12 
Forest and Stream 
TRAPPING THE THREE RIVER ZONE 
ACTUAL EXPERIENCES OF A TRAPPER DURING A PERIOD OF 
SEVERAL YEARS IN THE WILDS OF NORTHERN ALBERTA—Part Two 
W HEN the freighter left me at 
Kimberly Lake I had so much 
to do for the next few days 
that I hardly had a chance to 
become lonesome. My trap-lines had all 
to be gone over and grub packed into 
a side camp at Moose Lake, about half¬ 
way between the cabin at Kimberly and 
the Baptiste. The weather had been so 
bitterly cold that practically nothing 
was “moving” in the line of furbearers. 
Presently it started to snow and for 
several days I was confined to my camp, 
venturing out each day only to run a 
short line of traps about the lake. 
Then it was that I realized what an 
awful thing solitude was. For days 
there was hardly a breath of life. The 
snow had ceased and again came the in¬ 
tense cold. The great spruce trees about 
the cabin bowed silently under the load 
of smothering white—everything was 
white except the interior of my little 
cabin. Very little progress could be 
made even on snowshoes and I waited 
impatiently for the last fall to settle, at. 
least enough to give it a bottom. The 
surface of Kimberly Lake was a great 
bare floor, unsoiled by the footprints of 
man or beast. Not even the raucous 
call of the raven disturbed the silence. 
Once I saw a 
great golden eagle 
soaring over the 
lake and watched 
him intently till he 
sailed out of 
sight. 
Where were the 
wolves that had 
once h o w led so 
freely, where the 
ravens that had 
quarreled over my 
poison baits, and 
whence had gone 
the great horned 
owls that were 
wont to make the 
night hideous with 
their unca n n y 
shrieks ? Gone—■ 
all gone! I was 
ALONE. W h e n 
one considers the 
fact that I was but 
nineteen years of 
age it is no won¬ 
der that I got lonesome up there in the 
solitude! Indeed it has since seemed a 
marvel to me that I stuck with it. 
During February I was down at the 
Baptiste for two weeks and caught a few 
foxes within two or three miles of the 
ferryman’s cabins. One day while run¬ 
ning a short line below the crossing I 
saw a silver fox sitting on a ledge not 
more than thirty feet above me. As is 
usually the case, I had no gun with me 
By RAYMOND THOMPSON 
but that taught me a lesson that I have 
never since forgotten — one should 
ALWAYS be prepared. In trapping or 
hunting one can never know when a 
rare opportunity will present itself. 
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1III1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1IIIIIIIIIIIII1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMII1IIIIIIIIIII1IIIIIII1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIH 
Mr. Thompson continues the story 
of the trapper and tells how it feels 
to he alone in a vast land of white; 
how the solitude of the wilderness 
pressed down upon him during the 
long days of winter. 
You will be interested in the ways 
of the fur-bearers and the methods 
of trapping them which he describes 
so naturally. 
lllllllBllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 
While practically an amateur at the 
trapping game, I nevertheless had pretty 
good luck with anything I tackled that 
year. Foxes I found not at all hard to 
catch, providing one used a little com¬ 
mon judgment. One of my favorite sets 
was against stones or uprooted trees 
along the banks of the river or at the 
edge of a lake. I used essence of skunk 
with a little anise oil and found it made 
an ideal scent for luring foxes. That 
winter foxes traveled in trails quite a 
bit, especially in crossing the Baptiste 
River. These trails were merely a series 
of holes that the animals made in the 
surface as they progressed in leaps. It 
was a simple matter to conceal a couple 
of traps in the spot where the fox would 
light and I made several catches in this 
manner. The greatest drawback was in 
the fact that the snow had a tendency 
to drift considerably, thus often keeping 
the traps from working effectively. 
Another thing that bothers the trap¬ 
per a great deal is the thawing of the 
snow at this time of year, for as the 
wet snow freezes during the night it 
clamps the working parts of the steel 
trap in an icy grip and thus puts this in¬ 
strument of capture out of commission. 
There is a decided tendency among trap¬ 
pers to forever lay the blame on the 
weather and it is a fact that such con¬ 
ditions have a large share in one’s suc¬ 
cess or failure. When it is intensely 
cold the furbearers do not travel much 
and when it is real warm the traps are 
apt to get out of working order. Then 
there are times when it is more than 
usually difficult for the trapper to make 
his rounds owing to heavy falls of snow 
or warm “Chinook” winds. Progress is 
almost an impossibility when the snow is 
deep and soft; it clings to the bottom 
of either snowshoe or ski. 
A T last the snow began to leave down 
in the warmer valleys and the ice 
on the lakes and streams started rotting. 
I was looking forward to spring for 
various reasons; outside of the fact that 
I longed for the sight of the bare friend¬ 
ly earth, I hoped 
to make quite a 
little out of the 
spring trapping. 
Trapping in this 
country does not 
end till in June, up 
to which time the 
fur of the beaver, 
otter, 'rat and bear 
is quite prime. 
The quality of the 
“amphibians’ ” furs 
is retained because 
of the extreme 
coldness of the 
water up till that 
period, and as 
Bruin does not 
leave his winter 
home until late in 
April and some¬ 
times the forepart 
of May it is readily 
understandable 
that his coat 
should, too, be of 
good quality for some time. 
Things did not start off with a rush, 
as I had expected. The first disappoint¬ 
ment that I met with was the fact that 
all the muskrats had disappeared! On 
Kimberly Lake I had trapped them until 
the second cold snap and when I quit I 
was certain there were at least a hun¬ 
dred or so left. On Moose Lake there 
had been a large number of houses and 
I hadn’t touched a single one except to 
En route to Mile Twenty-seven with the dog team 
