, as he felt 
the knife, his jaws came together with a loud 
snap. I was light-footed, having moccasins on, 
and it gave me such a start that I jumped back 
several feet, but it was only a death struggle. 
By working hard I got the bear skinned and 
the trap reset, and cutting the body in two I 
carried it up to the “house” over the trap and 
placed it back of the trap, so that in case an¬ 
other bear should come along he could not carry 
it off. This was a good-sized bear, very fat and 
with a beautiful glossy coat. After folding the 
skin carefully so as not to grease the fur, I tied 
it up with my suspenders and reached camp in 
time to cut camp wood. 
Many people think that a bear when in a trap 
gets fast by accident, but anyone who has ever 
trapped bears knows that they try to get fast 
to something in order to pull out of the trap. 
Sometimes they will climb a tree, and getting 
the clog entangled will throw themselves down, 
evidently hoping that their weight will tear their 
foot out of the trap. I have known of four such 
cases. In one the bear escaped by tearing a toe 
out. In the other three cases the bears were 
found hanging dead. I saw where one of them 
by biting had broken off the top of a large hem¬ 
lock where it was more than six inches through 
and the ground beneath was strewn with splin¬ 
ters as if the tree had been struck by lightning. 
Bears differ in disposition and mental capacity 
as men do. Some, when in traps, are ugly and 
some are clever; some will drag a trap to a 
ledge if one is handy and will repeatedly smash 
the trap against the rock, trying to break it. I 
have known of cases where they succeeded. 
Some will drag a clog a long way and some will 
pick it up, and by holding it under their arm 
and walking erect upon the hind feet, will carry 
it a long distance without leaving any trail. If 
men who think that animals do not reason will 
try trapping bears or raccoons for a few years 
they will observe some things which will sur¬ 
prise them. 
“Nov. 2. It snowed a little last night and was 
so cold that I had to be up several times to keep 
a fire. It is quite a task to cut the camp wood, 
as when we are at home we burn fully a quar- 
